So yeah... this paper just basically invented Mass Effect

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.01439v1.pdf

I read this paper, and the first thing that came to mind was the giant Mass Relays from Mass Effect.

The scientific principle is entirely different: basically it says you can use Gaussian Beams to create a gravitational wave which can transmit a geodisc across spacetime at FTL speeds, without using Exotic Matter like warp drive.

Thoughts?

[Iskar]

As far as I understand it the concept in mass effect is about statically changing the gravitation in a given region of space and somehow magically propel a given mass across huge distances in a wormhole-like way. (I haven't played the game, but tried to read up on the scientific backstory a bit, couldn't find a concise concept of this propulsion, however.)

The paper now describes a different effect, pertaining not to timelike geodesics (the world lines of massive objects) but to null-geodesics (the world lines representing light/EM-wavelets) and thus affecting mostly the transmission of information. As the authors point out any application to the transfer of massive objects is highly speculative. From the illustration in the paper it seems like the effect is something like a gravitational analogue of the refraction index, where the local compression/extension of space by transverse gravitational waves accelerates/decelerates geodesics passing through the region as compared to non-refracted geodesics from the point of view of a distant observer. (Their eigen-time remains unaffected and hence the result is in no contradiction to the GTR.)

It is still a rather interesting thought and at least regarding hypothetical galactic infrastructure it would require a similar network of relays, though in our case not to create mass effect fields along the direction of travel, but to produce sufficiently strong gravitational waves transverse/orthogonal to it.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Great explanation!

I talked to the author and he did say Mass Effect was an inspiration for his theory. But yeah Mass Effect is a whole different, fictional, concept.

I think that this has a plausible application for FTL communication, if the theory is proven true. I always love seeing new stuff about theoretical FTL, as much of a pipe dream as most of it is.

[Gallus]

If I understand this correctly it's about using a gravitational wave to compress and extend spacetime in one direction, so theoretically, if one could "ride" that wave correctly, his distance of flight will be shorter, resulting in FTL travel. I haven't taken any GR classes yet though so I could be totally wrong.

[Sir Adrian]

And what happens with the geodisc once transmitted? Getting there is all peachy but I suspect you'd be a bit inconvenienced if you're a random atom soup when you get there.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

As someone stated above, the current theory proposes it as a method to transport information, or possibly energy, not matter.

[Sir Adrian]

IN that case if this works we may have just solved the second biggest problem related to space travel: communication.