50 replies to this topic

[treonsverdery]

this doesn't have much to do with faster than light travel unless you build a big fresnel type structure out of it, but then its just like squeezed photonics as known

I've been thinking about neutrino power

if people could absorb neutrinos the energy density is high enough to make things like flying cars

neutrinos are only absorbed on direct collision with an atomic nucleus that made me think that a modified form of matter like bose einstein condensate where the nuclei are spread across space would have different neutrino absorption characteristics If you could make a condensate with a rod like shape it would absorb neutrinos preferentially across a particular direction

now the nifty part

numerous graphs are asymptotic if a person wrangles the math about creating bose einstein condensate such that the condensate is asymptotic along a direction they create an area where neutrinos are asymptotically likely to be absorbed

if these neutrino absorbing asymptotes are layered you get a fabric like a felt that absorbs neutrino energy

technologically the thing happens with lasers making condensate near an asymptotic probability phenomena to shape the condensate towards an asymptotic aspect The thing would be pulsatile unless people are super clever about treating condensate felt regions as automata

a thought here is that if condensates with an asymptotic aspect are created then a prince ruperts structure may happen

now it might be that with areas that things just cant go arranged a particular way you create a kind of quantum: the neutrino must be rotating effect which causes a build up a kind of capacitor

Edited by treonsverdery, 06 April 2008 - 09:18 PM.

[Cyberbrain]

[DukeNukem]

>>> The problem with quantum entanglement, as I understand it, is that it naturally breaks when the entangled particles are too distant. Right now, "too distant" means 50 centimeters. But at least that's a start. <<<

Quantum entanglement has no distance cap. However, entanglement cannot be used to transfer information (cannot be used for communication), so it doesn't violate Einstein's theories.

If FTL travel is possible, or if time travel is possible, then one would expect evidence of either, by some superior civilization. Otherwise, we must rely on various thin excuses, like:

o We are the most advanced species in the universe (or one of a handful of the most advanced).
o Species with these abilities have rules preventing their presence from being known, like Star Trek's "prime directive".
o Civilizations with this capability quickly rise to hyper-transhumanist-like intelligences that may not need to travel or make themselves known. (To me, the most plausible reason, and the reason 99.99% of all futuristic sci-fi is WAY of the mark.)

[Luna]

This wormhole theory is so old by now, guilty until proven to work! =)
and I still believe faster than light theories with time travel are just a big misconception.

[DukeNukem]

This wormhole theory is so old by now, guilty until proven to work! =)
and I still believe faster than light theories with time travel are just a big misconception.

There's a book a read a year or two ago, The End of Time, that's also part of Discovery magazine's cover story in the current issue. It makes a somewhat compelling case that there is no time, only a series of nows. Time is an illusion, and there is no past or future as far as the universe is concerned -- only in our minds. I don't pretend to understand it fully, but it wouldn't surprise me if the real answer on time is not something utterly unexpected along these lines.

In the same issue, they also talk about how the computer power of the brain might be a trillion times more than previously estimated, because each neuron is actually a super computer on its own, with millions of nano-like tube structures that have computing power. This is gaining acceptance, and if true it pushes the singularity out another two decades.

[kiriel]

This is interesting, and I will share my thoughts with you guys.

"Time is a (ordered?) sequence of now's".

Isn't that the current definition of time? That is why we can measure it with clocks, as we defined the interval to be counted by standard time measurements to be a 'second' that is defined further by some frequency.

I was struck by a very strange feeling the other day. It is hard to verbalise the feeling and the attached pseudo-insight. But I will none the less give it an initial go, although I am convinced that no amount of verbalisation will ever make me able to communicate the feeling and all it's implications.

The feeling was that 'time' is connected somehow with 'local representation' of 'global freedom'.

Do you not agree that to 'represent' 'volume' (3 degrees of freedom) on a 'plane' (2 degrees of freedom), you need the concept of 'time' (which is equal to 'change')? Same goes with representation of 4D on 3D, and possibly further up in the 'dimension ladder' as well as further down (to represent 2D on 1D etc.). Thus what we call 'time' is just another word for 'self referential' 'compression'?

How can we represent higher degree of freedom in lower degree of freedom? We might do it by compression schemes. What we experience as time, change, might actually just be the 'higher level effects of lower level effects of higher level effects'.

I am convinced that everything is just 'effect', and that 'effect' follows 'effect', and that there is nothing but 'effect'.

No matter what direction you look, you only get 'effect'.

I hope that made at least a little sense.

Edited by kiriel, 13 April 2008 - 08:50 PM.

[vyntager]

Well, as far as compression goes, and dimensions; you can store information on both 3 dimensions. You can have information in a certain portion of space, and another independant piece of information in another portion of space.

The more space you have, the more room to store information.

But you can't store more information by using the dimension "time" in a deterministic universe. Let's say you have a certain portion of space, A, and that you know its state, at time i.

Because a piece of information, like that total state of a certain portion of space A, at time ti, is dependant and totally defined by the information contained in its past or future light cone, of which you can take any slice at tx (tx occuring before or after ti).

So time isn't a dimension like others, at the very least in that sense.

Edited by vyntager, 13 April 2008 - 09:24 PM.

[Luna]

This wormhole theory is so old by now, guilty until proven to work! =)
and I still believe faster than light theories with time travel are just a big misconception.

There's a book a read a year or two ago, The End of Time, that's also part of Discovery magazine's cover story in the current issue. It makes a somewhat compelling case that there is no time, only a series of nows. Time is an illusion, and there is no past or future as far as the universe is concerned -- only in our minds. I don't pretend to understand it fully, but it wouldn't surprise me if the real answer on time is not something utterly unexpected along these lines.

In the same issue, they also talk about how the computer power of the brain might be a trillion times more than previously estimated, because each neuron is actually a super computer on its own, with millions of nano-like tube structures that have computing power. This is gaining acceptance, and if true it pushes the singularity out another two decades.

I always claimed there is no time.

The time concept is more confusing and ilogical than the no time concept I am surprised people tell me I confuse them, being ilogical or that many believe in time.
And no this is not pushing the singularity.

[Crepulance]

I watched someone at a NPC ufo event talking about varying ufo technologies they've found that are Super Luminal (faster than the speed of light)

I still believe quantum entanglment is going to be a big disappointment.
And I doubt it will do any good for human teleportation.

[Luna]

I watched someone at a NPC ufo event talking about varying ufo technologies they've found that are Super Luminal (faster than the speed of light)

I still believe quantum entanglment is going to be a big disappointment.
And I doubt it will do any good for human teleportation.

Excuse me but care you explain what you just said?
Oh and btw, I forgot to mention, I believe faster than light would be quite simple to attend by either tweaking with motion or by very high amount of energy.
Quantum entanglment is not it.

Edited by Winterbreeze, 27 May 2008 - 10:47 AM.

[renton]

Any chance of traveling FTL is dependent on several things:

1) We have to assume we don't have the complete picture when it comes to conventional physics, quantum energy, et al. This is undoubtedly true, as we're always going to have this problem and considering we haven't even gotten close to the speed of light yet in traveling in space, we're a long, long way away from FTL. One step at a time.

2) Can quantum energy be unleashed in a way that allows us to break the C barrier (of course, without doing significant damage to space-time in the process)? If so, this is good news. Too bad we're not even close to figuring this out.

3) Can artificial worm holes or "folded space" techniques work?Again, purely theoretical.

I think, before we even start serious discussion about FTL, we need to take a step back and consider where we're at technologically. We haven't even traveled past our moon yet. Our concept of a mission to Mars could take years to develop, engineer and then deploy.

Unless the singularity happens at some point which creates a new intellectual paradigm for us to explore and speed up our technological progress, the most optimistic guess I'd give for FTL technology would be 2100, maybe.

[Lazarus Long]

3) Can artificial worm holes or "folded space" techniques work?Again, purely theoretical.

There is an interesting article in the current Scientific American.

May, 2008
Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?

One of the most basic facts of life is that the future looks different from the past. But on a grand cosmological scale, they may look the same
By Sean M. Carroll

* The basic laws of physics work equally well forward or backward in time, yet we perceive time to move in one direction only—toward the future. Why?
* To account for it, we have to delve into the prehistory of the universe, to a time before the big bang. Our universe may be part of a much larger multiverse, which as a whole is time-symmetric. Time may run backward in other universes.

The universe does not look right. That may seem like a strange thing to say, given that cosmologists have very little standard for comparison. How do we know what the universe is supposed to look like? Nevertheless, over the years we have developed a strong intuition for what counts as “natural”—and the universe we see does not qualify.

Make no mistake: cosmologists have put together an incredibly successful picture of what the universe is made of and how it has evolved. Some 14 billion years ago the cosmos was hotter and denser than the interior of a star, and since then it has been cooling off and thinning out as the fabric of space expands. This picture accounts for just about every observation we have made, but a number of unusual features, especially in the early universe, suggest that there is more to the story than we understand.

http://www.sciam.com...-of-times-arrow

If this is correct, and *IF* traversing the multiverse is even possible it implies time may exist with alternative meters or even *directions* within the multiverse. This would mean that one could travel in space and time through such transition and emerge back into this universe before the present or at a compressed travel time relative to here. This would provide some of the practical aspects of the wormhole.

Also it may mean that in other universes physical space is compressed or expanded relative to this one (due to relative ages of inflation for only one example) and travel through those regions of the mutiverse may result in effectively overcoming the FTL limit of this universe even if it is limited by the FTL limit of the alternate universe. You are not going FTL in this one. Again this looks a lot like wormholes.

[BrandonFlorida]

There are particles (tachyons) that move with speeds higher than the speed of light. It is not impossible to have a speed higher than the speed of light but it's impossible to accelerate to a speed higher than the speed of light.

None has actually been detected.

[BrandonFlorida]

As it was said, Tachyons are theoretical and probably do not exist.
About accelerating faster than light, as far as Enstein said, it is possible but needs huge amount of energy.

Actually, he said that if you start below the speed of light in vacuum, no amount of energy is sufficient to reach it.

[BrandonFlorida]

In addition to what Vyntager already said,
As I see it by all logical ways, nothing that increases in a normal way can become infinite.
The energy to go faster than light is probably huge but not infinite, must be a misconception here.
As I'm not a physicists, someone else might be kind enough to look into it and post here is finding on the matter.

It would be infinite, since the accelerated object's mass approaches infinity as it's speed approaches that of light.

[Luna]

In addition to what Vyntager already said,
As I see it by all logical ways, nothing that increases in a normal way can become infinite.
The energy to go faster than light is probably huge but not infinite, must be a misconception here.
As I'm not a physicists, someone else might be kind enough to look into it and post here is finding on the matter.

It would be infinite, since the accelerated object's mass approaches infinity as it's speed approaches that of light.

I somehow doubt this is true.
How can you even calculate "This object's mass is approaching to infinite due to acceleration"?
Infinite is not even a number, those calculations usually use a formula with specific, material, arguments, though can be large, they cannot be reaching infinite.

[BrandonFlorida]

In addition to what Vyntager already said,
As I see it by all logical ways, nothing that increases in a normal way can become infinite.
The energy to go faster than light is probably huge but not infinite, must be a misconception here.
As I'm not a physicists, someone else might be kind enough to look into it and post here is finding on the matter.

It would be infinite, since the accelerated object's mass approaches infinity as it's speed approaches that of light.

I somehow doubt this is true.
How can you even calculate "This object's mass is approaching to infinite due to acceleration"?
Infinite is not even a number, those calculations usually use a formula with specific, material, arguments, though can be large, they cannot be reaching infinite.

You're right, infinity isn't a number, but in mathematics, we have the theory of limits, usually taught in Calculus 1, and often speak of things approaching inifinity as a limit. Actually, what I'm describing is the Special Theory of Relativity, published by Einstein in 1905, and the formula for mass is:

m = m0/SQRT(1-v^2/c^2)

m0 is the mass when at rest. As you can see, the denominator approaches zero and so the formula for mass approaches infinity when v approaces c.

Typically, this is taught in a first college physics class, or sometimes even in high school physics.

[vyntager]

It would be infinite, since the accelerated object's mass approaches infinity as it's speed approaches that of light.

But it only is infinite for a particle that reaches the speed of light. Tachyons move at faster than light speeds, and actually loose energy the faster they go. The energy of a tachyon that moves at an infinite speed is nil.

Also, the mass of a particle that moves faster than light isn't real. Go figure what a particle with an imaginary mass means then.

In the end, a tachyon needs an infinite quantity of energy to reach the speed of light, and a bradyon, a normal particle, needs an infinite quantity of energy to reach it. It doesn't seem possible for either of those to cross to the other side of that barrier.

Infinity exists as a concept in mathematics, but in practice physicists don't like infinities, and always try to oust them from their models. For good reasons, usually.

[BrandonFlorida]

It would be infinite, since the accelerated object's mass approaches infinity as it's speed approaches that of light.

But it only is infinite for a particle that reaches the speed of light. Tachyons move at faster than light speeds, and actually loose energy the faster they go. The energy of a tachyon that moves at an infinite speed is nil.

Also, the mass of a particle that moves faster than light isn't real. Go figure what a particle with an imaginary mass means then.

In the end, a tachyon needs an infinite quantity of energy to reach the speed of light, and a bradyon, a normal particle, needs an infinite quantity of energy to reach it. It doesn't seem possible for either of those to cross to the other side of that barrier.

Infinity exists as a concept in mathematics, but in practice physicists don't like infinities, and always try to oust them from their models. For good reasons, usually.

However, I don't believe that there is experimental evidence for the existence of tachyons, and, even if they do exist, they won't enable a spacecraft to reach light speed, which would take an infinite amount of energy. Getting close to the speed of light would require "a lot" of energy.

Edited by BrandonFlorida, 10 October 2008 - 05:42 PM.

[Luna]

In addition to what Vyntager already said,
As I see it by all logical ways, nothing that increases in a normal way can become infinite.
The energy to go faster than light is probably huge but not infinite, must be a misconception here.
As I'm not a physicists, someone else might be kind enough to look into it and post here is finding on the matter.

It would be infinite, since the accelerated object's mass approaches infinity as it's speed approaches that of light.

I somehow doubt this is true.
How can you even calculate "This object's mass is approaching to infinite due to acceleration"?
Infinite is not even a number, those calculations usually use a formula with specific, material, arguments, though can be large, they cannot be reaching infinite.

You're right, infinity isn't a number, but in mathematics, we have the theory of limits, usually taught in Calculus 1, and often speak of things approaching inifinity as a limit. Actually, what I'm describing is the Special Theory of Relativity, published by Einstein in 1905, and the formula for mass is:

m = m0/SQRT(1-v^2/c^2)

m0 is the mass when at rest. As you can see, the denominator approaches zero and so the formula for mass approaches infinity when v approaces c.

Typically, this is taught in a first college physics class, or sometimes even in high school physics.

Yes I know this formula I simply doubt it is all correct.
Also, if mass can reach infinite, there might be a thing for energy as well.

Edited by Winterbreeze, 11 October 2008 - 04:15 AM.

[BrandonFlorida]

In addition to what Vyntager already said,
As I see it by all logical ways, nothing that increases in a normal way can become infinite.
The energy to go faster than light is probably huge but not infinite, must be a misconception here.
As I'm not a physicists, someone else might be kind enough to look into it and post here is finding on the matter.

It would be infinite, since the accelerated object's mass approaches infinity as it's speed approaches that of light.

I somehow doubt this is true.
How can you even calculate "This object's mass is approaching to infinite due to acceleration"?
Infinite is not even a number, those calculations usually use a formula with specific, material, arguments, though can be large, they cannot be reaching infinite.

You're right, infinity isn't a number, but in mathematics, we have the theory of limits, usually taught in Calculus 1, and often speak of things approaching inifinity as a limit. Actually, what I'm describing is the Special Theory of Relativity, published by Einstein in 1905, and the formula for mass is:

m = m0/SQRT(1-v^2/c^2)

m0 is the mass when at rest. As you can see, the denominator approaches zero and so the formula for mass approaches infinity when v approaces c.

Typically, this is taught in a first college physics class, or sometimes even in high school physics.

Yes I know this formula I simply doubt it is all correct.
Also, if mass can reach infinite, there might be a thing for energy as well.

Actually, of course, the mass cannot reach infinity, but simply approaches it more and more closely. The Special Theory of Relativity has, in the past century, been tested many times in the laboratory, and the results always agree with the theory. Particle accelerators, for instance, use special relativistic mechanics, and simply wouldn't work, if it didn't produce correct results.