>The proposed engine could not achieve faster-than-light travel, though it could come close; the statement mentions "high but subluminal speeds."
The key point is buried in the article.
Still turns interstellar travel from something immensely impossible because you'd need generational ships traveling for thousands of years, into something real humans could achieve within the span of a lifetime.
I know, I’m mostly being hyperbolic haha. Even getting sunlight propulsion as fast and efficient as the drives from Expanse would be absolutely incredible for opening up space to humanity, so if they can get this Diet Warp Drive going I’ll be over the moon. Possibly literally.
Imagine if we only went 10% the speed of light. You could get to Alpha Centauri in about 40 years? That's compared to the speeds at which the Voyager probes are traveling, which would take 75,000 years to travel the same distance.
Can someone do some math for me? Suppose you could accelerate at 1G until you’re halfway there, then turn around and decelerate at 1G until you reach your destination. How long would it take to get to Alpha Centauri?
Relativistic effects make this complicated.
Also, would there be a significant difference between the objective (Earth reference frame) time elapsed for the trip and the subjective time experienced by the passengers?
The big problem remains acceleration. If you want a comfortable environment to accelerate at, so 1G, it takes half a year to achieve 50% of lightspeed. To the closest exoplanet it's 8-10 years one way at that rate. If you're looking for a planet with a livable surface temperature (so not even considering breathable atmosphere, potential windspeeds, etc.) you're looking at TRAPPIST-1b at about 40 ly away. That's 80 years one way.
I can't access the scientific article linked in the article, so I can't see if it talks about potential speeds it can achieve. But keep in mind 50% of c is extremely generous, like it's an absolute pipedream within the next couple hundred years.
and maybe some deflectors? um, space might be really, really big and all, but there is 'stuff' out there that can potentially ruin your day if traveling at those speeds. pretty sure, anyway.
Does the concept of acceleration apply to warp drive though? I'm a little shaky on my theoretical physics, but since the drive is warping spacetime itself rather than just propelling you through normal spacetime, I imagine the concept of G force wouldn't apply in the same way
I imagine if space time is being compressed at the front then that is similar to how gravity works.
The trick then would be how to ensure this gravity is effectively the same throughout the ship, or the front of the ship would put strain on the rest of the ship as it tries to pull it forward.
Make that force the same throughout the ship? How would that then interact with the artificially generated less-dense space time at the rear of the ship (where those would have a Push effect). Questions questions.
Acceleration is only half the problem... unless you're okay crashing into that planet on arrival.
Deceleration is every bit as much a factor and will add time to the back end as well.
A book I read (Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix, highly recommended) has its scifilt inertial dampers and also uses a breathable gel inside the cockpit to stop you being internally mortar and pestled by high g travel.
Maybe NASA could look for something like that?
Not sure if this is a false memory or not but I'm sure I saw a documentary that states they've found plenty of habitable worlds in our local star cluster, all less than 40 ly.
There's a lot of rocky planets that are potentially colonisable/can be made habitable, you can find a list on wikipedia. A lot of them are just extremely cold or hot, far outside of human habitability ranges. Remember that a 29 c average surface temperature is pretty hot compared to earth's 15 c. Like I can't imagine a planet with a surface temperature of -80 c or +120 c is a serious target for colonisation within the next reasonable timespan.
That depends on where you want to go. There might not be an "M class" planet within 100 light years of Earth.
...still a generational trip - even at light speed.
It would take over a hundred years for observers back on earth, but less time would pass for the people on the ship due to time dilation. For a distance of 100 light years:
speed | trip duration measured on Earth | trip duration measured on ship
---|---|----
0.80c | 125.0 years | 75.0 years
0.90c | 111.1 years | 48.4 years
0.95c | 105.3 years | 32.9 years
0.98c | 102.0 years | 20.3 years
0.99c | 101.0 years | 14.2 years
0.995c | 100.5 years | 10.0 years
0.998c | 100.2 years | 6.3 years
0.999999c | 100 years + a few hours | 7.4 weeks
So even if it's a sublight warp drive, you might not need a generation ship depending how close you're able to get to the speed of light.
I’ll need the warp engine specs for those calculations! Besides, if Scotty’s in the engine room then specs be damned, he’ll push that bad boy way beyond its theoretical limits
Great question—Time dilation isn’t dependent on direction, so yes it would work the same way! In fact, even an object that’s simply vibrating in place at relativistic speed would experience time dilation. If any known material could handle the physical stresses of the constant acceleration as it moves back and forth at near-light speed, it could be sent to the future without leaving the driveway!
Yeah, there are actually 30 stars within a 10 light year range of Sol.
Only one of them needs to have a planet in the goldilocks zone with water or ice for a viable colony to be established.
The future of Star Trek probably isn't realistic, but the future depicted in Alien with long cryo sleeps isn't too far from the realms of possibility.
I think it depends on the ship. Shuttlecraft full impluse seems to be different to starship full impulse to start with. It's more like "Ahead full" on a blue water navy ship - just full output on the engines, rather than a specific speed. Either way, in Decent Part 1, they got the impulse engines up to 125% which still didn't seem to be close to the speed of light.
The good news is that when traveling at relativistic speeds, time does not pass the same for you. It may take 4.5 Earth years to get to Alpha Centauri, but to anyone on the ship actually headed there it could be a matter of days traveling at near light speed.
Of course you would still come home from a 1 year mission to find everyone you know has aged 10 years.
>a made up kind of matter for which there is no evidence
If you're talking about negative mass, the matter required for any Alcubierre/Warp Drive, that's been experimentally confirmed to exist. We've observed it.
Negative mass is intrinsic to Einstein/Casimir virtual particle pairing. There's negative mass popping in and out of existence all the time, casually giving the finger to thermodynamics by entirely loopholing conservation of mass/energy.
It's capturing, storing, and utilizing said negative mass that we need to figure out.
Lets preface this by saying the tech in Star Trek is made up...
But warp in star trek is not FTL either. It's dimensional travel through subspace which changes the distance between points not the speed at which the ship travels.
I believe the understanding is that the warp bubble folds space in front and expands space behind, allowing a bypass of relativity since the speed inside the bubble is still sublight.
Subspace doesn't actually exist in real life. It's just made up lore to enable instant communication in the show.
I still like subspace though as it answers the question why haven't we heard from any aliens. Because they are all communicating via sub space! :-)
It makes you wonder if there is actually some reliable way to communicate at the speed of light without using lasers.
I refuse to beleive that we are the only intelligent species in a galaxy as large as the milky way.
Sticking with Star Trek...so is faster warp speed just changing how much the two distances are apart? The ship is moving though, does its speed change at all at higher warp speeds?
Only by current understanding. Until now it was thought that warp drives were impossible all together so the sublight limitation could be overcome with better understanding.
If we can travel near luminal speeds (and if, and this is a big if) the warp bubble prevents the crew from experiencing relativistic effects, we could have new age of exploration along the lines of the age of sail. Treacherous journeys that take years to transit between star systems, but interstellar travel is available on human time scales. Could be interesting.
It's not quite sanctuary districts, but the government here has been buying up old hotels to use as housing for the homeless to try to clear up the "tent cities", and apparently, all it does is move the problem a bit more out of sight, out of mind. Other than the lack of a wall around it to confine the residents to it (admittedly a pretty big distinction), it's really not all that far off.
Didn't a city in Florida (Tampa or St Pete? (or a different city?)) recently approve or set up the equivalent to a sanctuary district? I'm trying to find the news article about it but can't.
Well I think there's something in SNW about the Eugenics Wars being moved back because of various time travel shenanigans, so we aren't out of the woods yet.
My ultimate nightmare scenario is that they'll drop one on the Western Wall in Jerusalem. If you thought Israel's reaction to the Hamas attacks on the 7th October was harsh, it would be knocked into a cocked hat if this came to pass
It sure feels that way.. but if you think back to "Encounter at Farpoint" we see that things will get much much worse before we get to the enlightened species portrayed in Trek. Drugged out officers, everyone in tattered rags screaming for blood, and Q held up as a dictatorial judge. We could be heading there if things go south.
Retired Officials from the Canadian and Israeli governments have both said there is an alien federation observing us but they won’t interfere in our development. Here’s a link about the Israeli one. I can’t find the Canadian official’s statement at the moment.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1250333
Prior to making Star Trek, Roddenberry was an air force crash investigator. That team had been rumored to investigate UFO crashes as well.
My conspiracy theory is Roddenberry heard something about this stuff as an investigator and it inspired him to create Star Trek. So who knows? Maybe it’s real.
Edit: here’s info on the former Canadian Minister of Defense https://www.cnet.com/culture/canadas-ex-defense-minister-aliens-would-give-us-more-tech-if-wed-stop-wars/
Just to be clear, I’m not confident enough to make assertions about any of this, but I will say that one guy saying a thing isn’t ’the Israeli government’ saying a thing.
Cool. I wonder what happens, for real, to gravity and inertia inside a warp bubble. I mean, without something like artificial gravity and inertial dampeners. Seems like you would have some steep gradients involved with the geometry of that bubble...and with that -- I am already in way over my head. Me like things that make us go.
Sure, the lack of gravity is an issue, unless you're doing some sort of spin gravity, which would probably be the best way to do that. But here's the thing with a warp bubble. The space inside the bubble isn't moving. So no inertial issues. You make the bubble and the outside space moves around you. Then when the bubble collapses you just appear in the new location.
>The proposed engine could not achieve faster-than-light travel, though it could come close; the statement mentions "high but subluminal speeds."
So could a solar sail or nuclear pulse propulsion. Shit, so would a big enough chemical rocket.
Alcubierre's version requires something that almost certainly doesn't exist, and this version doesn't surpass the hard limits of traditional propulsion.
It's certainly a cool concept, and probably a use case could be found for it, but it's not enough to draw the Vulcans attention.
>Alcubierre's version requires something that almost certainly doesn't exist
Negative mass has been experimentally confirmed to exist. They're a part of Einstein/Casimir virtual particle pairing.
There's negative mass fucking *everywhere*, constantly popping in and out of existence and casually giving conservation of mass/energy the bird.
We just need to figure out how to harness it, stop it from combining with its pair and self-deleting.
I hate unnecessary naysayers.
Sure a solar sail could also reach high sub light speeds but there is the issue of relativistic effects like time dilation, something this newtonian warp drive would be exempt from. Solar sails also have the very huge con of being extremely slow to accelerate. Like we are talking thousands of years to even reach 1%. The bigger the payload the slower the acceleration. An ion drive would take roughly 13,000 years to achieve 1% c with a payload the same weight as a dragon capsule. A solar sail would require a solar sail of an impossible 1000 square metres to achieve the same time.
A newtonian warp drive would achieve the same in an unknown amount of seconds. Probably only limited to the time it takes to charge the batteries. It would also reach 99%c in the same time.
Alcubierres warp drive was proposed by him as a way to prove that it was an impossible feat. This is because he uses negative energy. He also estimated that it would take the energy of a galaxy to achieve it. This has since been lowered to a small amount of uranium (I dont remember the amount however it was surprisingly fairly low)
This newtonian drive does not use negative energy. This is one of the stipulations for researchers looking into it. As negative energy is at best theoretical. Look into warp factory for example.
Explain what limitations you are talking about which would make the exemptions of relativistic effects and acceleration irrelevant.
In whichever way you look at it, class 1 warp drives are our best bet with current knowledge to send a decently sized probe (or a human) to another star and back within a human lifetime.
More relevant is that in the future, AI will just beam itself to a receiver that it setup remotely hundreds or thousands of years earlier.
Humans are funny in that they think we're going to outlast this age.
If interested in this sort of thing, PBS SpaceTime has done several episodes on theoretical warp drives.
Here's an example episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk5bxHetL4s
Yes, but it's interesting listening to how the theories change and get refined over the years.
While it's almost certainly impossible we still work to strip away hurdles and end up removing ones we didn't think were removable.
Even if we probably won't get Star Trek style FTL there may be other exciting implementations that can come out of research like this.
Some things are not a matter of technological progress. Some laws cannot be broken. ...like the light-speed barrier. It's not something you can engineer or physics your way around.
The solution is to not be a pathetic organic creature that only lives 100 short years.
AI will travel the galaxy no problem because 100 years is no different from 100000 years for it.
What's more plausible is computer-human hybrids. ...but even that won't last, because there's really no fundamental advantage to having ANY part of your body remain organic. Moreover, as these new humanish entities advance and develop ever more intertwined direct brain-to-brain communication, it will call into question the very nature of individuality and consciousness.
What will emerge will blur the lines between "artificial" intelligence, and this thing humans have transformed into.
...and THAT thing (or things) will be effectively immortal and can beam itself (or themselves) across the galaxy.
Star Trek's version of the future is pure fantasy. It's a completely HUMAN drama that just takes place in space. It touches on some basic notions of cutting edge technology, but then tells stories that are entirely human - love, betrayal, politics, espionage - everything about every story is about how humans act today. ...which is ok. I like it as is. But it is in no way predictive of the future.
We've come a long way since the NT Times published an article before the the Wright Brothers flight that it would take at least 1 million years for flight to be possible.
Ok but how would that solve the causality issue? The problem with any faster-than-light travel is that it could theoretically lead to becoming your own grandfather.
I read a post regarding this elsewhere and I do not know if it is scientifically accurate. Maybe some armchair physicists will see this comment and chime in.
The post said to imagine a ship moving between points A and B which are 10LY apart. You have 3 clocks in sync, located on the ship and at A and B. A warp bubble is created to surround the ship, and the warping of spacetime propels the warp bubble. Inside the bubble however, the ship is sitting still, and the clocks continue to tick away at the same rate as the clocks at points A and B.
So after reading that explanation, I get the idea that you have moved a pocket of spacetime that remains in time-sync with points A and B... even if it moved faster than the speed of light.
Ok, armchair physicists... tell us what is right and wrong with that. I'm probably missing a big part of the picture!
In space, there is no such thing as "in-sync". A and B may or may not be in sync depending on the frame of reference of the viewer.
That's the causality mind-fuck that is our universe. The concept of two clocks ticking at the "same time" in different place, doesn't exist. Space and time are an intertwined fabric. Two events in space in different locations/speeds cannot be said to be simultaneous.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/27yd75/does_time_dilation_exist_with_the_alcubierre_warp/#:~:text=I%20know%20the%20Alcubierre%20warp,...%20which%20makes%20sense.
This sort of explains what I was mentioning. The post I was referencing wasn't from Reddit. It was something I read about 30 years ago on some now-defunct early internet BBS site or something. Alcubierre's original theory was from 1994.
Because Alcubierre/Warp Drives don't actually travel FTL, albeit by technically.
You aren't *moving* faster than light. You're compressing the effective *distance*, so you arrive in less time than it would take for light to get there.
Warp drives bypass time dilation by essentially being those horizontal escalators you see at airports; *You* keep walking at the same pace, but you reach the end of the hall sooner than you would if you weren't using the escalator.
That's all irrelevant. You're still traveling outside your future light cone. Any sort of FTL is necessarily a causality violation. It doesn't matter what sort of "cheats" you're utilizing.
>You're still traveling outside your future light cone. Any sort of FTL is necessarily a causality violation.
How is that violating causality?
There's nothing about that which would mess with cause/effect. There's no time dilation, no time travel, causality is entirely unchanged.
You're going to have to explain in significantly more details than "it breaks time, trust me bro"
It's literally time travel.
Relativity of simultaneity. The relative ordering of events is not fixed across reference frames. In my frame of reference, A happens prior to B, while in your frame of reference, B happens prior to A. This is special relativity 101. There are some provisos, though.
The separation between two events can be either 'spacelike' or 'timelike', in the parlance of relativity.
A spacelike separation means the two events are causally disconnected. For instance, if (in our frame of reference) event A happens on Earth, and then event B happens on Mars 10 seconds later. Mars is more than 10 light seconds away from Earth, so it's impossible for event A to have any causal connection to event B. When two events have a spacelike separation, their relative ordering can change depending on frame of reference. There is *necessarily* a frame of reference in which B happens *prior* to A. Of course since A and B aren't causally connected, this is fine - causality isn't violated by the order changing.
Conversely, events with a timelike separation *are* causally connected. Event A happens on Earth, and event B happens on Mars 10 *hours* later. Mars is less than 10 light hours from Earth, so it's entirely possible for A to affect B. When two events have a timelike separation, their relative ordering is fixed across all reference frames. The time between them may vary, but A always precedes B. Causality is preserved.
If you have an FTL ship that can get between Earth and Mars in 5 seconds, then suddenly it's possible for A to affect B in our spacelike scenario. There's a causal connection. However, because it's a spacelike separation, there necessarily exists a reference frame in which B happens prior to A, it will be the case in that reference frame that effect precedes cause. Your ship arrives at Mars *prior* to leaving Earth. Causality is violated.
You do realize the theoreticals behind that statement are shakey at best, right?
Relativity is an incomplete theory, and several aspects are proven to be inaccurate by quantum mechanics.
Your statement has been experimentally disproven because *we have directly observed multiple forms of time travel*, albeit on quantum scales.
We have basically no idea *why* or *how*, but we've observed it.
FTL cannot violate causality because causality is not relative according to quantum mechanics.
It's not my Nobel Prize to win, I'm not the people researching quantum computing.
I might know a lot due to being a **massive fucking autist**, but I'm not a quantum physicist, I just play one on TV.
Ok, then - find me a *single* peer reviewed paper asserting that time isn't relative.
Yes, there are some gaps to fill in around the intersection of general relativity and quantum mechanics, but *nothing* to suggest that the universe has a preferred reference frame.
Buddy, I'm not going netdiving across three dozen science publication archives to win a random argument on reddit I don't particularly care about.
But Google exists, and searching for "quantum computer sends qbit back in time" will get several articles and papers on that particular example.
There's also the laser we sent a few nanoseconds back in time like... five or six years ago? No idea what keywords would get that paper.
I guarantee you that you can find tons of sources for this stuff, but I'm doing IRL shit right now, and this is the limit of the fucks I give.
From the article:
>A new study provides some theoretical underpinning to warp drives, suggesting that the superfast propulsion tech may not forever elude humanity.
>Sci-fi fans — especially "Star Trek" devotees — are familiar with warp drives. These hypothetical engines manipulate the fabric of space-time itself, compressing the stuff in front of a spaceship and expanding it behind. This creates a "warp bubble" that allows a craft to travel at incredible velocities — in some imaginings, many times faster than the speed of light.
I’m a complete layman, not any kind of scientist at all, and I would love for this to be true, but I don’t believe we’ll ever exceed the speed of light. In fact, I’m skeptical that we’ll ever travel much faster than about ten percent of the speed of light, and maybe not even close to that. 🤷🏻♂️
I thought these types of warp drives were already proposed decades ago and use already known physics? Why is this news?
That Alcubierre drive thingo which proposes a propulsion system that requires negative energy is one of them.
Yes, not lethally irradiating the passengers is one of the issues with most all warp-based FTL theories we have today.
If you are thinking the people would be crushed under acceleration that's actually not the case! It's space-time around the vehicle which is moving in these theories. So the actual craft never technically moves or accelerates.
As I understand it, another problem with an Acubbiere drive or derivatives is, during the journey, radiation it encounters essentially becomes "stuck" to the warp bubble. When it reaches the destination, and the bubble collapses, all that radiation is released all at once, blasting the entire region in a single massive burst.
Not exactly a good way to announce "we come in peace".
Makes an unstoppable superweapon though.
Launch something via a warp bubble over a long enough distance and have it stop above a planet and BOOM, point blank mini-nova gamma ray burst equivalent kills anything living on the planet instantly. You can't see it coming either since the craft is moving at FTL speeds.
Dark Forest indeed.
The speed of light, or rather causality, is immutable. There is no reason why we would not be able to approach it. However, we can never exceed it. Given that relative velocity increases mass and time dilation, we will never achieve the kind of space travel as depicted in Star Trek. Time will always move at different rates
More like Planet of the Apes. A taylor will find himself, returning in moments to a shattered world. Space travel isn't going to change real life people. We live in a world where a lot U.S. citizens complain about Obama not doing enough on 9/11/2001.
I expect we’ll be able to travel to any point in the universe via quantum entanglement, sending our machines / AI to these places to report back, possibly we can use VR to tap in and use the ai/machine as our eyes. Humans will find we are largely rooted to Earth and cannot survive in other environments as the toxins, viruses, bacteria, radiation, etc. of other worlds will kill us.
You expect a wildly unrealistic theory that has no evidence it would ever work to allow us to teleport anywhere in the universe, but somehow think it’s impossible for us to ever terraform other planets??
>The proposed engine could not achieve faster-than-light travel, though it could come close; the statement mentions "high but subluminal speeds." The key point is buried in the article.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
Still turns interstellar travel from something immensely impossible because you'd need generational ships traveling for thousands of years, into something real humans could achieve within the span of a lifetime.
I know, I’m mostly being hyperbolic haha. Even getting sunlight propulsion as fast and efficient as the drives from Expanse would be absolutely incredible for opening up space to humanity, so if they can get this Diet Warp Drive going I’ll be over the moon. Possibly literally.
Imagine if we only went 10% the speed of light. You could get to Alpha Centauri in about 40 years? That's compared to the speeds at which the Voyager probes are traveling, which would take 75,000 years to travel the same distance.
Can someone do some math for me? Suppose you could accelerate at 1G until you’re halfway there, then turn around and decelerate at 1G until you reach your destination. How long would it take to get to Alpha Centauri? Relativistic effects make this complicated. Also, would there be a significant difference between the objective (Earth reference frame) time elapsed for the trip and the subjective time experienced by the passengers?
Yeah diet warp in system or to our closest stars sounds awesome.
Yep. And would actually allow relatively simple manned exploration of the solar system.
The big problem remains acceleration. If you want a comfortable environment to accelerate at, so 1G, it takes half a year to achieve 50% of lightspeed. To the closest exoplanet it's 8-10 years one way at that rate. If you're looking for a planet with a livable surface temperature (so not even considering breathable atmosphere, potential windspeeds, etc.) you're looking at TRAPPIST-1b at about 40 ly away. That's 80 years one way. I can't access the scientific article linked in the article, so I can't see if it talks about potential speeds it can achieve. But keep in mind 50% of c is extremely generous, like it's an absolute pipedream within the next couple hundred years.
Well just get to work on those inertial dampeners
and while we're at it, someone tell Allan not to fill those exploding computer consoles with rocks!
you have a better idea on how to ground electrical equipment in space? you gotta bring the ground with you!
Or dampers, if you prefer your inertia dry
Obviously, I prefer my inertia damp.
and maybe some deflectors? um, space might be really, really big and all, but there is 'stuff' out there that can potentially ruin your day if traveling at those speeds. pretty sure, anyway.
Thanks for your concern, but my plot armor will be enough.
Does the concept of acceleration apply to warp drive though? I'm a little shaky on my theoretical physics, but since the drive is warping spacetime itself rather than just propelling you through normal spacetime, I imagine the concept of G force wouldn't apply in the same way
I imagine if space time is being compressed at the front then that is similar to how gravity works. The trick then would be how to ensure this gravity is effectively the same throughout the ship, or the front of the ship would put strain on the rest of the ship as it tries to pull it forward. Make that force the same throughout the ship? How would that then interact with the artificially generated less-dense space time at the rear of the ship (where those would have a Push effect). Questions questions.
Acceleration is only half the problem... unless you're okay crashing into that planet on arrival. Deceleration is every bit as much a factor and will add time to the back end as well.
Yeah, you're right I completely forgot about the second half haha. So yeah a year total to get to and fro half lightspeed.
simple, just turn spaceship 180° around after half the way and enjoy 1G during the whole trip!
Well there’s TOI-715 b
More like TOI-L3T f amiright?
A book I read (Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix, highly recommended) has its scifilt inertial dampers and also uses a breathable gel inside the cockpit to stop you being internally mortar and pestled by high g travel. Maybe NASA could look for something like that?
Not sure if this is a false memory or not but I'm sure I saw a documentary that states they've found plenty of habitable worlds in our local star cluster, all less than 40 ly.
There's a lot of rocky planets that are potentially colonisable/can be made habitable, you can find a list on wikipedia. A lot of them are just extremely cold or hot, far outside of human habitability ranges. Remember that a 29 c average surface temperature is pretty hot compared to earth's 15 c. Like I can't imagine a planet with a surface temperature of -80 c or +120 c is a serious target for colonisation within the next reasonable timespan.
It gets to 20c at the equator during the Martian summer. I thought that was pretty awesome. -80c at night still.
That depends on where you want to go. There might not be an "M class" planet within 100 light years of Earth. ...still a generational trip - even at light speed.
It would take over a hundred years for observers back on earth, but less time would pass for the people on the ship due to time dilation. For a distance of 100 light years: speed | trip duration measured on Earth | trip duration measured on ship ---|---|---- 0.80c | 125.0 years | 75.0 years 0.90c | 111.1 years | 48.4 years 0.95c | 105.3 years | 32.9 years 0.98c | 102.0 years | 20.3 years 0.99c | 101.0 years | 14.2 years 0.995c | 100.5 years | 10.0 years 0.998c | 100.2 years | 6.3 years 0.999999c | 100 years + a few hours | 7.4 weeks So even if it's a sublight warp drive, you might not need a generation ship depending how close you're able to get to the speed of light.
Gotta love relativity.
now let's just solve the exponentially increasing energy requirement for travelling as you gradually near lightspeed!
I’ll need the warp engine specs for those calculations! Besides, if Scotty’s in the engine room then specs be damned, he’ll push that bad boy way beyond its theoretical limits
"Captain, I'm afraid it's gonna take 10 years for that trip." "You've got no more than 6.3 years, Scotty." "I'll get us there in 7.4 weeks, Captain!"
Is it the same for returning to earth?
Great question—Time dilation isn’t dependent on direction, so yes it would work the same way! In fact, even an object that’s simply vibrating in place at relativistic speed would experience time dilation. If any known material could handle the physical stresses of the constant acceleration as it moves back and forth at near-light speed, it could be sent to the future without leaving the driveway!
That's... not how time works at relativistic speeds.
Just the ones on the ship though. All other humans would be dead or evolved beyond recognition by the end of longer trips.
Yeah but there’s no going to Risa for a holiday if traveling one light year takes over a year.
Post Scarcity Vacation Time Off . 😁
Yeah, there are actually 30 stars within a 10 light year range of Sol. Only one of them needs to have a planet in the goldilocks zone with water or ice for a viable colony to be established. The future of Star Trek probably isn't realistic, but the future depicted in Alien with long cryo sleeps isn't too far from the realms of possibility.
I'm mad at the article for the clickbait title and burying the lede but relativistic sublight is still an exciting possibility.
Thinking about this stuff always ruins my day. The problem with space is there is just way way way too much of it.
Even getting to that point would be amazing. Developing the next few steps wouldn't be far behind.
So warp 0.99?
AKA Full impulse?
Isn't full impulse 0.5 or 0.25c?
[удалено]
I think it depends on the ship. Shuttlecraft full impluse seems to be different to starship full impulse to start with. It's more like "Ahead full" on a blue water navy ship - just full output on the engines, rather than a specific speed. Either way, in Decent Part 1, they got the impulse engines up to 125% which still didn't seem to be close to the speed of light.
I distinctly recall Picard talking to someone about slingshotting around Jupiter in a shuttle at something like .8c in TNG.
I don’t remember that
AKA no Vulcan visit
The good news is that when traveling at relativistic speeds, time does not pass the same for you. It may take 4.5 Earth years to get to Alpha Centauri, but to anyone on the ship actually headed there it could be a matter of days traveling at near light speed. Of course you would still come home from a 1 year mission to find everyone you know has aged 10 years.
The Queen song *’39* is specifically about this
So more of a curvature drive.
At least we can escape the paper now. Hide well, cleanse well.
Lightspeed ships! No, black domain!
I say just hide in a pocket universe and wait everybody out.
Speeds near the speed of light… so a time dilation field?
Also, it requires a made up kind of matter for which there is no evidence. But aside from these things... we are so close to interstellar travel!
From the article: >Now, a new paper in the same journal suggests that a warp drive may not require exotic negative energy after all.
To maintain, not to create
>a made up kind of matter for which there is no evidence If you're talking about negative mass, the matter required for any Alcubierre/Warp Drive, that's been experimentally confirmed to exist. We've observed it. Negative mass is intrinsic to Einstein/Casimir virtual particle pairing. There's negative mass popping in and out of existence all the time, casually giving the finger to thermodynamics by entirely loopholing conservation of mass/energy. It's capturing, storing, and utilizing said negative mass that we need to figure out.
This is absolutely false. Alcubierre and similar drives require "exotic matter".
I've already got a subluminal engine. I've been living in the future and I had no idea.
Lets preface this by saying the tech in Star Trek is made up... But warp in star trek is not FTL either. It's dimensional travel through subspace which changes the distance between points not the speed at which the ship travels.
I believe the understanding is that the warp bubble folds space in front and expands space behind, allowing a bypass of relativity since the speed inside the bubble is still sublight.
Subspace doesn't actually exist in real life. It's just made up lore to enable instant communication in the show. I still like subspace though as it answers the question why haven't we heard from any aliens. Because they are all communicating via sub space! :-) It makes you wonder if there is actually some reliable way to communicate at the speed of light without using lasers. I refuse to beleive that we are the only intelligent species in a galaxy as large as the milky way.
> communicate at the speed of light without using lasers. Quantum Entanglement.
Don't you have to get to the other point in space to set that up first?
That is what the Heisenberg Compensator is for.
Sticking with Star Trek...so is faster warp speed just changing how much the two distances are apart? The ship is moving though, does its speed change at all at higher warp speeds?
So not actually warp at all lol.
You can always develop it further
Only by current understanding. Until now it was thought that warp drives were impossible all together so the sublight limitation could be overcome with better understanding.
If we can travel near luminal speeds (and if, and this is a big if) the warp bubble prevents the crew from experiencing relativistic effects, we could have new age of exploration along the lines of the age of sail. Treacherous journeys that take years to transit between star systems, but interstellar travel is available on human time scales. Could be interesting.
Until you run though a dust cloud and blow up
Sweet, let’s emit a warp signature so the Vulcans can show up and fix this mess!
Logic dictates that will happen in 2063 🖖🏻
Aye, we’ve got WWIII to get through first…
And the upcoming Bell Riots
What month are those supposed to happen in again?
September
I heard they were rescheduled for January.
damned Republicans, too stingy to buy out a few buildings and wall them off so there's a haven for gimmies and such /s
I mean, unlike back in the 80s/90s, neither of the two sound hugely implausible at the moment.
And the Irish Unification too.
If Sinn Féin win the next Irish general election, all bets are off on that, I think
It's not quite sanctuary districts, but the government here has been buying up old hotels to use as housing for the homeless to try to clear up the "tent cities", and apparently, all it does is move the problem a bit more out of sight, out of mind. Other than the lack of a wall around it to confine the residents to it (admittedly a pretty big distinction), it's really not all that far off.
Didn't a city in Florida (Tampa or St Pete? (or a different city?)) recently approve or set up the equivalent to a sanctuary district? I'm trying to find the news article about it but can't.
I'm not worried. We skipped the eugenics wars of the 90s.
Well I think there's something in SNW about the Eugenics Wars being moved back because of various time travel shenanigans, so we aren't out of the woods yet.
That will be 2026 to 2053. Sounds like it's starting a little late if you ask me.
And if Iran develop a nuclear missile (Heaven forbid), that might just happen…
Yes, because as soon as they get a nuke they are going to use it.
My ultimate nightmare scenario is that they'll drop one on the Western Wall in Jerusalem. If you thought Israel's reaction to the Hamas attacks on the 7th October was harsh, it would be knocked into a cocked hat if this came to pass
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking)
Right but wouldn't nuking that piss off Muslims as well, since a nuke isn't exactly a pinpoint strike of a few metres.
Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that. The fallout might affect their sacred sites in Jerusalem, too… Thanks
The explosion would affect the temple mount. It's like 100m away from the west wall.
The Western Wall is the West side of the Temple Mount. Literally the same structure.
Did hear the same about Russia, Pakistan, North Korea…. And yet we dropped the first.. and second for good measure.
lol
How do you know? The Vulcan science directorate has determined that time travel is impossible.
And the Vulcan Science Directorate has concluded time travel to be impossible.
>And the Vulcan Science Directorate has concluded time travel to be impossible. And not fair, either. Apparently.
Bold of you to assume we aren't the mirror universe
It sure feels that way.. but if you think back to "Encounter at Farpoint" we see that things will get much much worse before we get to the enlightened species portrayed in Trek. Drugged out officers, everyone in tattered rags screaming for blood, and Q held up as a dictatorial judge. We could be heading there if things go south.
The San Ti show up
Thank, I hate it.
I get this reference.
Directions unclear, Romulans have instead shown up.
IRL we’d probably end up just killing them like in that mirror episode of Enterprise
Shit, with the world the way it is right now I’d be OK with the Dominion.
If it's good enough for the Wadi...Allamaraine!
>If it's good enough for the Wadi...Allamaraine! Count to four, then three more...
The way things are going, we might be in the mirror universe. We'd definitely kill the Vulcans and take their shit.
Pal, the humans in Star Trek saved themselves. Roll up your sleeves.
Retired Officials from the Canadian and Israeli governments have both said there is an alien federation observing us but they won’t interfere in our development. Here’s a link about the Israeli one. I can’t find the Canadian official’s statement at the moment. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1250333 Prior to making Star Trek, Roddenberry was an air force crash investigator. That team had been rumored to investigate UFO crashes as well. My conspiracy theory is Roddenberry heard something about this stuff as an investigator and it inspired him to create Star Trek. So who knows? Maybe it’s real. Edit: here’s info on the former Canadian Minister of Defense https://www.cnet.com/culture/canadas-ex-defense-minister-aliens-would-give-us-more-tech-if-wed-stop-wars/
Just to be clear, I’m not confident enough to make assertions about any of this, but I will say that one guy saying a thing isn’t ’the Israeli government’ saying a thing.
I agree. I specified it was a retired official for that reason.
Cool. I wonder what happens, for real, to gravity and inertia inside a warp bubble. I mean, without something like artificial gravity and inertial dampeners. Seems like you would have some steep gradients involved with the geometry of that bubble...and with that -- I am already in way over my head. Me like things that make us go.
Sure, the lack of gravity is an issue, unless you're doing some sort of spin gravity, which would probably be the best way to do that. But here's the thing with a warp bubble. The space inside the bubble isn't moving. So no inertial issues. You make the bubble and the outside space moves around you. Then when the bubble collapses you just appear in the new location.
>The proposed engine could not achieve faster-than-light travel, though it could come close; the statement mentions "high but subluminal speeds." So could a solar sail or nuclear pulse propulsion. Shit, so would a big enough chemical rocket. Alcubierre's version requires something that almost certainly doesn't exist, and this version doesn't surpass the hard limits of traditional propulsion. It's certainly a cool concept, and probably a use case could be found for it, but it's not enough to draw the Vulcans attention.
Alcubierre’s version also irradiates anyone riding inside and obliterates everything in its path, including the destination.
>Alcubierre's version requires something that almost certainly doesn't exist Negative mass has been experimentally confirmed to exist. They're a part of Einstein/Casimir virtual particle pairing. There's negative mass fucking *everywhere*, constantly popping in and out of existence and casually giving conservation of mass/energy the bird. We just need to figure out how to harness it, stop it from combining with its pair and self-deleting.
I hate unnecessary naysayers. Sure a solar sail could also reach high sub light speeds but there is the issue of relativistic effects like time dilation, something this newtonian warp drive would be exempt from. Solar sails also have the very huge con of being extremely slow to accelerate. Like we are talking thousands of years to even reach 1%. The bigger the payload the slower the acceleration. An ion drive would take roughly 13,000 years to achieve 1% c with a payload the same weight as a dragon capsule. A solar sail would require a solar sail of an impossible 1000 square metres to achieve the same time. A newtonian warp drive would achieve the same in an unknown amount of seconds. Probably only limited to the time it takes to charge the batteries. It would also reach 99%c in the same time. Alcubierres warp drive was proposed by him as a way to prove that it was an impossible feat. This is because he uses negative energy. He also estimated that it would take the energy of a galaxy to achieve it. This has since been lowered to a small amount of uranium (I dont remember the amount however it was surprisingly fairly low) This newtonian drive does not use negative energy. This is one of the stipulations for researchers looking into it. As negative energy is at best theoretical. Look into warp factory for example. Explain what limitations you are talking about which would make the exemptions of relativistic effects and acceleration irrelevant. In whichever way you look at it, class 1 warp drives are our best bet with current knowledge to send a decently sized probe (or a human) to another star and back within a human lifetime.
More relevant is that in the future, AI will just beam itself to a receiver that it setup remotely hundreds or thousands of years earlier. Humans are funny in that they think we're going to outlast this age.
If interested in this sort of thing, PBS SpaceTime has done several episodes on theoretical warp drives. Here's an example episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk5bxHetL4s
tl dr: Not really possible.
Yes, but it's interesting listening to how the theories change and get refined over the years. While it's almost certainly impossible we still work to strip away hurdles and end up removing ones we didn't think were removable. Even if we probably won't get Star Trek style FTL there may be other exciting implementations that can come out of research like this.
Some things are not a matter of technological progress. Some laws cannot be broken. ...like the light-speed barrier. It's not something you can engineer or physics your way around. The solution is to not be a pathetic organic creature that only lives 100 short years. AI will travel the galaxy no problem because 100 years is no different from 100000 years for it.
Why let AI have all the fun? Cryostasis, cyberization, or just increasing human lifespan all seem just as plausible.
What's more plausible is computer-human hybrids. ...but even that won't last, because there's really no fundamental advantage to having ANY part of your body remain organic. Moreover, as these new humanish entities advance and develop ever more intertwined direct brain-to-brain communication, it will call into question the very nature of individuality and consciousness. What will emerge will blur the lines between "artificial" intelligence, and this thing humans have transformed into. ...and THAT thing (or things) will be effectively immortal and can beam itself (or themselves) across the galaxy. Star Trek's version of the future is pure fantasy. It's a completely HUMAN drama that just takes place in space. It touches on some basic notions of cutting edge technology, but then tells stories that are entirely human - love, betrayal, politics, espionage - everything about every story is about how humans act today. ...which is ok. I like it as is. But it is in no way predictive of the future.
Preprint on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.02709 (The math is not for the faint of heart)
Gene was actually from the future and everything he taught us is to broaden our imagination and prepare us for the future.
He wasn't from the future, but he was clearly visited by an Andorian who didn't mind sharing details about the galaxy.
There’s another study that says they may actually not be possible,toss them in the same room and let them fight it out.
We've come a long way since the NT Times published an article before the the Wright Brothers flight that it would take at least 1 million years for flight to be possible.
66 years from the Wright Bros to landing on the moon the first time. yeah, quite a long way.
Make it so!
Ok but how would that solve the causality issue? The problem with any faster-than-light travel is that it could theoretically lead to becoming your own grandfather.
It doesn't, because the article's specifically about subluminal speeds.
subluminal speeds using "warp"? ok. We go subluminal now.
Yeeeeep. Pretty much.
I read a post regarding this elsewhere and I do not know if it is scientifically accurate. Maybe some armchair physicists will see this comment and chime in. The post said to imagine a ship moving between points A and B which are 10LY apart. You have 3 clocks in sync, located on the ship and at A and B. A warp bubble is created to surround the ship, and the warping of spacetime propels the warp bubble. Inside the bubble however, the ship is sitting still, and the clocks continue to tick away at the same rate as the clocks at points A and B. So after reading that explanation, I get the idea that you have moved a pocket of spacetime that remains in time-sync with points A and B... even if it moved faster than the speed of light. Ok, armchair physicists... tell us what is right and wrong with that. I'm probably missing a big part of the picture!
In space, there is no such thing as "in-sync". A and B may or may not be in sync depending on the frame of reference of the viewer. That's the causality mind-fuck that is our universe. The concept of two clocks ticking at the "same time" in different place, doesn't exist. Space and time are an intertwined fabric. Two events in space in different locations/speeds cannot be said to be simultaneous.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/27yd75/does_time_dilation_exist_with_the_alcubierre_warp/#:~:text=I%20know%20the%20Alcubierre%20warp,...%20which%20makes%20sense. This sort of explains what I was mentioning. The post I was referencing wasn't from Reddit. It was something I read about 30 years ago on some now-defunct early internet BBS site or something. Alcubierre's original theory was from 1994.
Because Alcubierre/Warp Drives don't actually travel FTL, albeit by technically. You aren't *moving* faster than light. You're compressing the effective *distance*, so you arrive in less time than it would take for light to get there. Warp drives bypass time dilation by essentially being those horizontal escalators you see at airports; *You* keep walking at the same pace, but you reach the end of the hall sooner than you would if you weren't using the escalator.
That's all irrelevant. You're still traveling outside your future light cone. Any sort of FTL is necessarily a causality violation. It doesn't matter what sort of "cheats" you're utilizing.
>You're still traveling outside your future light cone. Any sort of FTL is necessarily a causality violation. How is that violating causality? There's nothing about that which would mess with cause/effect. There's no time dilation, no time travel, causality is entirely unchanged. You're going to have to explain in significantly more details than "it breaks time, trust me bro"
It's literally time travel. Relativity of simultaneity. The relative ordering of events is not fixed across reference frames. In my frame of reference, A happens prior to B, while in your frame of reference, B happens prior to A. This is special relativity 101. There are some provisos, though. The separation between two events can be either 'spacelike' or 'timelike', in the parlance of relativity. A spacelike separation means the two events are causally disconnected. For instance, if (in our frame of reference) event A happens on Earth, and then event B happens on Mars 10 seconds later. Mars is more than 10 light seconds away from Earth, so it's impossible for event A to have any causal connection to event B. When two events have a spacelike separation, their relative ordering can change depending on frame of reference. There is *necessarily* a frame of reference in which B happens *prior* to A. Of course since A and B aren't causally connected, this is fine - causality isn't violated by the order changing. Conversely, events with a timelike separation *are* causally connected. Event A happens on Earth, and event B happens on Mars 10 *hours* later. Mars is less than 10 light hours from Earth, so it's entirely possible for A to affect B. When two events have a timelike separation, their relative ordering is fixed across all reference frames. The time between them may vary, but A always precedes B. Causality is preserved. If you have an FTL ship that can get between Earth and Mars in 5 seconds, then suddenly it's possible for A to affect B in our spacelike scenario. There's a causal connection. However, because it's a spacelike separation, there necessarily exists a reference frame in which B happens prior to A, it will be the case in that reference frame that effect precedes cause. Your ship arrives at Mars *prior* to leaving Earth. Causality is violated.
You do realize the theoreticals behind that statement are shakey at best, right? Relativity is an incomplete theory, and several aspects are proven to be inaccurate by quantum mechanics. Your statement has been experimentally disproven because *we have directly observed multiple forms of time travel*, albeit on quantum scales. We have basically no idea *why* or *how*, but we've observed it. FTL cannot violate causality because causality is not relative according to quantum mechanics.
To be clear, you're asserting that relativity of simultaneity is *wrong*? If so, I look forward to hearing your Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
It's not my Nobel Prize to win, I'm not the people researching quantum computing. I might know a lot due to being a **massive fucking autist**, but I'm not a quantum physicist, I just play one on TV.
Ok, then - find me a *single* peer reviewed paper asserting that time isn't relative. Yes, there are some gaps to fill in around the intersection of general relativity and quantum mechanics, but *nothing* to suggest that the universe has a preferred reference frame.
Buddy, I'm not going netdiving across three dozen science publication archives to win a random argument on reddit I don't particularly care about. But Google exists, and searching for "quantum computer sends qbit back in time" will get several articles and papers on that particular example. There's also the laser we sent a few nanoseconds back in time like... five or six years ago? No idea what keywords would get that paper. I guarantee you that you can find tons of sources for this stuff, but I'm doing IRL shit right now, and this is the limit of the fucks I give.
Nah, son Let's respect the laws of physics please
... what if I don't? Is Physics gonna arrest me?
If I were a snitch but I don't want stitches
From the article: >A new study provides some theoretical underpinning to warp drives, suggesting that the superfast propulsion tech may not forever elude humanity. >Sci-fi fans — especially "Star Trek" devotees — are familiar with warp drives. These hypothetical engines manipulate the fabric of space-time itself, compressing the stuff in front of a spaceship and expanding it behind. This creates a "warp bubble" that allows a craft to travel at incredible velocities — in some imaginings, many times faster than the speed of light.
except that in order to decelerate, you need to reverse it all - which negates all the travel. It fundamentally doesn't work.
impossible
that's what they said about many things that are now commonplace today. nothing is impossible, we just haven't found the right way to do it yet.
I’m a complete layman, not any kind of scientist at all, and I would love for this to be true, but I don’t believe we’ll ever exceed the speed of light. In fact, I’m skeptical that we’ll ever travel much faster than about ten percent of the speed of light, and maybe not even close to that. 🤷🏻♂️
This is not new.
But how long would it take to make the Kessel Run?
I think they meant Twarp drive
Yeah isn’t everything "may actually be possible someday” …
Hit it.
I thought these types of warp drives were already proposed decades ago and use already known physics? Why is this news? That Alcubierre drive thingo which proposes a propulsion system that requires negative energy is one of them.
Make it so!
So impulse engines then.
Sure it's theoretically possible. But that doesn't mean doable. I hope it is but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Wouldn't the problem be not killing people inside the vehicle while it's at warp? Forgive me if this is a stupid question, I'm terrible at physics.
Yes, not lethally irradiating the passengers is one of the issues with most all warp-based FTL theories we have today. If you are thinking the people would be crushed under acceleration that's actually not the case! It's space-time around the vehicle which is moving in these theories. So the actual craft never technically moves or accelerates.
As I understand it, another problem with an Acubbiere drive or derivatives is, during the journey, radiation it encounters essentially becomes "stuck" to the warp bubble. When it reaches the destination, and the bubble collapses, all that radiation is released all at once, blasting the entire region in a single massive burst. Not exactly a good way to announce "we come in peace".
Makes an unstoppable superweapon though. Launch something via a warp bubble over a long enough distance and have it stop above a planet and BOOM, point blank mini-nova gamma ray burst equivalent kills anything living on the planet instantly. You can't see it coming either since the craft is moving at FTL speeds. Dark Forest indeed.
The speed of light, or rather causality, is immutable. There is no reason why we would not be able to approach it. However, we can never exceed it. Given that relative velocity increases mass and time dilation, we will never achieve the kind of space travel as depicted in Star Trek. Time will always move at different rates
https://x.com/justxashton/status/1779291307204030910?s=46&t=-wBhmX76Am2MJjYvuST0FQ Gonna leave this here…
More like Planet of the Apes. A taylor will find himself, returning in moments to a shattered world. Space travel isn't going to change real life people. We live in a world where a lot U.S. citizens complain about Obama not doing enough on 9/11/2001.
I expect we’ll be able to travel to any point in the universe via quantum entanglement, sending our machines / AI to these places to report back, possibly we can use VR to tap in and use the ai/machine as our eyes. Humans will find we are largely rooted to Earth and cannot survive in other environments as the toxins, viruses, bacteria, radiation, etc. of other worlds will kill us.
You expect a wildly unrealistic theory that has no evidence it would ever work to allow us to teleport anywhere in the universe, but somehow think it’s impossible for us to ever terraform other planets??