The Dudeism Forum

NASA Working On Faster-Than-Light Warp Drive 2013

Nasa Engineer Sonny White talks about Nasa's work on a faster-than-lightspeed warp drive.

Wave of the future, dudes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdaMI2wnVBg

LOL, the dude was about as vague as he could be. At even sub-light relativistic speeds the near perfect vacuum of space is like hitting a radioactive brick wall with the force of an atom bomb and the nice thing about warp drive is it crushes and obliterates anything in your path. The latest designs I know of are similar to the tardis on Dr. Who and would allow astronauts to walk through a door on earth onto the ship halfway to wherever and go home at night once their shift was over. That's really cool dude, but the problem is the thing still requires converting an entire moon into energy just to power it even with the theoretical progress they've made. Like the moving walkway at the airport he mentioned it also has to be installed at slower than light speeds. You have to send a ship out to the destination first at slower than light speeds to provide the "anchor" so to speak.

At this point it's still highly theoretical stuff. If you are interested in such things, there is also a professor in Connecticut working to build the first time machine. He's using counter-rotating laser beams pushed through a bose-einstein condensate to slow the speed of light to a crawl and increase it's inertial mass. The experiments are really to see if the universe won't just laugh in their faces for their hubris and the thing won't just blow up in their faces or keep demanding more energy.

Sounds exhausting.

It's been a while since I've read up on FTL and Alcubierre drives and all that (yeah, I'm a major geek), but if I remember correctly, mathematically we can travel under and over the speed of light, but not at the speed of light. Which really makes no damn sense, because that's like saying you can drive at 53mph and 55mph, but not 54mph.

Also, a lot of these drives don't really have good explanations of how to exit the warp bubble upon reaching the destination. Lastly, I wonder how they're going to circumvent the lack of exotic matter in the original mechanism?

But to be honest, I hope it's possible. I'd love to take a vacation on a foreign planet. Can you imagine sitting on a freaky lake's bank, enjoying a homemade beer, and digging your toes into green sand or something? And without the use of recreational drugs?

Quote from: Masked Dude on June 30, 2013, 04:28:41 PM
It's been a while since I've read up on FTL and Alcubierre drives and all that (yeah, I'm a major geek), but if I remember correctly, mathematically we can travel under and over the speed of light, but not at the speed of light. Which really makes no damn sense, because that's like saying you can drive at 53mph and 55mph, but not 54mph.

Also, a lot of these drives don't really have good explanations of how to exit the warp bubble upon reaching the destination. Lastly, I wonder how they're going to circumvent the lack of exotic matter in the original mechanism?

But to be honest, I hope it's possible. I'd love to take a vacation on a foreign planet. Can you imagine sitting on a freaky lake's bank, enjoying a homemade beer, and digging your toes into green sand or something? And without the use of recreational drugs?

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

"Good Evening, ladies and gentlemen, I am your host for tonight, Max Quordlepleen, and I have just come straight from the other end of time where I have been hosting a show at the Big Bang Burger Bar and I will be your host for this historic occasion - the End of History itself."

If you've done six impossible things this morning why not round it off with breakfast, lunch or dinner at Milliway's, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe...

I'm staying, finishing my pan galactic gargle blaster - http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/The_Restaurant_at_the_End_of_the_Universe

More new shit has come to light (speed).............

NASA Warp Drive Project - "Speeds" that Could Take a Spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in Two Weeks - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRn4WpoNAyo

You would still have to send out a probe first at sub-light speeds to "anchor" the other end of the carpet so to speak. At relativistic speeds a trip to Alpha Centauri would require roughly 40 years one way earth time and to then send a warp drive ship after it would require the power equivalent of converting an entire moon into anti-matter.

Quote from: wuliheron on July 08, 2013, 09:17:11 AM
You would still have to send out a probe first at sub-light speeds to "anchor" the other end of the carpet so to speak. At relativistic speeds a trip to Alpha Centauri would require roughly 40 years one way earth time and to then send a warp drive ship after it would require the power equivalent of converting an entire moon into anti-matter.

Speed of Light Tour 

You could send a robotic drone which would take maybe four months to four years ship-board time, but there is no getting around the fact relativity places severe limits on interstellar travel that no one has figured out a way around yet. Warp drive may be the only alternative, but that's extreme future technology when you are talking about converting entire moons into antimatter to power the thing. A baseball sized piece of antimatter is enough to destroy the entire earth and, personally, I'm glad we don't have anywhere near that kind of power yet.

<big downer warning>

Back when I was a kid in the sixties, the future predictions were very lofty, as they are now. Somehow, we have this presupposition that science and technology are the main driving forces for societal evolution; our hope for a brighter future even. Sorry kids, it turns out the ISS is pretty well the best we've done. No flying cars. No plug and play body parts, no inter-planetary travel - let alone colonization.

Science and technology have contributed hugely in the last 30 or 40 years to society, but it's greed and politics that drives our evolution as a world for the most part. Look at how fat the top one-tenth of one percent of the world live, owning more money than most country's budgets. Then there's the slow and insidious conversion of people to centuries-old religion - 60% or the western world are either converted to Islam, or believe Jesus is coming back. Pick your Adamic religion flavour; it's becoming more and more popular to fly a religious flag and claim "harm done" when you can't wear your [insert religious clothing or article] through customs at an airport, or soccer field.

That's like, my opinion man. Dreaming is nice, and everyone should have a little Gene Rodenberry in them. Meanwhile, we have a fucked up world to fix.
</big downer warning>

Anyone want a peanut?

Quote from: Hominid on July 09, 2013, 12:25:59 AM
<big downer warning>

Back when I was a kid in the sixties, the future predictions were very lofty, as they are now. Somehow, we have this presupposition that science and technology are the main driving forces for societal evolution; our hope for a brighter future even. Sorry kids, it turns out the ISS is pretty well the best we've done. No flying cars. No plug and play body parts, no inter-planetary travel - let alone colonization.

Science and technology have contributed hugely in the last 30 or 40 years to society, but it's greed and politics that drives our evolution as a world for the most part. Look at how fat the top one-tenth of one percent of the world live, owning more money than most country's budgets. Then there's the slow and insidious conversion of people to centuries-old religion - 60% or the western world are either converted to Islam, or believe Jesus is coming back. Pick your Adamic religion flavour; it's becoming more and more popular to fly a religious flag and claim "harm done" when you can't wear your [insert religious clothing or article] through customs at an airport, or soccer field.

That's like, my opinion man. Dreaming is nice, and everyone should have a little Gene Rodenberry in them. Meanwhile, we have a fucked up world to fix.
</big downer warning>

Anyone want a peanut?

Yeah, have to say, violent religion is getting a bit out of control. Lack of coitus is my theory, and the lack of a dude-like attitude, as is the lack of the distribution of the world's wealth.

This is realistic, if we just get out head out of asses - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqe9Wq9gqo

The Jesus is coming back? I did not know that.

Quote from: Hominid on July 09, 2013, 12:25:59 AM
...Then there's the slow and insidious conversion of people to centuries-old religion - 60% or the western world are either converted to Islam, or believe Jesus is coming back.

60% turned to Abrahamic religion. Can you please quote your source for this statistic.

Reason I ask is the 80% drop in the UK census count of Christians in the last census because the Humanists lobbied for a change of the wording.

For years the UK was listed as about 80 to 90% christian, but that figure now proves to be more like 20% (much to my delight).

the closest I can get is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups.

Sorry religious statistics and their validity is a big thing with me. (I am a practicing Pagan as well as a Dudeist and have lectured on the subject so am genuinely interested).

This figure may be true of the USA but I have doubt for the rest of the western world.

More worrying is the missionary movement that is invading China and trying to fill the "spiritual void" left by the cultural revolution.

Quote from: meekon5 on July 09, 2013, 12:31:30 PM

Quote from: Hominid on July 09, 2013, 12:25:59 AM
...Then there's the slow and insidious conversion of people to centuries-old religion - 60% or the western world are either converted to Islam, or believe Jesus is coming back.

60% turned to Abrahamic religion. Can you please quote your source for this statistic.

Reason I ask is the 80% drop in the UK census count of Christians in the last census because the Humanists lobbied for a change of the wording.

the closest I can get is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups.

Sorry religious statistics and their validity is a big thing with me. (I am a practicing Pagan as well as a Dudeist and have lectured on the subject so am genuinely interested).

This figure may be true of the USA but I have doubt for the rest of the western world.

More worrying is the missionary movement that is invading China and trying to fill the "spiritual void" left by the cultural revolution.

Read the whole sentence! It's the "or" that makes a difference.  I could have said "60% of the western world either believe Jesus is coming back, or have converted to Islam", and it means the same thing. It wasn't my intent to put more emphasis on one or the other; just making the point that we seem to be moving backwards with this whole religion thing...  I blame it on the poor education system, but that's me. 

We need more beer girls.

Quote from: DigitalBuddha on July 08, 2013, 05:37:55 PM

Quote from: wuliheron on July 08, 2013, 09:17:11 AM
You would still have to send out a probe first at sub-light speeds to "anchor" the other end of the carpet so to speak. At relativistic speeds a trip to Alpha Centauri would require roughly 40 years one way earth time and to then send a warp drive ship after it would require the power equivalent of converting an entire moon into anti-matter.

Speed of Light Tour  8)

That sounds like a Metallica gig ;)

Star trek type warp drive is a bit contradictory I think as it is intended for inter stellar space transit yet most stories have them exiting warp next to planets which would bugger the planet as the space it occupies is affected by the ships warp bubble. The theory is the ship moves space rather than moves through space so it doesn't actually move faster than light in relative terms. But the energy required to do it is astronomical, no pun intended.