Author Topic: NASA thinks it may be able to build an engine that will get us to Mars in weeks instead of months.  (Read 5194 times)

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Offline kevindavis007

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Offline ABX

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Contemplate this. (warning: it would be best to smoke one before reading this)
 
What if humans are nothing more than a universal virus. And we are seeking every and any way to spread into a greater entity. We are currently constrained on Earth, but just like a virus, we are always looking for a way to spread ourseleves to envelope everything.

Not just humans, but life itself.

Offline EC

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Also virus tends to mutate... I have a belief if we don't find a identical planet, at least somewhat a close one, the human race can find a adapt to the planet that we settle on.

People already do.
There is a place in the Atacama that has poison water, is hot as hell and bone dry. There is a town there.
In Kenya there is a place that is literally hell. Sulphur clouds, random lava flows, the ground is mostly salt. People live there.
Tierra del Fuego - it's bloody cold at times, to put it politely. The people there used to live, work and sleep naked.
Altitudes of over 15000 feet are supposedly not survivable long term. Tell that to the ones on the mountain tops all around the world.

We're a tough and versatile species.
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Offline Dexter

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Not just humans, but life itself.

A virus is just another form of life doing exactly what all forms of life do. Life adapts, thrives and expands wherever possible. 
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-Socrates

Offline 240B

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Also virus tends to mutate... I have a belief if we don't find a identical planet, at least somewhat a close one, the human race can find a adapt to the planet that we settle on.

You get the cookie Chief. There is no doubt that humans in space or on another planet would be much different than us.
 
Which, of course, means, obviously, we would have to go to war with them and kill them. And they would go to war with us. That is the human nature.
You cannot "COEXIST" with people who want to kill you.
If they kill their own with no conscience, there is nothing to stop them from killing you.
Rational fear and anger at vicious murderous Islamic terrorists is the same as irrational antisemitism, according to the Leftists.

Offline 240B

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People already do.
There is a place in the Atacama that has poison water, is hot as hell and bone dry. There is a town there.
In Kenya there is a place that is literally hell. Sulphur clouds, random lava flows, the ground is mostly salt. People live there.
Tierra del Fuego - it's bloody cold at times, to put it politely. The people there used to live, work and sleep naked.
Altitudes of over 15000 feet are supposedly not survivable long term. Tell that to the ones on the mountain tops all around the world.

We're a tough and versatile species.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mx-BRJM0sA
You cannot "COEXIST" with people who want to kill you.
If they kill their own with no conscience, there is nothing to stop them from killing you.
Rational fear and anger at vicious murderous Islamic terrorists is the same as irrational antisemitism, according to the Leftists.

Offline Dexter

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You get the cookie Chief. There is no doubt that humans in space or on another planet would be much different than us.
 
Which, of course, means, obviously, we would have to go to war with them and kill them. And they would go to war with us. That is the human nature.

Someday humanity will transcend its violent tendencies. This will happen when communication and ease of access around the world opens our eyes to the fact that we're all just people doing our best to live a decent life, and that no other race or group of people is inherently bad or ignorant. That is my hope, anyway.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2014, 05:38:28 pm by Dex4974 »
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Offline EC

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Someday humanity will transcend its violent tendencies. This will happen when communication and ease of access around the world opens our eyes to the fact that we're all just people doing our best to live a decent life, and that no other race or group of people is inherently bad or ignorant. That is my hope, anyway.

I hope so. But we didn't get to the top of the food chain without violence being built in.

I mean, look at an average person. Weak senses, no built in weapons, laughable teeth, minimal situational awareness. It was only our immense capacity for violence, brains, and our opposable thumbs that got us where we are today.
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Imagine an object traveling at the speed of light, say a motorcycle.  The driver turns on the headlight.  What happens?
There are some among us who live in rooms of experience we can never enter.
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Offline EC

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Imagine an object traveling at the speed of light, say a motorcycle.  The driver turns on the headlight.  What happens?

He'll glow.
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Online Lando Lincoln

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Offline aligncare

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LOL! I get up at 5 AM for my morning run ... I never get used to it.

Offline Chieftain

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Per Wiki....

Quote
The Alcubierre drive or Alcubierre metric (referring to metric tensor) is a speculative idea based on a solution of Einstein's field equations in general relativity as proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, by which a spacecraft could achieve faster-than-light travel if a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (i.e. negative mass) could be created. Rather than exceeding the speed of light within its local frame of reference, a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel.

Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space.[1] Although the metric proposed by Alcubierre is mathematically valid in that it is consistent with the Einstein field equations, it may not be physically meaningful or indicate that such a drive could be constructed. The proposed mechanism of the Alcubierre drive implies a negative energy density and therefore requires exotic matter, so if exotic matter with the correct properties does not exist then it could not be constructed. However, at the close of his original paper[2] Alcubierre argued (following an argument developed by physicists analyzing traversable wormholes[3][4]) that the Casimir vacuum between parallel plates could fulfill the negative-energy requirement for the Alcubierre drive. Another possible issue is that although the Alcubierre metric is consistent with general relativity, general relativity does not incorporate quantum mechanics, and some physicists have presented arguments to suggest that a theory of quantum gravity which merged the two theories would eliminate those solutions in general relativity which allow for backwards time travel (see the chronology protection conjecture), of which the Alcubierre drive is one.

In short, nothing in Einsteinian Space/Time can attain or exceed the speed of light, but there is a great deal of evidence that suggests space itself moved considerably faster than light during the big bang, which gives rise to this theory.  How to do it is another matter, but there is research ongoing into this and other theoretical drives.


Offline Dexter

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Per Wiki....

In short, nothing in Einsteinian Space/Time can attain or exceed the speed of light, but there is a great deal of evidence that suggests space itself moved considerably faster than light during the big bang, which gives rise to this theory.  How to do it is another matter, but there is research ongoing into this and other theoretical drives.

It's important to note the knowledge Einstein had access to while he was alive. People like to refer to his ideas as the end all rules about space and light speed, but his perspective was formed when we were still pretty ignorant (at least by today's standards). I wonder if any of his ideas would be different were he alive today. The simple fact that greater than light speed momentum has ever existed at any point kind of puts a dent in his whole theory, in my opinion.

It's also possible that getting around the universe will be more about ripping a hole in space and teleporting there, making light speed kind of irrelevant. Scientists have already observed that quantum teleportation is possible, so how much of a leap is it really to find a way to bring that to a macro level that we can control? Technology proves the impossible to be possible on a regular basis. There is no telling when we will stumble upon some new discovery that unlocks a plethora of options we never even considered before.
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Offline EC

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Well - there is also the small detail that the furthest galaxies we can see show a red shift that indicates they are heading away at faster than the speed of light. It's old light, sure. From around the time of the big bang, in some cases.

I know - measurement errors are going to creep in when you get the odd photon from an entire galaxy. But it should be checked out. We should do at least one thing urgently. Replicate some of the gear we already have up there - the Hubble, for example - give them a better guidance and control system and then park them in orbit between Jupiter and Saturn. A 24 AU parellax is a lot better than a 2 AU one for resolving details.
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Well - there is also the small detail that the furthest galaxies we can see show a red shift that indicates they are heading away at faster than the speed of light. It's old light, sure. From around the time of the big bang, in some cases.

*  *  *

Which might very well support the idea that space itself, as opposed to objects within space, can move faster than light.  Which in turn gives some further support to the theory behind the Alcubierre drive.

Offline Relic

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http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/1/5959637/nasa-cannae-drive-tests-have-promising-results

We can't even get a person to the ISS.

This has the feel of an old, broken down professional, at a bar, telling anyone and no one of his big dreams.

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It's important to note the knowledge Einstein had access to while he was alive. People like to refer to his ideas as the end all rules about space and light speed, but his perspective was formed when we were still pretty ignorant (at least by today's standards). I wonder if any of his ideas would be different were he alive today. The simple fact that greater than light speed momentum has ever existed at any point kind of puts a dent in his whole theory, in my opinion.

It's also possible that getting around the universe will be more about ripping a hole in space and teleporting there, making light speed kind of irrelevant. Scientists have already observed that quantum teleportation is possible, so how much of a leap is it really to find a way to bring that to a macro level that we can control? Technology proves the impossible to be possible on a regular basis. There is no telling when we will stumble upon some new discovery that unlocks a plethora of options we never even considered before.

Space, as opposed to matter, does not have "momentum" in the sense that matter does.  Ergo, even if space is expanding at a rate greater than the speed of light, that says nothing about whether "greater than light speed momentum" has ever existed.

How much of a leap is it to bring "quantum teleportation" to the macro level?  Much larger than the leap from Newton to Einstein.  Also, "quantum teleportation" is not the same thing as Star Trek teleportation.  In particular, it relies up classical movement to set it up and therefore cannot be accomplished faster than the speed of light.  I'd suggest a little more reading on the subject first.

And I doubt that Einstein would change that many of his ideas were he alive today for the simple fact that to-date most of his theories have been tested and passed the test.  And no, before you set up that strawman, I am not saying that Einstein is infallible, nor am I saying that he would not have further developed his ideas were he alive today - no doubt he would have pushed his theories further than he got them - but I am saying that the fundamentals of his ideas are sufficiently solid that any newer theory must incorporate them as, at the least, special cases, in much the same way that Einstein's theories incorporate Newton's theories on gravity as a special case.



Offline Chieftain

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It's important to note the knowledge Einstein had access to while he was alive. People like to refer to his ideas as the end all rules about space and light speed, but his perspective was formed when we were still pretty ignorant (at least by today's standards). I wonder if any of his ideas would be different were he alive today. The simple fact that greater than light speed momentum has ever existed at any point kind of puts a dent in his whole theory, in my opinion.

It's also possible that getting around the universe will be more about ripping a hole in space and teleporting there, making light speed kind of irrelevant. Scientists have already observed that quantum teleportation is possible, so how much of a leap is it really to find a way to bring that to a macro level that we can control? Technology proves the impossible to be possible on a regular basis. There is no telling when we will stumble upon some new discovery that unlocks a plethora of options we never even considered before.

Einstein's Space/Time theories about relativity set the stage for other avenues of theoretical physics, Quantum Mechanics being one.  Very little about quantum anything is possible in Einsteinian Space, but outside of it there are some tantalizing suggestions about what might be possible, including FTL travel and unlimted power sources.  The math involved is way over my head and I understand very little about what some of these subjects deal with, but it is fascinating to peruse anyway.