Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean that UAP stuff? Occam's razor says this is probably some electronic countermeasure stuff by the US or something.
Occam's razor actually says that?
Turing test failed.
Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
81–90 of 194 posts
Re: Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
#82Everyone always talks about FTL travel for spacecraft, but there's also an interesting perspective from weapons side (and this a reason to be a bit careful and think about some ethics as we move along). A FTL kinetic weapon would be devastating. If it comes with a collapsing warp bubble then there's basically a gamma ray "gun" that travels right in front of your mass that is traveling at tremendous speeds. You look a…
If we're talking surprising applications of FTL, what about reducing latencies within CPUs?
You don't even need FTL for that, just move quicker than your cpu!
Re: Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
That conjecture is one of the two foundational principles of relativity - that the laws of physics are the same in all valid frames of reference. "Violating causality" means that in some valid frame of reference A, event X caused event Y, and in some other valid frame of reference B, event Y caused event X. The laws of physics cannot be the same in A and B for both of those to be true.
I'm watching two friends go through a nasty breakup that "violates causality" if you take both points of view into account, and am realizing that it's impossible to do any work with pop-sci physics because I'm relying on an extended metaphor to grasp the topic. It's clear that your point of view matters in physics, but it's also clear that I have no idea what a "point of view" means in this context.
Point of view means coordinate system, or reference frame.
If I am stationary and measuring you flying past me in a relativistic train, I would measure you in a coordinate grid say, centered on myself. You may be watching me from your train and doing the same, but from a reference grid stationary with respect to you but moving with respect to me. Even if we both agreed on identical measures ahead of time, your measurement of me from your reference frame and mine of you from my reference will be off from a measurement we do ahead of time in the same reference frame as a calibration. However, that difference comes out in the wash through the magic of the Lorentz Transformation. Using the Lorentz Transformation, I should be able to negotiate transforming a measurement I do of you in my own reference frame to what it would look like from yours and you should be able to transform yours to mine, through which we'd both come to the same numbersassuming we're in spacetime that shares the same general degree of curvature (same gravity). This can even be generalized to arbitrary degrees of spacetime curvature. I.e. if your relativistic train is racing past a black hole with a near tangent intersect, and I'm stationary with reference to the black hole centric reference frame but further out in the system, as you blast through the high curvature part of your trip your clock may seem to de-sync from mine. This too, however, can be mitigated through copious amounts of math I don't get for more than half an hour after looking away from a text book. I just know if I ever have a problem to solve that involves hitting that book again, I have either made some terrible or awesome decisions in my life.
Re: Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
#84If FTL is possible (and engineerable) then the Fermi paradox becomes a serious problem. There "should" be aliens all over the place unless... (1) We are wrong about the nature of the universe and strong theism / creationism or the simulation hypothesis (which is the same thing more or less) are right. (2) Life or complex life are so phenomenally unlikely that we are literally the only example in the local galactic su…
Or 7) FTL is possible, but the amount of energy required is so insanely large it doesn't matter. The paper says it takes energy equivalent to "four orders of magnitude smaller than the solar mass", which is an absurd amount.
This reminds of an interview I read with Donald Knuth about the P vs. NP problem. IIRC, Knuth said he believes there probably is a polynomial time algorithm to solve NP problems, but the constant factor will be so absurdly huge (e.g. Graham's number) that it could never be run on an actual computer. I've heard layman claim that if P=NP were proven, then it'd suddenly spell the end of encryption relying on NP problems, but it's entirely possible that it'd have no practical impact. The constant factor is analogous to energy requirements for FTL.
Re: Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
#85Everyone always talks about FTL travel for spacecraft, but there's also an interesting perspective from weapons side (and this a reason to be a bit careful and think about some ethics as we move along). A FTL kinetic weapon would be devastating. If it comes with a collapsing warp bubble then there's basically a gamma ray "gun" that travels right in front of your mass that is traveling at tremendous speeds. You look a…
If we're talking surprising applications of FTL, what about reducing latencies within CPUs?
Funnily enough, the writers of ST:TNG had this idea too. The main computer of the Enterprise-D was huge (9 decks tall) and generated a subspace field so that optical processing ran faster than light.
Re: Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The macro evidence in that if FTL were possible it makes it that much more unlikely that we haven't detected starfaring life. I don't think this is a great argument. Even with FTL the galaxy (not universe) is huge. Let's just say you can go 2x (warp factor 1.25) it would still take more than 2 years to reach Alpha Centauri (our closest star, 4.37 lyr). Even at 8c (Warp 2) it would still take >6 months. At 100c it i…
I don't think it's fair to say "or immortality, or generational ships." You can make a one way trip, sometimes, but you can't meaningfully communicate. FTL is necessary or the universe is kind of boring on a grand scale.
It's not boring, it's just too big and therefore too slow for our tastes. If we lived 5,000 years, taking a 100 year trip to Alpha Centauri might not seem so bad. I think extending lifespan like this is more likely than building an FTL drive.
Re: Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
#87PBS Spacetime has a video discussing the recent theoretical advances in warp drives. It does not cover this paper but does discus a paper that also claims to solve the negative energy problem.
Re: Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
c is defined. https://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?c You don't have to measure c, or calculate it. The causal chain goes the other way - we assume c is invariant and define capacitance and inductance in terms of it (c, that is).
No, the meter is defined (as c times a certain number of seconds).
No, the meter is defined in terms of c and the hyperfine transition frequency of Cs-133 is defined https://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?nucs. If that link isn't good enough, you can check out the SI Mises en pratique on the subject: https://www.bipm.org/en/publications/mises-en-pratique
Edit: I'm totally this guy right now https://xkcd.com/386/
Re: Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we're talking surprising applications of FTL, what about reducing latencies within CPUs?
This would also be neat. And of course any information communication. While Ansibles[0] are typically used to verbally communicate with someone why not any information? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible
That was sort of a primary plot point of the Ender's Game series.
Re: Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures
#90The lesson we should really take here is the power of wishful thinking. People dearly want to believe in FTL travel. Without it, the Universe just seems so vast, empty and distant. The truth is it is and it isn't. It's only really that on our current time scales. Not to be a broken record (there's some new variation on some old idea like every week it seems), but I'm firmly in the camp that believes FTL isn't possibl…
> Theoretical: a lot of these theories rely on people not understanding the domain of a function
We thought it was an aberration of mathematics when Einstein's equations blew up into singularities. A singularity couldn't exist in the real world, they said. Must just be an artifact of us using "real numbers", and we needed to be careful to respect the domains of those functions.
Well, turns out singularities do exist and the math led us right to them.