Quantum Setback For Warp Drives 627
KentuckyFC writes "Warp drives were generally considered impossible by mainstream scientists until 1994 when the physicist Michael Alcubierre worked out how to build a faster-than-light drive using the principles of general relativity. His thinking was that while relativity prevents faster-than-light travel relative to the fabric of spacetime, it places no restriction on the speed at which regions of spacetime may move relative to each other. So a small bubble of spacetime containing a spacecraft could travel faster than the speed of light, at least in principle. But one unanswered question was what happens to the bubble when quantum mechanics is taken into account. Now, a team of physicists have worked it out, and it's bad news: the bubble becomes unstable at superluminal speeds, making warp drives impossible (probably)."
Hiesenberg says.... (Score:5, Funny)
improbability drive (Score:5, Funny)
is this where the improbability drive comes in?
yeah, someone had to say it.
WARP 10 (Score:2, Funny)
So we can't go there, big whoop... (Score:5, Funny)
Just do what the Planet Express Ship does and use a Dark Matter drive to move the Universe around us instead... [wikipedia.org] :)
Warp Drives?? (Score:4, Funny)
Bah, just reverse the polarity (Score:2, Funny)
Any warp engineer knows that.
Re:improbability drive (Score:5, Funny)
Will that allow ludicrous speed?
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:5, Funny)
That's the only statement you could come up with?
What a Bohr.
Re:Warp Drives?? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:3, Funny)
Don't Asimov about it bro. Sometimes you just gotta Kepler.
Cancel the Star Trek movie (Score:5, Funny)
This problem has been solved. (Score:3, Funny)
Don't they remodulate the shield frequency (or reconfigure the emitter array), and that keeps the bubble stable just long enough?
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:improbability drive (Score:4, Funny)
A: 42
Re:They won't be strangers for long. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh my.
This is why we need women in the army to stop that nonsense.
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:5, Funny)
I always just have Mr. Scott handle the warp drive. He does the impossible instantly, miracles take longer. When Spock lends a hand, hours can seem like days...
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:5, Funny)
Or is it *both* Impossible and not Impossible?
Only when you're not observing and you don't hear it meowing
Reverse the Polarity! (Score:3, Funny)
It always works.
Re:improbability drive (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paper was submitted 1. April (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Funny)
With magic, you can ride a unicorn.
Re:improbability drive (Score:3, Funny)
No, no, the Bistromatic drive is much better...
Even though now it's been replaced with the CDS drive, so you can have ludicrous speeds without an actual propulsor...
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Warp Drives?? (Score:5, Funny)
Zing!
Re:improbability drive (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps it's only Infinitely Improbable?
Re:improbability drive (Score:5, Funny)
* - Possibly also Nazi-Nazi.
Re:improbability drive (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:4, Funny)
> Or is it *both* Impossible and not Impossible?
Well, yes and no...
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:4, Funny)
"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable."
- Christopher Reeve
...then you fall from a horse and reality hits you like a freight train.
We all know how this ends. (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:5, Funny)
If I were you I'd stop poking about with things we don't understand. After all, it was curiosity that did and didn't kill the cat. ...
I'll get my coat.
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:5, Funny)
Frankly, I never get invited to any of those parties, either.
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:4, Funny)
You guys talk as if you haven't heard of the Heisenberg Compensator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_(Star_Trek) [wikipedia.org] states, "Heisenberg compensator remove uncertainty from the subatomic measurements, making transporter travel feasible."
Its clear this is a dual use technology used both for Warp drives and transporters.
Re:improbability drive (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps this is why, despite our best efforts, no other civilization has contacted us. It's simply too hard to bridge the huuuuge gap between the stars.
More likely, they've just chosen not to. Like why we tend to not talk to people from Alabama.
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:5, Funny)
Fourier information, I thought it was pretty funny.
Re:Causality (Score:3, Funny)
A bit solipsistic are we?
No, it's just you.
Re:There is no fabric! (Score:2, Funny)
My people are taught that it's a fluid, not a fabric. When particles pop into existance, or exist as matter, in our dimensional space their probability function becomes highly localized and creates a "void" between dimensions and a pressure density gradient at that point in space. This pressure forces the fluid of space to flow into these voids and it's this flow of space fluid that creates and explains the drag known to us as gravity.
We are also taught that if enough matter is brought together in a region of space the flow of space fluid into other dimensions becomes so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape the currents. We call these objects deep blue holes. Technically they are black because no light escapes, but we're smurfs and we think we're cool, so since cool blacks are bluish blacks we call them deep blue holes.
I'm pretty sure I got that explanation right. Brainy lectures on and on about it but it's hard to pay attention when the discussion is about deep blue holes... Smurfette sits next to me... droooooool....
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:4, Funny)
The problem with traveling faster than light is that my wife would never go with me on a trip:
"Traveling that fast is going to make my ass look big."
(Hmm, leaving her behind might be a good thing... )
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:4, Funny)
I always just have Mr. Scott handle the warp drive. He does the impossible instantly, miracles take longer. When Spock lends a hand, hours can seem like days...
And sometimes Spock gets radiation poisoning and indirectly gets Kirk's son murdered. All in all, much better to let Mr. Scott handle things ;)
Re:WARP 10 (Score:5, Funny)
Unless...
Go East
You have been molested by a Mullgrue
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:3, Funny)
3 years 205 days is 31,200 hours. so yes the trip will only last for hours, 31k of them.
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:3, Funny)
Or is it *both* Impossible and not Impossible?
Man, even I, a liberal arts major, know that Heisenberg studied dead cats, not space travel!
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:4, Funny)
So if we close our eyes when we flip the switch it all still works?
Well, maybe. Technically because you haven't seen it or work or not work it's both working and not-working at the same time. So, the trick is to keep your eyes closed at all times, and you'll be able to visit strange new worlds, boldly going where no man has gone before. When you open your eyes, you'll find yourself doing that, or simply daydreaming at the office instead of writing that documentation you promised so long ago.
I imagine that a more feasible technique would be applying buttered toast to a cats back and harnessing the power from that to travel the stars. Sadly, my experiments in that area have all resulted in failure, often with the cat scratching me. I have to admit that my neighbours refer to me as "that weirdo from nextdoors" ever since they saw me and I yelled in an ominous voice: "Stand back, I'm doing SCIENCE!" while holding a cat and a piece of buttered toast.
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:4, Funny)
Inadvertently, a Slashdot poster stumbles upon the reason that aliens, intersteller travelers who travel in very small ships, abduct people on Earth and stick things up their butts.
And then
Re:They won't be strangers for long. (Score:4, Funny)
the real problems, and a closer analogy, (pun? what pun?) would be the Navy....
500 men leave on the ship, 6 months later 250 couples return
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:3, Funny)
Heisenberg eh?
thought that was Schroedinger....
(/liberalartsmajor)
Yes, and he didn't actually study dead cats.
(liberalartsmajor)
Is this going to be on the final? Man am I hung over!
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:4, Funny)
Curiosity didn't kill the cat. It was Ignorance that killed the cat, and framed curiosity.
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:4, Funny)
"Traveling that fast is going to make my ass look big."
Just figured out my reply: "Dear - it's all relative... "