From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Aug 30 1999 - 03:58:56 MDT
Evolver16@aol.com writes:
> On the subject of the transporter, it is indeed possible, and, even more
> remarkable, being done often, albeit on a small scale. Photons have been
> destructured and restructured meters away. And if photons are, then they must
> have substance. And if matter can be moved, the large matter may be as well.
As Robert pointed out, the practical problems may be simply
insurmountable. After all, particles exhibit the tunnel effect
("tunneling" through barriers that appear impassable) and formally
even macroscopic objects can do it, but in practice it doesn't work
because the probabilities of tunneling occuring are microscopic.
> While unmentioned, the subject of warp speed (faster-then-light travel) is
> seriously being studied, most notably by the esteemed Dr. Stephen Hawking.
Are you sure it is Hawking? He seems more to be interested in
cosmology and theoretical physics than the warp drive
discussion. There are many others who are involved though, such as
Alcubierre and van Brock. There are some fun papers at
xxx.lanl.gov/gr-qc
> The whole premise relies on the collision of matter and antimatter
> (in itself being produced often enough to bear mention), the energy
> released by the collision producing the fantastic power required for
> such speeds. While in the relativistic universe, such speeds are, at
> best, impossible. But such is the beauty of the warp field. The
> field alters a small portion of space that travels with the
> dual-nacelled starship, circumventing inertial and relativistic
> effects that would make such travel impossible.
This is the Star Trek explanation, but it doesn't work that well in
reality. You have to make the antimatter (costs more energy to make
than you get out of it) and the most "reasonable" warp drive
geometries that are discussed still requires both magical physics to
warp spacetime (the researchers just discuss what would happen if you
already have the geometry, not how to make it) and amounts of energy
that are much more extreme than "puny" antimatter reactions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:57 MST