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)."
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on whether we can engineer ourselves to live 50 years in a tiny spacecraft with a bunch of strangers.
Proof! (Score:5, Insightful)
Helicopters! (Score:2, Insightful)
Paper was submitted 1. April (Score:5, Insightful)
Please note the submission date:
Semiclassical instability of dynamical warp drives [arxiv.org]
They won't be strangers for long. (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, after 8 weeks of army basic training none of the 50 or so people in my company were strangers.
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares if it takes 50 years to fly to Alpha Centauri if we can engineer ourselves to live for a thousand!
Either that, or we can just figure out how to get really close to the speed of light, and reap the benefits of time dilation to make the journey only last hours from the traveller's point of view.
Progress in theoretical physics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Why make the ship tiny?
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. At about one G acceleration you can reach any point in the universe in a few years of ship time.
Got a Better Idea? (Score:3, Insightful)
While what you say may be very true, the problem is that we have yet to come up with a more feasible method of reaching distant planets in a reasonable amount of time.
The next closest idea that Science and Science Fiction have come up with is Wormhole/Space Fold travel. And unless you have some safe way of generating more power than a large star in a safe and contained manner, that's going to be even tougher than FTL or Warp Bubble drive.
So our best bet is to spend the time doing a full scientific inquiry into FTL/WB drive including actually attempting to BUILD something and testing it. If after that we can show that FTL/WB drive is the cosmic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, then OK. But let's do the hard Science and prove it first. IANAQP, but it seems to me that your theory and TFA theory are as about as likely as the Mexican guy's theory. Let's find out, shall we?
One major reaction (Score:3, Insightful)
I am completely hopeful for the sake of knowledge and experience that we get to into space like in Star Trek. However, I do note a bit of escapism in some of the hopes for a warp drive. I think people are a bit afraid of the idea that this Earth might be the only world humanity will ever live on. The cynic in me suggests that people want this world to be disposable.
We co-evolved with the planet all the way back to when we were microbes. This world is a part of us. Yes, let's try to break past the speed of light, for the sake of science and achievement. Are we existentially okay with our fate as a species being completely contained in this world? I think we can be.
Re:Hiesenberg says.... (Score:3, Insightful)
What scientists do not know could fill a universe. (Score:4, Insightful)
The very people who should be aware how little they know compared to what is possible. They come up with these statements, and they forget that for every problem, there IS a solution, even if they can not figure it out themselves.
The question their current "findings" should be asking is "what makes it unstable?". They may not know, but that is the key to solving the problem.
People forget that scientists used to think that it was impossible to break the sound barrier for various reasons. Then they came up with the idea that the speed of light could not be broken. Time has proven again and again that the only thing stopping ANYTHING is not having the knowledge to do it. Not having knowledge does not make something impossible, it just means a CURRENT inability to do something.
Re:One major reaction (Score:4, Insightful)
People do not want this world to be disposable, but they want the option to get off this crazy panet, in the hopes that there will be some sanity once you get away from the current cultural stupidity we see from terrorists and those who support terrorism.
There is also the concern that the stupidity of a few may destroy the world, so getting off the planet is also a survival instinct for the species at this point.
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:2, Insightful)
You forget that the human brain would need to evolve or be changed radically to adapt to this vast travel durations. We're programmed to think in terms of seconds, minutes and hours. We stop having clear concepts of time already at days..
Or... They're further away than that (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the nice things about the universe is that it's actually pretty hard to hide phenomenon. We, for instance, have been making no attempt to not blatantly broadcast our location and existence - while the sample size is small, do you really think any other civilization is going to have their first thought upon discovering radio waves be "Damn, better be careful about using lest an impossibly distant alien race finds out where we are!"?
No, far more likely is that if there is life out there, it's simply far enough away (or, correspondingly, too young) that we haven't had the chance to see any evidence of them. But to assume that 'if there is life, of course they see us', is entirely illogical.
Re:Proof! (Score:4, Insightful)
E=MC^2 doesn't contradict that F=MA.
F=MA doesn't contradict that things fall down.
What makes you think that new developments in physics will contradict that E=MC^2?
In short, physics is further and further refined by research, not contradicted, because new theories don't change the empirical evidence that was used to determine old theories, they just explain it better.
Of course, that doesn't mean new theories don't help development of new technologies, so your point stands.
Circular Argument (Score:3, Insightful)
That's sounds like a circular argument:
Re:One major reaction (Score:2, Insightful)
Are we existentially okay with our fate as a species being completely contained in this world? I think we can be.
Without the possibility to colonize other planets humanity will almost certainly tend towards conformity and ultimately stagnation. In many ways I find that fate as sad as extinction.
Re:Helicopters! (Score:3, Insightful)
People that argue FTL is inevitable, that our theoretical physics must have a tiny flaw that will allow it to happen, don't understand that this isn't about quantum physics or string theory or even relativity. It's about the basic rules that allow us to understand the universe.
Have to disagree there. It is about relativity. Its relativity that says we live in "4 space" with one time like dimension. Its relativity that makes the prediction that FTL travel can result in causality violations. So it can't not be about it.
You don't even need to modify it that much to prevent causality violations with FTL either. If FTL travel *does* have a preferred inertial frame, IIRC then thats enough. A FTL ether if you like. This however may not be interpreted as a "small" change to relativity.
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets say we do that tomorrow. Now you still need to figure out how to keep food and water on that ship for 50 years. Engineer a fuel source that can carry you with strict safety controls to keep the bag of flesh that is you in alive. Oh, while we're at it we'll need a new groundbreaking psychology that can keep 1,000 yo humans sane, especially ones stuck in a smelly spacecraft for 50 years. I wont hold my breath.
Re:Longer lifetimes is the answer (Score:3, Insightful)
The scariest part about light-hugging spaceships to me (with thanks to Alastair Reynolds) is the impossibility of rescue. If you've got a ship that's able to continuously produce thrust, you fire that thing up, continue to accelerate until the mid way point to your destination, then flip the ship around and decelerate. Yeah, what happens when the drive fails while you're booking along at .95c? It's not like Star Trek where you "drop out of warp" and stay still. There's no "crash landing" there's no friction to slow you down...you just keep right on going at .95c until the end the universe, with no possibility of rescue. That is some scary shit.
Re:Causality (Score:2, Insightful)
Technically, he didn't get it right unless he derived the idea from observations by a valid method.
If you just make up some stuff, say in a science fiction book, which then turns out to sound like something scientists discover 100 years later to be a fact, that doesn't mean you were right. It's just an interesting coincidence.