Topic: Superluminal Velocities

[arakish]

Yes but unfortunately some people focus on the 1/2 part and not the forever part.
MDC

LOL!  How true!

rmfr

[markc]

  All this talk of the Higgs boson has me thinking of a Higgs Drive that sort of works like the Star Trek Warp Dive or maybe a jump drive. Or maybe it works like a teleport gate with time to focus on the distant gate for it to be effective.
MDC

[markc]

Maybe a Dark Matter Filament Drive? http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/04/giant-dark-matter-bridge-between-galaxy-clusters-discovered/?intcmp=features


MDC

[RandalThor]

I just started reading these books where the n-space drive is done be creating a mini-singularity in front of the ship and you just constantly fall towards it, maneuvering it around to change direction, while still being able to "twist and turn" in place. They did have older/different methods as well that they used in other situations like when operating in atmosphere and when inside other ships (Don't want a mini-singularity getting loose inside, now do ya?), so they weren't limited to this method.

[yammahoper]

my fav drive was simular to what randal described in the previous post.  A gravity well is generated in front of the craft and pulls the ship along, hypothetically at the speed of gravity, which I understand is unknown so potentially faster than light.

It was a neat idea but seems to seriously violate the law of conservation of energy.

[JimiSue]

Which raises some interesting observations on the force of gravity.

The way we are taught in school is wrong. We are taught about gravitational potential energy, or simply potential energy which is possessed by an object at rest when being held above another surface, and when it falls, that energy is translated into kinetic ednergy. This is bogus.

It seems clear to me that the object at rest has no energy. However, as can be measured from the calculations to do with conservation of energy, when the object hits something it does possess energy. Therefore, the force of gravity must therefore be a means to add energy into an object while it is moving (+), with caveats that this can only be done in one direction, and only if the object is freely able to move in that direction.

Newton was the pioneer in the physics of gravity, but his theory has turned out to have holes in it. Then came Einstein, who plugged some of those holes but it has been proven that his formulae also don't describe the full picture. I wonder if the next pioneer in this field can harness a way to capture that energy, because that could mean an unlimited supply of essentially free energy.

Which then paves the way for an FTL drive - if the amount of energy you could in theory gain from gravity increases with the strength of the gravitational field, and at a singularity the force of gravity is infinite... by definition you have a source of the infinite energy required to push a solid object through the light barrier.


(+) However... conservation of energy tells us that this energy must come from somewhere. Which is where that all kind of falls down. Maybe it is connected to Dark Energy as an opposite force pushing the universe apart? With mass providing a sort of lensing effect (so the greater the mass, the greater the gravity. Maybe the gravity "wasted" in not doing things like holding everything in orbit around everything else goes through some complex reaction to end up as dark energy? Maybe if I can solve those I should write to the Nobel institute and tell them where to post my prize

[GrumpyOldFart]

It seems clear to me that the object at rest has no energy.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as "an object at rest." However, gravity appears not to obey lightspeed limits. As a simple and obvious example, Earth's orbit is shaped by where the Sun is, not by where the Sun was 8 minutes and 19 seconds ago.

[JimiSue]

Odd that of the fundamental forces gravity is the one most familiar to common experience, and yet is the strangest and probably least understood of them all.

But what you mentioned there Grumpy would naturally mean that even beyond the light barrier you could still continue to use drives like the 'falling into a singularity' one  on the other side of the light barrier as well.

[markc]

Which raises some interesting observations on the force of gravity.

The way we are taught in school is wrong. We are taught about gravitational potential energy, or simply potential energy which is possessed by an object at rest when being held above another surface, and when it falls, that energy is translated into kinetic ednergy. This is bogus.

It seems clear to me that the object at rest has no energy. However, as can be measured from the calculations to do with conservation of energy, when the object hits something it does possess energy. Therefore, the force of gravity must therefore be a means to add energy into an object while it is moving (+), with caveats that this can only be done in one direction, and only if the object is freely able to move in that direction.

Newton was the pioneer in the physics of gravity, but his theory has turned out to have holes in it. Then came Einstein, who plugged some of those holes but it has been proven that his formulae also don't describe the full picture. I wonder if the next pioneer in this field can harness a way to capture that energy, because that could mean an unlimited supply of essentially free energy.

(+) However... conservation of energy tells us that this energy must come from somewhere. Which is where that all kind of falls down. Maybe it is connected to Dark Energy as an opposite force pushing the universe apart? With mass providing a sort of lensing effect (so the greater the mass, the greater the gravity. Maybe the gravity "wasted" in not doing things like holding everything in orbit around everything else goes through some complex reaction to end up as dark energy? Maybe if I can solve those I should write to the Nobel institute and tell them where to post my prize

 I think you are getting your frames of reference confused. Newton used the Earth as his frame of reference and now we use the universe as the frame of reference when describing your item at rest.
 But I could be wrong as it has been some time since I did some real Q Physics and Frames of Reference problems.
MDC

[JimiSue]

I wasn't even talking about frames of ref really - By Newton I was referring to his laws of motion, which work very well on the large scale, and then Einstein whose laws worked very well at large scale and also the small scale, not to mention the whole concept of space-time and how mass distorts it (hence, gravitational lensing). But his laws also break down at the very small.

But yes, by the object at rest I was not considering the motion of the planet it's on or the universe around it.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Well that's the point. When you say

It seems clear to me that the object at rest has no energy.

what I see is 'An object at rest relative to its local environment has no energy relative to its local environment.' In other words, the energy is in the relationship, not in the object.

In a somewhat similar way, a magnet can generate an electric current in a wire as long as the magnet and the wire are in motion relative to one another. Stop the motion and change nothing else, you stop the current. The energy is in the relationship, not in the magnet or the wire.

[RandalThor]

It seems clear to me that the object at rest has no energy.

I think it is more like everything is energy, just in different forms. A rock: energy, air: energy, sunlight: energy. Do we have the knowledge and/or capability to understand how this is so, and to tap all these types? No. Not yet, anyway.

[arakish]

It seems clear to me that the object at rest has no energy.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as "an object at rest."

An object at rest, absolute rest, would also have 0 Kelvins of energy.  I do not mean 0 degrees Kelvins (although both refer to almost the same thing), I mean Kelvins, as in molecular energy.  At 0 Kelvins, matter would have absolutely no molecular energy.  Or any other kind of energy.

However, as GOF said, in a round about way, there is no such thing as an object at rest.  Everything contains energy, whether it is molecular, nuclear, potential, etc., etc.  Even at the Zero Point.

A very good example is Helium.  Even at 0 degrees Kelvin, also viewed as being the Zero Point, helium is still a liquid.  This means, that even at the Zero Point, helium still contains energy, enough to keep it liquid.  That is until we also apply pressure.  It takes about 4 atmospheres of pressure to solidify helium at 0 degrees Kelvin.  This kind of proves (but not truly) that even at the Zero Point, there is still energy.  Thus, there is no such thing as "an object at rest."

But!  It would be interesting if such a thing could be achieved through technology.  That would mean an object at "absolute rest" would literally become The "center of the universe" since it would be at absolute rest and everything else is moving away from it.

The speed of gravity is infinite.  As GOF pointed out, the effects of an object's attractive force (gravity), no matter how miniscule, is determined by where it IS, not where it WAS.  So imagine a true, pure, hypergravitic drive.  You could literally put yourself anywhere in the universe in less than an instant.  No real time passing.  Currently, in my FtF SM campaign, that is a type of drive the Terran Star Empire is currently working on.  However, the best they have been able to do is about 10 to 15 LY in (as they call it) an instant.  And, they have had problems with the X-Ships either imploding or exploding sometimes at the destination point.  Currently, they are using a much less advanced system known as the Hypershunt Jump Drive, which I have mentioned here.  I just have not mentioned that it works on hypergravitics which was first introduced by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation universe.  Basically, that drive shunts the ship to FTL velocities with no real time passing.  The deshunt also occurs with no real time passing.  However, time still normally passes while in the hypershunt.  And, no, for some reason, time does dilate while in the hypershunt.  Time still passes normally.  In other words, if you spent five days (432,000 seconds) in the hypershunt, then five days (432,000 seconds) has passed outside the hypershunt.  Most often, the Terrans simply refer to such as "shunt" and "deshunt."

Once advanced enough, the Terran Star Empire will be able to "shunt" their ships from location to location with no real time passing, or if you prefer, instantaneously.  Then as they continue to advance, they will discover how that drive will literally have no distance limitations.  However, that is quite a bit of time down the stream.

rmfr

[RandalThor]

I think it is more like everything is energy, just in different forms. A rock: energy, air: energy, sunlight: energy. Do we have the knowledge and/or capability to understand how this is so, and to tap all these types? No. Not yet, anyway.

Holy moly! I just watched an episode of Nova about "What is Space?" And it looks like I was right.* Even in "empty" space there is all sorts of stuff going on. Neat.



*At least that is the theory.

[arakish]

I think it is more like everything is energy, just in different forms. A rock: energy, air: energy, sunlight: energy. Do we have the knowledge and/or capability to understand how this is so, and to tap all these types? No. Not yet, anyway.

Holy moly! I just watched an episode of Nova about "What is Space?" And it looks like I was right.* Even in "empty" space there is all sorts of stuff going on. Neat.



*At least that is the theory.

I watched the same show.  What is truly interesting is how the "Golden Age" authors (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, et. al.) speculated such things in some of their novels before such was known or speculated by the physicists.

rmfr

[markc]

 Has there been a Wave Particle Drive any where?
MDC

[arakish]

sounds familiar, but I'll have to sit and mull it over some to see if anything rattles free.

Seems Star Trek had something called a <something> Wave Drive.

rmfr

[markc]

sounds familiar, but I'll have to sit and mull it over some to see if anything rattles free.

Seems Star Trek had something called a <something> Wave Drive.

rmfr

 I postulated that it would work the same but the drive would use special materials in the hull to turn the ship into a particle wave for FTL.
MDC

[JimiSue]

Just had a thought about  a Relativistic Substitution drive.... Everyone knows E=mc² - If you calculate that out using the weight of the ship... you get a big number. But, just suppose you had the means to generate that energy (e.g. matter/antimatter annihilation), the drive would function by converting an amount of energy into mass, effectively substituting the light speed capability of the energy into solid matter. From a game point of view I liked that because:

1) it provides a sub-industry of collecting these lumps of matter which the ships leave behind
2) it provides bragging rights to pilots - for a perfect entry, the ship would just blip out of sight to be replaced by a chunk of something, and for a bad one there would be a very obvious light show.
3) there's an adventure hook for a corporation to refine that drive specifically so that it produces specific elements, suddenly cornering the platinum market for example.
4) it gives rules laywers something to do to calculate with extreme accuracy the exact mass of their ship, not to mention the roleplaying opportunities provided by over-zealous customs officers requiring you to declare even the replacement firing pin in your gun for the one that was a little worn down.

Still working on how such a drive would come out of it's tachyon-esque existence at the other end though. Details, details