Superluminal Travel - New Theories that could turn "Slipspace" into Reality

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Could things like Halo's "slipspace", Star wars, "hyperspace", and star Trek's "warp speed" be theoretically possible. Theories dating back into the mid-1900s could make it possible. What do you think? Here are some things I found:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0985 (Matterwave Transport without Transit)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_space (Minkowski Space Theory)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_Theory (Heim Theory)

I think it would be awesome to have this sort of thing.

[Devilmaypoop]

Of cource it's possible, we just dont know how to yet.

[Randarkmaan]

Well, it is possible to exceed the local speed of light when it is slowed down by passing through a medium such as water, this has quite interesting effects actually. I guess anyone who has played Mass Effect heard the phrase Cerenkov Radiation in the codex?

Though this ofcourse means that the actual speed of light (3,00*10^8 m/s, which is in a vaccum) is exceeded. So far it does not seem as though it is possible for anything with a mass to attain, let alone exceed, the speed of light. It could very well be one of those seemingly inviolable laws of nature such as the conservation of energy. Though as it is with the conservation of energy, I would think that it is not wholly improbable that it could be 'tricked' and violated temporarily on a quantum mechanical scale. However as with the conservation of energy I think the possibilities of this being possible on a larger scale, i.e. one where general relativity applies, might be very slim indeed.

However there could be some other way, such as the ever convenient wormholes and extra dimensions, that, if it is at all possible to utilize them, could allow you to take a shortcut. I doubt FTL travel, if it ever becomes possible will be anything like the starships we love so much, nor anywhere near as convenient. I also think it would require ludicrous amounts of energy to accomplish, which is why stargates and the huge mass relays of Mass Effect hits a chord with me.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Halo presents a rather realistic view
Quote:
"
The engine makes ruptures by using high-power cyclic particle accelerators to generate microscopic black holes. Because of their low mass, Hawking radiation gives them a lifetime of around a nanosecond (or potentially a little longer than a whole second)[4] before they evaporate into useless thermal energy. In that nanosecond, the engine manipulates them into forming a coherent rupture between normal space and the slipstream."

Alternate Dimensions are a viable option - as they could potentially have different laws of physics.

[Godfrey I of Leuven]

Using wormholes for interstellar travel would be the most feasible I think.

[Randarkmaan]

Alternate Dimensions are a viable option - as they could potentially have different laws of physics.

I guess you mean alternate universes? Because alternate dimensions would be very much a part of our own universe (like the 4 certain ones, spacetime) and follow the same laws, however a new one could represent a new way of travelling, in that you could take another path, that is shorter or something.

Using wormholes for interstellar travel would be the most feasible I think.

That depends on how feasible wormholes are. As theorized they are hardly stable at all, and last for a very short time, and are minutely small, I think on the sub-atomic scale. First one would need a way of generating them, though if they do occur some kind of very powerful particle accelarotor sounds like its up that alley. But the more difficult job would be to find some way to capture and stabilize them and then inflate them by many, many orders of magnitude in order to let large objects like ourselves and//or machines pass through. And then I'm thinking... how would you even know where it ends? Well I'm guessing you could just walk (maybe look?) but the chances that it would link to someplace useful must be something like a googolplex-to-one, so you would have to capture an impossible amount of them to find a useful one.

Now I am far from an expert on wormholes, this is just me recalling what I've read (I hope with some luck), but I foresee that these points might be considerable obstacles to reliable FTL travel using wormholes (though not actually FTL, just a shortcut, like making a tunnel through a mountain)

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Tearing apart the fabric of space time using brute force could work - you just go "under" the fabric until you arrive below where you want, and then tear a hole through back to our universe. This would work providing the universe beneath the fabric allows for FTL travel.

Matterwave Transport w/o transit makes the most sense to me. This is from HAlopedia:

In this process the 7 hidden spatial dimensions, 3 known spatial dimensions and the 2 time dimensions appear to collapse into a singularity to an outside observer. But in reality, this is only an illusion. In this type of field, relativity predominates, for instance the reality is dependent on the radial displacement from the source that generates the field. At small distances, reality is relatively intact. The further away from the field source, the less sense it makes to talk about reality; a cause can occur after an effect, time has no linear flow. Nothing has a definite momentum or velocity. Objects can occur at multiple positions simultaneously. When an object enters a field, it produces a burst of neutrinos, antimatter and other types of radiation.

If you have points 1,2, and 3 in sequential, probably linear order, in normal space to cross from point 1 to 3 at some point you have to go past point 2. In Matterwave transit w/o transport, it allows you to go from 1-3 without going through 2, 1.5, or even 1.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001
It's pretty good and awesome and stuff.

[Randarkmaan]

You're thinking something along the lines of how electrons move (though even that might actually be somewhat difficult to imagine, seeing as how they are just as much or more probability waves as they are point particles) between the energy levels in atoms? In that an electron goes from the energy level 1 to 2, without ever being in any inbetween space, in a way for an infinitesimal time it could be imagined to be in two locations at the same time.

[Gordon Freynman]

Could things like Halo's "slipspace", Star wars, "hyperspace", and star Trek's "warp speed" be theoretically possible.

Theoretically they probably are possible, but there is a huge difference between whats theoretically possible and whats practically possible.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0985 (Matterwave Transport without Transit)

This involves cooling the subject to mere nano-kelvins above absolute zero to create a Bose-Einstein condensate, which is essentially a group of particles or atoms that behave like a single particle. This isn't a very practical method of travel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_space (Minkowski Space Theory)

This is only the mathematical setting that relativity is most often formulated in. I don't see any direct relation to FTL travel here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_Theory (Heim Theory)

I've never actually heard of Heim Theory and it sound very interesting, but it doesn't look like it has much going for it.

Right now the only FTL traveling methods I know of that might be possible involve wormholes and Alcubierre Drives, and these don't seem very practical to me even thousands of years into the future because they require ridiculous amounts of energy and exotic matter.

[Elfdude]

Right now the only FTL traveling methods I know of that might be possible involve wormholes and Alcubierre Drives.

This although Alcubierre Drives are a lot more plausible a lot more immediately in the future than I think he gives them credit for. They're theoretically possible to build with existing technology the issue is the cost to find the exotic matter necessary would exhaust the world's economy. Basically we just need more efficient ways of producing exotic matter and we have warp drive. With recent advances I don't think that's so far fetched in 50-100 years.

Wormholes can be stabilized using something like negative matter, however controlling where their exit points are would likely require a gate of some sort. The most effective way IMO would be to constantly create ring ships which accelerate to predetermined star systems. Ships would then ride along like highways, as ship tech improves wormholes generation can probably be controlled to make it portable and perhaps even target-able.

[Randarkmaan]

I don't think finding (or creating) exotic matter in the first place would be so difficult, never mind more efficient methods of production! Especially when you're thinking of the kind with negative mass. This is highly speculative to say the least.
Ofcourse there are other theorized types of exotic matter, but IIRC the kind with negative mass is the kind you would need to expand and stabilize wormholes, which are also highly speculative and elusive.

Mars is going to remain uninhabited - it only has a fraction of earths atmosphere, and with no Magnetic Field we would be fried and the atmosphere would be blown away by solar winds.
Also about andromeda - that's a few million years from now, nothing we should presently be concerned about.

Andromeda is a few billion years from now actually, big difference, I just brought it up because some guy brought out the sun going bye-bye.

When you first are talking about technology to break apart the fabric of space-time and enter into hypothesized extra dimensions, expanding exceedingly tiny wormholes, also speculative, to the size of starships, stabilizing said wormholes, and/or simply breaking nature's ultimate speed limit. Well I don't think it's so far fetched to talk about a possible machine built using highly advanced technology on a very large scale to generate a suitably large magnetic field, and also just pump some gases into that atmosphere, for instance by melting Mars's polar icecaps (where lots of trapped CO₂ is thought to be)

[removeduser_4536284751384]

isn't that just another way of saying "you can change the speed of light if you change the speed of light/change the laws of the universe"?

[removeduser_4536284751384]

Our current models of physics aren't complete anyway, and conflict with each other, or simply cannot be comprehended by the human mind. Give it another few centuries or so until we have a theory of everything and can actually understand what we're on about.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

THere's actually a group (red it in an article) of people who are working on solving issues with interplanetary and interstellar travel, and they estimated 250 or so years before we have the tech to leave the solar system. Awful close to 2291...

[Roloc]

THere's actually a group (red it in an article) of people who are working on solving issues with interplanetary and interstellar travel, and they estimated 250 or so years before we have the tech to leave the solar system. Awful close to 2291...

Maybe Halos exist then.

[Holger Danske]

Maybe Halos exist then.

I hope not. Simply because Halo is terrible copycat Science Fiction with a huge fanbase of dumb Xbox playing teenagers with limited imagination and creativity.

[Nimthill]

THere's actually a group (red it in an article) of people who are working on solving issues with interplanetary and interstellar travel, and they estimated 250 or so years before we have the tech to leave the solar system. Awful close to 2291...

I'm really curious where that two hunderd and fifty years or so came from. I'm guessing from a place where no sun shines ;-)

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

@roloc
lol, maybe.


It was based on the current rate/acceleration of technological advancement.

[MathiasOfAthens]

I hope its possible to create a hyperdrive or something similar... otherwise this existence would be a cruel joke once out planets population starts to bulge at the seems. I like to think the universe is like a field of grass. The rules of nature apply up there as well in that everything lives in cooperation... Planets orbit suns and suns grow until they die when they implode and spread their seed...

[Randarkmaan]

I hope its possible to create a hyperdrive or something similar... otherwise this existence would be a cruel joke once out planets population starts to bulge at the seems. I like to think the universe is like a field of grass. The rules of nature apply up there as well in that everything lives in cooperation... Planets orbit suns and suns grow until they die when they implode and spread their seed...

5 billion years is a an unfathomably long time, we can still possibly terraform Mars, some gas giant moons, create giant space stations and the like. And send out generation ships (or fleets) to nearby favourable star systems, when (let's hope this shouldn't be if) our society is sufficiently advanced and mature enough that we may need to seed further systems to ensure the future survival of our species (or Terran life in general if you prefer). Red dwarf stars also (though they probably don't have any habitable planets, being much too cold) have a lifetime that's quite possibly much longer than the current age of the years.
Thus even without any means of FTL travel, we could still spread beyond the Solar system, seeding the galaxy with humanity (and other life).

Though there is also the fact that Andromeda is set to collide, and devour (well actually combine with) the Milky Way. But, with the chance of actual collisions and such being quite low, it will probably go smoother than is thought. Though I may have heard that numerous new binary and tertiary (and so on) star systems will form. These are quite unhospitable environments for planets.