1 less problem to deal with then, which is good! I should probably fully read an article in an OP before commenting on it The issue of communication may be overcome once quantum entanglement is fully figured out and implemented. I believe some short-range tests have already been successfully completed in that regard even.
It's always been Wankershim!
My Brand!
We'd still need to master fusion in order to power this.... but fortunately some very smart people are making great strides on that front too. A fusion chamber will be competed in France within 2 years which should create a stable and self sustaining fusion reaction.
and the interesting possibility with that is ... instead of trying to 'push' our way through space ... we could use that knowledge to let the universe pull us through space; since electricity and magnetism are closely related.
there are quite a few interesting theories out there, that step outside the current 'accepted' boundaries. It always takes people to do this, if we didn't have people like that in the past ... the moon would be cheese, the earth is flat, and everything goes around us, just like it appears from our limited perspective on the ground.
'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers clogged with rotting red
And there they lay I damn me eyes
All lookouts clapped on Paradise
All souls bound just contrarywise, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
So, I wonder what happens when they run into rocks? Will the rock pass through the ship at 10c and drill a straw-hole through it or will the rock enter the bubble with relative speed to the ship as if the ship was standing still? Or perhaps the rock will pass through the ship so fast that the atoms won't have enough time to interact and it will be like nothing happened?
this is something i have always wondered too. For instance, Voyager 1 & 2 have not hit anything and they are almost out side of our solar system. Is there some sort of sensor that adjusts is trajectory when there is something soon to be in it's path? Or is there really absolutely nothing but planets and satellites within our solar system? I figured there would have to be some asteroids or meteorites around somewhere? Have the voyagers just been that lucky?
"Death is not kind. It's dark, black as far as you can see, and you're all alone."
I just read a Q&A session with some of the world's top fusion researchers, and they indicated that (at least in the case of tokamoks) that once you get the fusion reaction started, as long as you keep it fed, it's self-sustaining. "Feeding" it merely involves adding small amounts of fuel on a regular basis. Apparently, so long as it has fuel, it will continue to sustain the fusion reaction without additional energy being added.
Of course, you're still spending a boatload of energy to contain said ball of plasma, but that's really where the issue lies: figuring out how to harvest sufficient quantities of the energy released to sustain the containment. Once that point is reached, any additional energy harvested is power output from a functioning fusion reactor...
Where we are going.. we won't need eyes to see!
-Event Horizon
If Captain Picard has taught me anything, you plot the course first, then engage warp
But seriously, I think the course would still have to be pre-determined. I am however unsure if matter can even penetrate a bubble that's warping space and time around it.
One thing to remember is that there is "a lot" of seemingly empty space in the universe. All matter we know and understand is just 4% of the universe. If one knew what they were doing, odds of running into random objects are very slim I would think.
---------- Post added 2012-09-19 at 11:00 PM ----------
Thanks, that's a nice Q&A
This suggestion isn't a strict propulsion though. You're right, if you propel an object its mass becomes greater the faster it goes, thus requiring more energy and so on . But what they suggest isn't propulsion in that sense. The object technically remains stationary, it's space that moves. And the lightspeed/energy restriction doesn't apply to simply warping of spacetime, as evidenced by wormholes and the expansion of the early universe. The warp drive they propose is a variation of one that was originally proposed back some years ago. It was found to be technically sound, but the energy required was completely impractical. Something like the equivalent mass energy of a large gas planet. What they said here is that theoretically they may be able to lower that energy cost to something much more practical. This doesn't address the difficulty in obtaining the exotic matter needed for the warp ring however, so until that is figured out this is still conjecture. But cool, exciting, awesome, sciencey conjecture. The best kind.
It would. That's basically the idea behind gravity. The moon orbits the earth due to the warping of spacetime by the earth. Same thing applies here, the ship=earth and the rock/debris=moon. The time frames and amount of warping would be different obviously, but the idea is the same.
Last edited by Urti; 2012-09-19 at 11:15 PM.
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"Facts became discussable when critical thinking stopped being the focus of education."- Chonogo
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We just need to get all the timey-wimey wibbledy-wobbly things to fit together right.
'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers clogged with rotting red
And there they lay I damn me eyes
All lookouts clapped on Paradise
All souls bound just contrarywise, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!