Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel • Hacker News Board

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#41

Post by captainmuon » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

wolfram74 wrote: post #10

It is early in the morning, so I'm still irritable, but this line is pretty egregious -- The energy savings would need to be drastic, of approximately 30 orders of magnitude to be in range of modern nuclear fission reactors.” He goes on to say: “Fortunately, several energy-saving mechanisms have been proposed in earlier research that can potentially lower the energy required by nearly 60 orders of magnitude.” -- Say…

University of Göttingen alum here, in our astrophysics courses we used to make jokes about how generous the approximations were. Comparing x^2 with x^5, take log on both sides, 2 ~= 5, so x^2 = x^5 ... Appropriate xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2205/

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#42

Post by komon » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

nynx wrote: post #27

If warp drives actually are feasible (either sub or super liminal), that'd be great. However, it seems to me that it's much more likely we'll travel between stars as digitized minds that are recorporialized at the destination.

That's only going to become a solution if you can convince people that the process preserves continuity of experience.

How do I know that I actually wake up on the other side, instead of dying and having a clone with my memories wake up instead?

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#43

Post by tgv » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

nynx wrote: post #35

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what is the state of this research? That's the Takeshi Kovacs solution, but I haven't seen any real jumps in that regard other than some new tech allowing the brain to control computers to some degree. And even if we do have that tech, we'd still have to be able to reach those destinations in the first place so we could establish outposts where our digitized minds could travel to. At the moment, the…

There is foundational research being done on destructive brain scanning and emulation. It is decades—at a minimum—away from being more realizable. You don't need to send a generation ship, just solar sails powered by massive laser installations that have enough tech on board to convert an asteroid into a receiver. To be fair, 1000 years is not very long when you have digital immortality.

Is there even an electrolytic cap that survives a 1000 year space trip?

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#44

Post by GoblinSlayer » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

riggsdk wrote: post #18

wolfram74 wrote: post #10

It is early in the morning, so I'm still irritable, but this line is pretty egregious -- The energy savings would need to be drastic, of approximately 30 orders of magnitude to be in range of modern nuclear fission reactors.” He goes on to say: “Fortunately, several energy-saving mechanisms have been proposed in earlier research that can potentially lower the energy required by nearly 60 orders of magnitude.” -- Say…

For a long time I thought of the sun as being the product of many cycles of recycled material from older suns - but if you look at the cosmic calendar our sun has been around for roughly half (a little less than) the age of the universe! For all we know we could be the first intelligent species to reach the space age in our observable universe.

The noise is huge though, the whole Mesozoic era was just a random delay for our evolution, imagine if it didn't happen or was shorter. Time needed for development of civilization and travel around the galaxy is an infinitesimal perturbation in such huge noise.

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#45

Post by nynx » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

komon wrote: post #42

nynx wrote: post #27

If warp drives actually are feasible (either sub or super liminal), that'd be great. However, it seems to me that it's much more likely we'll travel between stars as digitized minds that are recorporialized at the destination.

That's only going to become a solution if you can convince people that the process preserves continuity of experience. How do I know that I actually wake up on the other side, instead of dying and having a clone with my memories wake up instead?

I don't really see a difference. You experience a discontinuity every night when you sleep.

Of course, this entire concept is reliant on materialism. If you believe in a soul, then I'd probably find it difficult to convince you that a digital copy of you is close enough to being you.

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#46

Post by akvadrako » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #40

akvadrako wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on subjective velocity. As you approach the speed of light from an outsider's perspective from the insider's perspective the universe appears to shrink.

But if you experience 22 years to make 10,000 ly's of distance, you've subjectively gone much much faster than the speed of light, haven't you? I thought that was a constant in all frames of reference.

From your own perspective you are always stationary, it's just the universe that is moving (and shrinking).

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#47

Post by nynx » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #43

nynx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is foundational research being done on destructive brain scanning and emulation. It is decades—at a minimum—away from being more realizable. You don't need to send a generation ship, just solar sails powered by massive laser installations that have enough tech on board to convert an asteroid into a receiver. To be fair, 1000 years is not very long when you have digital immortality.

Is there even an electrolytic cap that survives a 1000 year space trip?

Probably not right now, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.

Anyhow, a laser propelled solar sail would make the journey to, say, alpha centuri in more like 20-40 years.

There's really not much point in slow travel if you can, instead, launch a self-replicator, wait a few decades for it to get there, and then just cast on over.

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#48

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #46

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you experience 22 years to make 10,000 ly's of distance, you've subjectively gone much much faster than the speed of light, haven't you? I thought that was a constant in all frames of reference.

From your own perspective you are always stationary, it's just the universe that is moving (and shrinking).

Quote from the original claim:

> After I found all this out, I concluded space travel isn't THAT hard, assuming you have a way to accelerate constantly at 1g for 22 years (that is the hardest part actually), you can get anywhere in the galaxy in a human lifetime, no need for generation ships, cryogenics or other crazy tech.

They are saying add a constant 1g acceleration and you can get anywhere relatively quickly, no warp bubble required. That's what I'm taking exception to. If we add a warp bubble, sure, but a constant 1g acceleration shouldn't ever see you having an experience of moving faster than the speed of light, and that 10,000 ly trip should still take > 10,000 ly.

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#49

Post by simiones » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #24

dreen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but the nearest star is (only?) 4 light years away. If we only managed to travel close to the speed of light, we surely live long enough today. Time dilation will cause our friends to be older by a few years than they should be, but not by that much right?

There is a cool calculator of what happen if you travel around with constant 1G acceleration. Long story short: to travel to Alpha Centauri it would take for the traveller still about 4 years, and when back at home, people would have aged only some months more than the astronauts. Crazy things happen if you decide to go on galaxy-wide trips though, to the astronauts because space contraction they perceive their own t…

> After I found all this out, I concluded space travel isn't THAT hard, assuming you have a way to accelerate constantly at 1g for 22 years (that is the hardest part actually), you can get anywhere in the galaxy in a human lifetime, no need for generation ships, cryogenics or other crazy tech.

Unfortunately, there is also a kind of rocket equation for constant 1g acceleration, and if I remember correctly it's not really doable for any realistic amount of time, even with matter/antimatter reaction drives.

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#50

Post by GoblinSlayer » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

rdsubhas wrote: post #7

monkeycantype wrote: post #3

We don’t need hyperexotic negative energy to travel to the stars, we just need to live a lot longer, and we need our friends and family to live longer too so we can comeback and see them again.

I kind of disagree here. 50 thousand years — it doesn't matter if people are biologically alive. You, your friends, family, society, relationships — would all be very, very different when you come back. If you just meant "see friends and family", yeah technically you could see each other I guess. Practically, might as well be an alien.

It's a solved problem: just make the stars your home and live there. The ability to live among the stars is required for interstellar travel. That will be your place to come back. Those who travel among the stars don't live in dirt like earth pigs.