Warp - any scientific take on it?

[DanielXY]

Yeah, starting eve just a few weeks ago + seeing the concept of warping used in almost all science-fiction movies I wondered if this has any scientific backing... Like Fusion being theoreticly possibel but not really invented yet...
I mean where does the word warp come from anyways? (English is not my first-language but I think its exclusivly used to describe fast travel in space?).

[Pekka]

Scientific take? No. Unless you'll want to take and expand that term into including stuff from Hubbard and other wannabes.

Some day? Perhaps, now? No take.

[Thue]

Nope, no basis in known science.

I read that instantaneous travel through wormholes may be theoretically possible. With stress on theoretically.

[Perfection]

Spacetime naturally warps from gravity as per general relativity. In science fiction they play on this concept and make it do all sorts of crazy stuff.

In reality warping space time to make FTL (Faster then light) information transfer is theoretically impossible (by mainstream physics). In fact all forms of FTL info tranfer are theoretically impossible by modern mainstream theory. There are some ideas to get around it, but they involve exotic (read nonexistant) material or major modifications to current theory (read probably BS).

In a nutshell, it seems that the speed limit of C is one of those universal principles of the universe like conservation of energy and FTL is probably impossible.

Additionally I should note that allowing FTL allows for time travel as well and you have to deal with that mess.

[FrostyBoy]

FTL is not impossible. It's just a speed. Light has no power over the speed in which anything travels.

Anything that travels faster than light will simply be invisible.

[Perfection]

Please tell me that was a joke...

[Winston]

Muhammad Ali could do it, way back in the sixties.

[Gatekeeper]

I trust that, someday, when our scientists know even more about physics, they'll find that the "speed limit" imposed by the speed of light was really just something waiting to be broken, much like folks once said going faster than sound (let alone flight) would be something never done by humans.

Gatekeeper

[Perfection]

I think your trust is misplaced. There are limits that science can't breach (like conservation of energy), we're pretty damn sure the speed of light is another.

I should note that traveling faster then sound was never really considered physically impossible (because we could make things go faster then sound) rather that we couldn't engineer something that could go faster. FTL on the other hand it is considered physically impossible for anything to travel faster then.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
I trust that, someday, when our scientists know even more about physics, they'll find that the "speed limit" imposed by the speed of light was really just something waiting to be broken, much like folks once said going faster than sound (let alone flight) would be something never done by humans.

Gatekeeper

I'm not saying you're wrong but I don't like your analogy.


There was never any theoretical strong objection about flying or going faster than the speed of sound.

Even in Antiquity, they could see many things flying and going faster than the speed of sound (planets for examples).

The speed of sound was never an important physical quantity anyway, it varies from medium to medium etc...

It could be that our current understanding is incomplete, in fact it probably most certainly is, but the speed of light limit is part of our current theoretical understand of physics, while impossibilty of flying or speed of sound limits never were.

[FrostyBoy]

Originally posted by Perfection
Please tell me that was a joke...

prove me wrong..

[Blake]

There's this one, by warping space-time and moving the local space rather than moving the ship (the ship stays still, it's space-time which is moved)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

I think the problem with this idea can be summarized with this quote:

By contracting the 3+1 dimensional surface area of the 'bubble' being transported by the drive, while at the same time expanding 3 dimensional the volume contained inside, Van Den Broeck was able to reduce the total energy needed to transport small atoms to less than 3 solar masses.

Um yeah. Energy requirements may be unrealistically high.

[BeBMan]

I'm pretty sure they had this in Star Trek

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Blake
There's this one, by warping space-time and moving the local space rather than moving the ship (the ship stays still, it's space-time which is moved)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

I think the problem with this idea can be summarized with this quote:

Um yeah. Energy requirements may be unrealistically high.

Interestingly enough, that's how the ship in Futurama moved.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Sn00py


prove me wrong..

Well, it's called the theory of relativity and has been successfully tested many times at different levels, including accelerating massive objects to very near light speed (which is what we're discussing) with energies required following theoretical predictions up to experimental error.


You may argue that this is not proof, and while technically right, it is as "true" as anything can be in physical science and there is a lot more evidence for that than your ideas.

Maybe you can explain to us how your Theory of Invisible Fast Objects work, what testable predictions it makes that differ from accepted physics and we can check.