Assuming that we can properly obtain and contain antimatter, could this at all be realistic?

I'm sure there may be other factors that are a tad unlikely, but that's all I could think of at the moment.

What's everyones opinion on this?

http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nodes/NODEv4n3-5.html

__________________
Obedience brings victory
Victory is life
That is the order of things

I don't care what NASA's BPP folks think, it looks impossible - or, if not impossible, so impractical as to be nearly so.

__________________
If ignorance is bliss, why is the world so full of misery?

186 000 miles per second, BTW. The article says 186 000 mph.

__________________
Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

It is actualy quite a sound theory unlike the star trek one which uses anti-matter injectors and dutirium crystals which i dont think even exist as dutirium is a heavy hydrogen atom IIRC, which wouldn't form crystals H2 metalic liquid would freeze to be like steel i believe and not with a crystaline structure.

A more obvious form and more plausible form is the show andromeda's FTL travel which uses natural work hole nexus for the ships to travel through as Einstein stated that space being warped and worm holes where plausible yet improbable IIRC.

(edit) sorry i meant to say quite a sound theory compared to the star trek theory

I'm skeptical of something like warp drive, but to be fair I'll post two things I found, one pro and one con .. both are dated links (1999 & 1993 respectively). There's probably a lot more stuff out there (I did a quickie search to get both sides).

In Star Trek, they use "dilithium" (which is a made-up substance) crystals. You are thinking of deuterium, which is a hydrogen atom with a neutron in the nucleus.

In Star Trek the warp drive does not require dilithium. Older fusion powered starships like the Phoenix did not have it. Dilithium is used as a moderator to control the matter / antimatter reactions in the warp core.

Deutorium is needed to power a ship's fusion reactors. They power systems like shields and weapons.

__________________
NCC 2000 - USS Excelsior. Commanded by captain Hikaru Sulu.

Shamelessly ripping off Lawrence Krauss' arguments about warp drive (in his two books about physics in Star Trek):

In principle, it is possible to achieve FTL by "warping" space around a ship, but this requires manipulation of energy and mass distributions comparable to black holes.

But, in order to "warp" space in front of the ship, one needs to send out signals which are still bound by the speed of light (as far as we know, changes in gravitational field propagate with the speed of light).

Therefore, even if we were able to warp space, we would not be able to do it FTL.

:-k I think wormholes are the way to go.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

I just read this article about the problems involved with FTL travel. It's very informative for "non physics" people like myself. It covers the problems of violation of causality and unsolvable paradoxes and offers some very hypothetical ideas as to how we might be able to get around the problems of FTL travel. It speculates on diffferent modes of FTL, including "warp drive" and use of sub-space.

__________________
An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

If we're talking about moving through normal space, then you would need some kind of a cattle catcher, or deflector shield to "clear a path" for the ship.

Traveling at those speeds, encountering even the tiniest particle would result in a very holey ship.

__________________
"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Dilithium is just two lithium atoms which can be used in fusion reactions as they break down into hydrogen atoms, its another way of getting heavy hydrogen atoms IIRC.

The warp drive some how puts them into "sub-space" which IIRC from one of the episodes it said that in "sub-space" the only thing you could encounter is a worm hole but no ship ever goes into "sub-space" properly.

If space was really warped infront of a ship couldn't it be warped so that all matter goes around the ship and retakes its original place behind it after (as to not blow up a planet if you accidentaly went through it.

What i'd want to know is how you would make one of those shields because it would be simple to create a strong magnetic field around the ship and in that way you could get the aft, port, etc. shields but wouldn't it have to be like a plasma shield as that could easily be held in a magnetic field. I think the ionising the hull plating like in the new Enterprise show would make more sense.

One last thought, how in the heck do they change the polarity of their shields cause if its held by a magnetic field and run on DC power you have 2 polaritys, 3 if you want to turn it off and get shot. on AC power i guess you could have unlimited polaritys by changing the hertz its made at which would also probably screw up the magnetic field and all the power on the ship unless it was taken from a different generator which would be a total waste of space.

Teleportation technology has been around since the 1940s. The Government wants to cover it up to keep us in the dark.

The Philadelphia Experiment ring any bells?

Hopefully people like Richard Hoagland, Marshall Barnes, and Kieth Laney will bring the truth to the masses.

__________________
An open mind & common sense is more important than logic & reasoning.

source: unknown wisdom by Philip Rossing

If teleportation has been around since the 1940's, then please give us some evidence to support your hypothesis. Speculation doesn't count as evidence, and since we're only speculating, we can't make any solid claims as to whether or not teleporation exists.

__________________
Obedience brings victory
Victory is life
That is the order of things

I read the whole page from that nasa link that you give. It appears that the scientist who wrote that article doesn't understand star trek technology all that well.

He mentioned phaser technology and didn't exactly understand what it was. Phasers are supposed to be lasers that operate out of phase with space-time. There are other technologies he doesn't quite understand in star trek as well, so his conclusions aren't exactly accurate either.

Just a nitpick

__________________
Obedience brings victory
Victory is life
That is the order of things

Teleportation of photons works and the teleportation of a single atom has only taken place so far, i dont think we're going to be saying "beam me up scotty" anytime soon.

Anyway if teleportation had been around since the 40's wouldn't we have a moon base by now because we could just transport oxygen and food there aswell as space stations with it. I dont buy technology cover up of that scale.

I'm glad you did. I enjoy Star Trek and noticed that other Trek-things were covered but didn't get around to reading it and now won't bother. Well to redeem myself somewhat I'll toss in this link. This from the same site discusses the "Alcubierre warp drive" .. the rest of the site looks interesting as well (although after that Trek link I won't vouch for it until I read it! :wink: )

[edited to add 2nd link]

Prove that teleportation can work. And if it works there is no reason the goverment would keep it a secret since it can greatly benifit from it.

Proof it even took place ?

Their crediblity is very low.

__________________
NCC 2000 - USS Excelsior. Commanded by captain Hikaru Sulu.

Well phasers are not really like lasers which are direct energy transfer weapons. Phasers are chain reaction weapon inducing NDF in the target.

__________________
NCC 2000 - USS Excelsior. Commanded by captain Hikaru Sulu.

I highly suggest you read http://www.viewzone.com/philadelphia.html ...

Marshall Barnes did grade A investigatory work and tells indepth every facet of the incident.

__________________
An open mind & common sense is more important than logic & reasoning.

source: unknown wisdom by Philip Rossing

Dr Buster - if you want to talk about the Philadelphia Experiment start another thread or do a search and resurrect an old one that dealt with this fable.

Sure I remember that movie. But I don't think Hollywood scriptwriters can be taken as a serious source of historical information.

And yes, the ship the experiment (allegedly) took place stills exist. It was decommissioned by the army and bought by a freight company that still uses it. Now unusual phenomena have been reported by sailors...

__________________
FUTURE PIG

Well if you want hollywood historical information i would surgest the film JFK with its 100% guaranteed baloney. It's so factual that it never took the actual video evidence of the day into account or even the seating positions in the car! Or that the "perfect" bullet had pieces of the mayor's (i think it was the mayor) wrist bone embedded in it, or the markings a rifle makes on the bullet from the rifling in the barrel or the stamping.

Hollywood is never factual it is sometimes based on a true story which means something vaguely the same happened and they've decided to add 1000 guns in an army and a couple of aliens that take over the US government. :wink:

No wonder they think they're going faster than light. Their speed limit is off by a factor of 3600.

Here's my idea.

It calls for a couple of experiments (which I have also designed) to show that space, or the "fabric" of space can be made the opposite of how it exists around massive objects. If space is more "dense" around massive objects, then it may also exist in a "rarified" state as well --a virtual negative mass.

I propose 2 experiments to show that by (nearly) instantaneously removing a mass from an area of space, that the warped space will not only "spring" back to normal, but "overshoot" and become rarified, as if a negative mass existed in the same space, for a short time.

If that virtual negative mass occupies the same space as a positive mass (of which some had been instantaneously converted to energy), the two masses might cancel to zero. If that is the case, then infinite acceleration is possible, hence FTL is possible.

Experiment 1 is a dynamic version of Cavendishes torsion experiment to determine the gravitaional constant, using charged spheres (in Faraday cages).

Experiment 2 involves an underground nuclear test and some very-very sensitive gravitomiters and accelerometers.


Bottom line, if space is "springy" then FTL may be possible.

__________________
http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/stats...033/prj:6/.png

Okay, what i say to the first paragraph is that to do this instant removing of mass, im guessing a singularity would be needed or antimatter even though im not sure if what's emmited would leave mass or not.

The removal of mass quick enough could result in a whipping effect in a normal substance but we dont know if space-time works like that or not. So if you took out 1000 tons of matter (exaple not a real amount could be 1 gram or a billion tons) from our sun in an instant by singularity or anti-matter or how ever you propose it would go nova from instability of the gravity and explosive force. Nova's happen near the speed of light as its a hydrogen and helium plasma, your proposal would make it so that a star could go nova or super nova faster then the speed of light and in theory destroy things in the past.

I think this breaks causality in our universe you cant have an effect proceeding a cause, this is why traveling faster then the speed of light is impossible. Its the grand-father paradox, which the universe may have an inbuilt protection against it. One theory is that how ever unprobable an accident happening it will, so say their was a 1 in a billion chance that shooting your grand-father from point blank in the head could back fire it would instead of killing him and you'd end up unable to kill him. or your time machine would break.

I think FTL travel is impossible to achieve especialy at our present state. But another theory is that if you did shoot your grand-father that history would rewrite so your grand-mother had an affair and your dad wasn't your grand-fathers son. If this is true then your theory would be possible but im not sure at all probbable.

The expansion of space time can and has shown to be FTL.

tlbs101, are you proposing an effect similar to dropping a rock in a pond, and riding the wave that it produces?

__________________
Obedience brings victory
Victory is life
That is the order of things

I know the expansion has prooved FTL photons but riding the "wave" will do you nothing, your place in space time will remain the same! chucking pebbles in a pond next to a boat only moves it up and down not horizontaly! The same will apply to space time if you are making it behave like a wave as it does for any wave.

Im sorry but its not like making a mountain and running down it. Especialy if your traveling faster then light in which the wave would have to be moving faster then you in the first place for you to be able to "ride" it.

I've got an even better experiment for you, albeit one that is not particularly practical with current propulsion technology. (Perhaps antimatter would generate sufficient energy over time... to get back to the beginning of the thread). Try this: take an object and keep accelerating it. Period.

Too simple? Guess what? No one's ever done it. Nothing created by human science, nothing that has carried measuring instruments to record data for us, has ever even approached the speed of light. Not because it's "impossible," but because it *just hasn't been done.*

As I said, current tech makes this difficult: you'd need a heckuva lot of fuel. But someone ought to try it. We should be able to achieve significant fractions of the speed of light just by plotting some creative slingshot orbits, I think. (I don't have the math on this... anybody know what the limits would be before the traveling probe was going too fast for any solar system object's gravity to keep it within the system?) Let's *really* test the effects of relativity, not just extrapolate from the few minute effects we've noticed so far.

Personally... I suspect (but can't prove) that Einstein was either wrong, or was correct but has been widely misinterpreted. *Why* can't something exceed the speed of light? Why *shouldn't* it be able to? What will stop it? What will happen if we try my experiment--just keep accelerating a body until... well, until whatever is supposed to happen happens, or until we discover that we can, in fact, move faster than the speed of light?

Let's not just assume. Let's prove it. Then we can worry about whether or not we even need to "warp" space, or find wormholes (also hypothetical--and our ability to take advantage of them even more so), or whatever else.
[/b]

Okay Einstein is misinterpreted, matter can not travel faster then light, photons can't travel faster or slower, and objects traveling faster then the speed of light can not travel slower.

2nd they have accelerated things to near the speed of light, being hydrogon ions, and their effects have been measured. The ions "weight" greatly increases, This is done every day in particle colliders and they dont do it for fun! they measure everything that happens.

accelerating something like a space ship through a sling shot orbit would most likely knock out the entire solar system as the ship would gain more mass then a moon orbiting a planet and once one's orbit is out the whole system will go over time.

The relativistic mass doesn't make the object have more gravity. That's one reason why they don't think about it that way anymore. A better view is that the formula for acceleration is different from the classical one, factoring in gamma.