Speed of light vs warp 5

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by Myrkul
or just cheating space?

I don't know that you can actually "cheat" space... except for maybe in Scrabble, like if you tried to use "alot" as your word, when we all know it's "a lot" and therefore unacceptable. 🙂

But, I digress.

-Elizabeth

[BuzzLY]

<gasp!> Another Scrabble player??? If only you lived close enough so that we could play! 😉

[Myrkul]

Originally posted by Elizabeth
I don't know that you can actually "cheat" space
-Elizabeth

I meant space as in the time/SPACE contium..

Originally posted by Elizabeth
But, I digress.
-Elizabeth

digress? hah yea.. not even close
you went completly off topic! lol

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by BuzzLY
<gasp!> Another Scrabble player??? If only you lived close enough so that we could play! 😉

Yes, perhaps someday I can TRANSPORT myself to "star command" and we can play! (Notice how I segue right back on topic.)

... or I could just drive the 20 minutes. LOL 😃

-Elizabeth

[BuzzLY]

I even have the Travel Scrabble... my friend and I play it at lunch all the time 😃

[Bunkermaster]

I love Scrabble too 🙂

<---------------- 900 :eek:

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by Myrkul
well, your assuming the conciousness is a non-physical element. But It seems more likley our consiousness is simply electical charges in our brains. There is really nothing to suggest otherwise.. I mean if you think of our brain as a incredibly complex computer hardrive.. or for that matter a computer.. you can take a computer apart (into peices) then take them across town and put them back together.. pretty much the same thing with teleporting humans (dealing with the disassembly and reassembly not the actual transportation).. but so much more complex.

But to do that while the computer is running?

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by Bunkermaster
ok, what if the system stops in the middle but the buffer is present in both destination and has not been purged in source... Where does the soul go?


Instant cloning O_o

Thing is that during teleportation the original quantum state is destroyed in the process of examining it.

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by Myrkul
would you considerusing a shortcut of sorts (like a through a wormhole) cheating the speed of light? or just cheating space?

Ah, now you're talking about warp drive.... Quite a bit of research has been going on into that possibility lately. Like stretching and bunching up spacetime in the immediate vicinity of the ship so that from the ship's own viewpoint it never travels faster than light, but from someone outside the warp field it belts along, surfing on a wave of distorted geometry.

It seems that exotic matter (matter with negative mass) of some sort will be needed in any case, to get the right sort of gravitational curvature; whether it's a field of negative energy being generated by the ship itself, or negative mass struts and braces holding a wormhole open.

[dalecosp]

Boy, what I've been missing...

Elizabeth is probably right about this issue. We're not grown up enough as a race to deserve this kind of technology.

First thing you know, some transporter systems operator would be duplicating backup buffers of (insert supermodel name here) and selling her to erstwhile teenage boys on the black market; they would buy her with replicated genuine cash, I expect.

As with most advances, both wonderful and horrible acts would be possible. Would open up new possibilities for security minded folks, I expect....

As for storing prisoners, you wouldn't wanna sentence someone my than five years, IMO: too high a rate of HDD failure 😉

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by Weedpacket
Ah, now you're talking about warp drive.... Quite a bit of research has been going on into that possibility lately. Like stretching and bunching up spacetime in the immediate vicinity of the ship so that from the ship's own viewpoint it never travels faster than light, but from someone outside the warp field it belts along, surfing on a wave of distorted geometry.

It seems that exotic matter (matter with negative mass) of some sort will be needed in any case, to get the right sort of gravitational curvature; whether it's a field of negative energy being generated by the ship itself, or negative mass struts and braces holding a wormhole open.

Weed, I hope you remember us when you're rich and famous. 😉 One comment though - while it's obvious you possess a superior intellect and extensive knowledge of quantum physics, it's really hard to take you seriously with that beanie staring back at me. 😃

<- bowing to Weedpacket's enormous brain! 🙂

-Elizabeth

[Myrkul]

Originally posted by Weedpacket
Ah, now you're talking about warp drive.... Quite a bit of research has been going on into that possibility lately. Like stretching and bunching up spacetime in the immediate vicinity of the ship so that from the ship's own viewpoint it never travels faster than light, but from someone outside the warp field it belts along, surfing on a wave of distorted geometry.

It seems that exotic matter (matter with negative mass) of some sort will be needed in any case, to get the right sort of gravitational curvature; whether it's a field of negative energy being generated by the ship itself, or negative mass struts and braces holding a wormhole open.

Indeed your right with what you said, but thats not what I am talking about. Your talking about manipulating space through "stretching and bunching" it.. to take advantage of the curve gravity creates in space.

But when I said wormhole, I ment more than just "stretching and bunching" I ment punching a hole through the fabric of space/time it self (IE a black hole).. theortically a black hole is connected to another or to a white hole (holes opposite of black holes that are thought to exist to prove the law of conservation of mass).. so if one was to survive the trip through the event horizon and the singularity one could travel great distances. Now that idea isn't really practical.. what is though would be to create artifical black holes, without all the nastiness of sucking everything within its grasp in. Thus the idea of wormholes.

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by Myrkul
theortically a black hole is connected to another or to a white hole (holes opposite of black holes that are thought to exist to prove the law of conservation of mass)

Er, no... (a) there would need to be as many white holes as there are black holes (unless they had some sort of trading going on between them), (b) mass is conserved when a black hole absorbs mass because the hole itself gets more massive in the process, (c) all that stuff being emitted by the white hole would be so dense as it came out that its own gravity would be enough to form a black hole.

.. so if one was to survive the trip through the event horizon and the singularity one could travel great distances.....Thus the idea of wormholes.

Which I commented on.

The original serious work on wormholes began when Carl Sagan was writing Contact. He wrote to an astrophysicist friend of his name of Kip Thorne to ask about the usefulness of black holes as a means of transport.

Thorne wrote back that there were grave fundamental difficulties with using a black hole. For example, once within the event horizon all your possible future paths hit the singularity - a very nasty place where pressure, temperature and density all become infinite; which most physicists regard as silly - but then, most physicists who have anything to do with any of this already know that neither quantum mechanics nor general relativity as we have them today are up to the task of describing such a situation. Further discussion (which spread in the way many scientific discussions do to pull in a variety of kibitzers) developed the original wormhole models.

On a more general note, Thorne posited the conceptual paradigm of the "arbitrarily advanced civilisation" - also called "Star Trek physics" or (in a nod to Stanislaw Lem) "HPLDs". This theoretical approach runs more or less like: "Assume that the only limitations on what a civilisation can do are physical: there are none of the social, political, economic, logistical, or engineering difficulties that afflict lesser civilisations. What can they do, within the compass of physics as we understand it?" The consequences of such brainstorming are worked through and hopefully eventually, one of those consequences will turn out to be testable by us.

[BuzzLY]

Well... no duh! :rolleyes:

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by Elizabeth
it's really hard to take you seriously with that beanie staring back at me. 😃

<- bowing to Weedpacket's enormous brain! 🙂

Gee, I think I need to cool down a bit, now...

[Elizabeth]

That's much better, thanks 😃 LOL

-Elizabeth

[Myrkul]

Originally posted by Weedpacket
Er, no... (a) there would need to be as many white holes as there are black holes (unless they had some sort of trading going on between them), (b) mass is conserved when a black hole absorbs mass because the hole itself gets more massive in the process, (c) all that stuff being emitted by the white hole would be so dense as it came out that its own gravity would be enough to form a black hole.

(a) obviously whose to say there isnt? (i'm not saying there is just making a point)
(I'll concede that black holes aren't connected to white holes)
(b) how do you justify this? While you can't justify either way.. your saying that the black hole actually stores the mass it intakes.. and becomes larger? so why dont black holes just expand and take over larger and larger amounts of area? the only way to really conserve the mass would be to transform it into energy.. is there any evidence of black holes giving off energy? (thats a question not a point/statement) One thing you forgot to mention aboutt he singularity was mass.. as you pass over the event horizon and near the singularity your mass starts to reach infinty (even though "reach infinity" is paradoxial.. ignore that) as well as all the other things mentioned.. but (another actual question) does time? Its said if you look back across the event horizon while your crossing it (or over it) you'll see all future and/or past exisiting at once (i read this is a book somewhere not sure of the validity of it.. just something interesting). When you reach the singularity (a 1 dimensional point).. everything becomes infinitly small not infintly big correct?
(if you havent guessed by now I'm going from thing to thing without any order) Since a black hole is a rip, that implies there is a whole.. a whole to what?
(c) precisly.. the confusion.

I would be interested in what you mean by "...all your possible future paths hit the singularity "?

This implies that there is more than one possible future.. that everything isnt predetermined.. doesnt it?

[Weedpacket]

b obviously whose to say there isnt? (i'm not saying there is just making a point)[/b]
I think they'd be fairly noticeable things. Judging from current progress it seems to be a lot easier to find black holes than it is to find white ones...

b how do you justify this? While you can't justify either way.. your saying that the black hole actually stores the mass it intakes.. and becomes larger? so why dont black holes just expand and take over larger and larger amounts of area?[/b]
You've just stated what amounts to the second law of classical black hole dynamics. If you're wondering, the relation between a black hole's mass and its circumference is C=4piG*M/c^2, where C is the circumference, M is the mass of the hole, G is the gravitational constant, and c is of course the speed of light. Does that count as a justification one way or the other (not that I'm asking, just being rhetorical; I am wondering just what you know of black hole physics, but not enough to ask)?

the only way to really conserve the mass would be to transform it into energy..
E=m*c² - what's the difference?

is there any evidence of black holes giving off energy? (thats a question not a point/statement)
Classically, no. Theoretically yes, but it involves quantum mechanics. Practically, no, because for even something as small as a stellar-mass hole the amount of mass lost through Hawking radiation is still less than the amount gained by absorbing cosmic background photons (and as a hole gets bigger it cools down and radiates less) - not an easy thing to make out telescopically, therefore.

One thing you forgot to mention aboutt he singularity was mass..
Couldn't be bothered: with density infinite and volume zero, and mass being density divided by volume... The maths blows up (which is why it's called a singularity).

I would be interested in what you mean by "...all your possible future paths hit the singularity "? This implies that there is more than one possible future.. that everything isnt predetermined.. doesnt it?
No, I'm just talking geometry. Any path from a point within the horizon that avoids the singularity would have to involve faster-than-light travel (or, equivalently, time travel) somewhere along it. Don't care what's travelling the path or how it got there or what it's trying to do or why it thinks it's a good idea, just that it is.
And if you've already got FTL travel, why are you mucking around jumping into black holes?

Since a black hole is a rip, that implies there is a whole.. a whole to what?
Don't you mean "a whole lot of what?"

A black hole is just a place like any other - except for a few small details like the fact that there is a point nearby which requires you to travel faster than light if you want to move away from it. The point itself is a problem: the maths blows up - but like I said, physicists already know that the theoretical tools for dealing with the singularity don't exist yet. As for what actually goes on in there - you seem to have a more solidly-formed opinion than I. I would point out though that things get highly uncomfortable before the singularity itself is reached (contemporary theory is quite effective in such regimes).

b precisly.. the confusion.[/b]
Whose? (I'm being rhetorical again.)

Just swung by Amazon and ran Kip Thorne's name through its search engine. Found a book I'd been trying to remember the title of. Very good general-audience introduction to this subject, I thought. Covers the (then) state of the art in gravitational engineering theory, right down to virtual particle positive feedback loops between wormhole mouths. I recommend it to you.

[Myrkul]

Interesting, indeed very interesting.

When i said.. "the only way to really conserve the mass would be to transform it into energy.. " I implied inside the black hole. Because I didnt see how it oculd store mass itself. It would have to transform it into energy.. then like you said it possibly leaks out through Hawking Radiation (of which I found out about after I posted - quite interesting theory)

"Don't you mean 'a whole lot of what?' "

No I litterally ment a whole to where? I assume that if its a gravitational rip.. there is a whole (the singularity?). Mabye I am wrong though.

"...which requires you to travel faster than light if you want to move away from it[the event horizon]"

Doesn't it also take an infinite amount of time to cross the horizon? To the Viewer by the time you;ve reached the event horizon the black hole has gone up and evaporated already (hacking radiation)..
Anyways I have to go to work now. I'll pick up that book thanks.

[dalecosp]

OK, from the "contemporary DaleCo dictionary of the English language the way I learned it in school..."

whole-complete; the totality of an object or sum of objects or other describable entity/entities.

hole-opening, cavity, portal, gap, etc.

So you mean 'hole to where'.... Weedpacket is classically trained and something close to genius, we think, (around here). Ask a hacker about a whole, and he'll refer to definition one above every time...

🙂