FTL (faster-than-light) Travel

[Meghan]

See
General- Welcome Scifi Readers! Msg 67-69 for the beginning of this discussion.

[Bill]

What are the various explanations of how FTL works that you have encountered?

I don't have anything in mind, except for wormholes/folded space and of course the non-explained warp drive and subspace.

[Casey]

I don't remember any details as such... but with speeding neutrino's making the news perhaps we won't have to wait much more than 100yrs or so to find out how it works for real :P

[Mandapanda]

I love this article from The Guardian after Cern scientists successfully repeated their tests showing neutrinos travelling faster than light. It's fascinating science: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/201...

However there are lots of sceptics still in the science world. I love the quote from that science boffin, "Professor Jim Al-Khalili of the University of Surrey" who "expressed the incredulity of many in the field when he said that if the findings prove to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV". LOL.

On another note I used to live in Geneva close to Cern. You can't see much obviously cause it's all underground. But there is one little hill there with an entry that looks suspiciously like a hobbit door!;)

[Casey]

And what's really cool - for the Dr Who fans out there... that photo on the link above - it looks like it's written in Galifreyan :D

A physicist friend of mine has just applied to work at CERN. I'm waiting for the 'take your friends to work day' ;)

[Mandapanda]

Casey wrote: "And what's really cool - for the Dr Who fans out there... that photo on the link above - it looks like it's written in Galifreyan :D'..."

Oh yeah! How cool. (can I come to that open day too!!!:)
Gallifreyan Language

[Casey]

Yea, the interlocking circles part - although more like you see on their chameleon arxh fob watches and engaved on the Dr's crib.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Chameleo...

[Mandapanda]

*sighs* I love David Tennant. I think he's my favourite Doctor.

[Casey]

I'm a Matt Smith girl myself. Tennant runs a very close second though.

[Bookwatcher]

Casey wrote: "I'm a Matt Smith girl myself. Tennant runs a very close second though."

ME TOO!!!!!!! Oh I love Matt Smith. He is awesome!
:-)

[Oco]

Kernos wrote: "What are the various explanations of how FTL works that you have encountered?

I don't have anything in mind, except for wormholes/folded space and of course the non-explained warp drive and subsp..."

Yep, those be basically them as I remember them. So taking advantage of this idea of our three dimensions being limiting, and there are perhaps, what ... seven? I can't remember the thinking on all that, but there are hypotheses, and presumably it might be possible to jump across dimensions that we don't yet see (hence 'wormholes', also 'jumps'). Anyway... something like that... hope you didn't get the idea I knew what I was talking about there... :D Not sure what kind of physics 'warp drives' might derive from. Probably none. And I think it is mostly space operas that employ them (along with that fascinating ability to accelerate in a vacuum by rocket propulsion).

But in addition to FTL, I was also thinking of the various acceptable methods for space travel -- FTL is one, translation through dimensions (or wormholes, or as I think of it, punching through the moebus strip). But there is also the device of sleep/seed capsules, where people or people seed are frozen to be woken after arrival. And also the concept of arks that move people over eons, so that it is the great-g-g-g-g-g grandsons of the people who left Earth that arrive at the planet.

ETA: just realized I ramble up there. Apologies. Got off work at a godawful hour and I'm sort of sleepwalking. :) Can't seem to resist this and the dystopia discussion though.

[Casey]

This is a great clip for getting your head around the possibles.

It's called 'imaging the tenth dimension' - a very simplified example of how one guy explains a limited form of string theory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_GQq...

Our space ship is the ant - you'll understand when you see it.

[Casey]

In one book I read (it's a love it or hate it book - I warn you in advance) Details of the Hunt there was an interesting uhm... device for time travel and FTL.

(view spoiler)[ the one species were the only civilisation to have mastered time travel and their ships were carefully guarded - only registered engineers were allowed to work on them - the reason? It wasn't the ships technology that made the jumps, it was the species themselves through a kind of meditation and they could take the ship and its occupants with them. Not a revelutionary technologiy but an interesting twist on the usual. (hide spoiler)]

[Mandapanda]

Casey wrote: "This is a great clip for getting your head around the possibles.

It's called 'imaging the tenth dimension' - a very simplified example of how one guy explains a limited form of string theory.

ht..."

My brain hurts! LOL

[Casey]

Yeah - it does that to you... but you kind of get the idea of the ant disappearing and appearing along with the headache :)

[Mandapanda]

It's a funny feeling with this extreme intellect stuff. I can hear it and on a superficial level it makes sense when someone describes it. But to be able to then describe it to someone else so they understand it is very hard. But having said that I love hard science in Scifi novels. Particularly the Red Mars series and books by Alastair Reynolds.

[Bill]

Simultaneity! We just started re-watching the 3rd Doctor, Jon Pertwee at least those available on DVD. The unforgettable Jo Grant just joined him last night in Terror of the Autons (the 1st monster to be brought back in the new series, BTW) with the return of The Master (the 1st Master, Robt Delgado). I sooo like the old series, better than the super-slick, pc, new series. The next episode, The Mind of Evil, story 56, is not yet available on DVD, though we have it on VHS, just no VHS player anymore.

Which brings up the concept of interstitial time and time particles, ie, time (or space-time) is a particle or digital and one can get around our perceived limitations by slipping into the space between the particles, thus interstitial. Sergeant Benton, in Pertee's The Time Monster, explains it as slipping between one second and the next. There is an experiment going on now to find evidence that space-time is digital rather than continuous (see the current issue of Scientific American).

Which brings up Tachyons as a means of FTL:

"Tachyons appear in many works of fiction. It has been used as a standby mechanism upon which many science fiction authors rely to establish faster-than-light communication, with or without reference to causality issues. The word tachyon has become widely recognized to such an extent that it can impart a science-fictional "sound" even if the subject in question has no particular relation to superluminal travel (a form of technobabble, akin to positronic brain)."

[Charming, Order theorist]

Casey wrote: "In one book I read (it's a love it or hate it book - I warn you in advance) Details of the Hunt there was an interesting uhm... device for time travel and FTL.

[spoilers removed]"

I admit to loving it. Time travel! Tentacles! Woohoo! But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, at least not without a "severe dumbness" warning.

I am going to set up a "guilty pleasures" sub-shelf for my personal shelves one of these days.

[Casey]

Charming wrote: "I admit to loving it. Time travel! Tentacles! Woohoo! But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, at least not without a "severe dumbness" warning."

Ditto that.

I was actually coerced into reading it by fellow readers that thought it was hilarious in its awfulness and I had to endure the ridicule when it came time to admit to enjoying it for what it was - a light hearted, fun read.

[Mandapanda]

Kernos wrote: "Simultaneity! We just started re-watching the 3rd Doctor, Jon Pertwee at least those available on DVD. The unforgettable Jo Grant just joined him last night in Terror of the Autons (the 1st monster..."

I like the old Doctors too. Especially Tom Baker. But what I like about the new series is that it's so slick. I like the (slightly!) higher quality gizmos and aliens, and the revamped music/titles, and I like the lean towards horror stories that seems to be cropping up.

I think I found the article you mentioned in the Scientific American, Is Space Digital? . Do you know if after a period of time we will be able to view the full article or do you always have to subscribe to able to read it?

[Casey]

I had something clever to say about tachyons and superluminal but by brain is already sleeping... will have to come back to it.

Yes, new Dr = supershiny tech :D

thats all I can manage for now

[Oco]

Kernos wrote: "Which brings up Tachyons as a means of FTL:
"Tachyons appear in many works of fiction..."

Oh haha! Wasn't but maybe a month ago that I read this and I bet it was the exact same source, it is so familiar. I think I'd googled 'tachyon' thinking WTF is that anyway. Weird thing is, I'd put 'tachyon' communications in a fic I'm writing, and I was trying to figure out where my brain had come up with the word (I'd figured some random nuclear physics reading I'd done). Oh. That's where. :D I guess I absorb ideas without knowing I've done it.

[Bill]

MandyM wrote: "...I think I found the article you mentioned in the Scientific American, Is Space Digital?. Do you know if after a period of time we will be able to view the full article or do you always have to subscribe to able to read it? ..."

Yes you will. I think when the next issue is released. The experiment is being done at Fermilab and if I understood was a repeat of the Michelson-Morley experiment using 2 interferometers with a sensitivity in the Planck length range. The theory postulated the digital information is within a square 1 Planck unit on a side and 2-dimensional.

It is very difficult for me to grok this stuff (grok=having an intuitive understanding, in my vocabulary). I only took 1 year of college physics, but really wish I had gone on through physical chemistry and quantum mechanics. I will do in my next life.

The quote on tachyons is from the wikipedia page, near the bottom. I think I heard it 1st In Star Trek, either TOS or TNG.

[Bill]

I just finished Starbound by Joe Haldeman. Super-aliens had a means of seemingly instantaneous travel which they could not explain in human terms, but differentiated between time and duration. "You are mixing up time with duration.From an external frame of reference, it took the ship as long as calculated from an Einsteinian POV (their ship had reached relativistic speeds), but from in the ship it seemed instantaneous. I have a feeling it had something to do with perception. Of course this was not rigorously explained, because we humans could not understand.

[Casey]

Kernos wrote: "Of course this was not rigorously explained, because we humans could not understand. " Nice get out clause from the author - I like it :D