Hyperspace Travel

[Plano Skywalker]

The existance of an absolute reference system (also known as luminiferous aether) has been proven impossible, and not exactly recently. Currently it isn't considered any more valid than heliocentrism.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

my point is that sci-fi needs to have certain plausible theories to explain things like hyperspace....sci-fi does not, however, need the latest and greatest theories.

 

I think the following ideas are plausible for sci-fi:

 

* the speed of light is the fastest "conventional" speed that an object with mass can obtain....in practice, it is not actually attainable because such an object would have infinite mass.

 

* some advanced races HAVE BEEN RUMORED to come up with *tech gobbledogook answer* that allows for faster-than-light travel....whenever you "conventionally" travel faster than light, you are time-travelling.

such technology is dangerous and must be destroyed if found, etc.

 

* making the "jump to lightspeed" or "warp 1, 2, 3" etc is not travelling at or greater than the speed of light in the "conventional" sense but is done by manipulating the folds in spacetime.

[cewekeds]

sci-fi needs to have certain plausible theories to explain things like hyperspace

 

No they don't. To achive hyperspeed the ships in star wars run on liquid force. To prevent crushing several relay points have been set up to help the ship Computer to dodge anythin it might run into.

[Plano Skywalker]

No they don't. To achive hyperspeed the ships in star wars run on liquid force. To prevent crushing several relay points have been set up to help the ship Computer to dodge anythin it might run into.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

point well taken (w00t)

 

let me rephrase: it is *ideal* when sci-fi (and across different franchises) utilizes a consistent and somewhat plausible explaination for such things.

[metadigital]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

 

Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

English physicist & science fiction author (1917 - )

[EHP]

"Just to back Mr Numbers, this is a relative time passage. Another example:

A pulsar is one of the most distant objects we can see from here (very, very bright in the radio spectrum -- some people have theorized these are the tailpipes of space ships travelling away from us!). They are upwards of 12 billion light-years away; that means the light we see from them is 12 billion years old (because that's how long it's taken to reach here). If you could travel faster than the speed of light, you could arrive before the light was leaving, and therefore have travelled back in time."

 

^^^^ to the person who wrote that somewhere in the middle of page 3

 

one light year equals 93 million miles. 12 light years times 93,000,000 is not 12 billion my friend. Thats the most basic info u can possibly learn on the subject. Its the distance light travels from the sun to earth, and they chose that as the unit of one light year.

[Darth Flatus]

You can't count - to save your embarrassment just delete your post.

[213374U]

one light year equals 93 million miles. 12 light years times 93,000,000 is not 12 billion my friend. Thats the most basic info u can possibly learn on the subject. Its the distance light travels from the sun to earth, and they chose that as the unit of one light year.

That's right!

 

Because everyone knows that it takes light a year to reach Earth from the Sun. "Everyone", as in just yu0.

[Darth Flatus]

what's so funny is that he is adamantly wrong.

[Reveilled]

what's so funny is that he is adamantly wrong.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

When I read that a light year was the distance from the sun to the earth, my jaw literally droped in awe of the most huge mistake ever used as an insult. There must be some sort of award for this kind of thing.

[213374U]

Only if he dies from it.

[SteveThaiBinh]

I think the distance from the Earth to the Sun is called the Astronomical Unit. There was a lot about it last year when there was the transit of Venus, because that's how the distance was first calculated reasonably accurately.

[metadigital]

I think the distance from the Earth to the Sun is called the Astronomical Unit.  There was a lot about it last year when there was the transit of Venus, because that's how the distance was first calculated reasonably accurately.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Spot on.

 

Light takes just over eight minutes to reach the Earth from the Sun, and about a second to travel the distance between the moon and the Earth. (The film footage from the Voyager probe took a couple of hours to reach the Earth relay station from the moons of Jupiter.)

 

This is on par with calling a light-year a measure of time (as some early SF tv as done).

 

@Reveiled: this is precisely why mathematics should be mandatory, for longer, at school. Trying to have a conversation about anything (meaningful ) will normally involve maths to a lesser or greater extent at some point; the frightening post script to this posters comments is the underlying innumeracy. Product of modern pedagogical pupil-friendly breast-fed-till-teenage-sharing-the-bed-with-mummy type progressive education that marks the departure from traditional rod-rules-and-rote-learing of the pre-baby-boomer generation.

 

 

Aside 2: The EHB must be a gag logon, surely? One post and it's to make a self-ridiculing statement? Tip: If not, EHB, create a new account anyway ...

[Reveilled]

@Reveiled: this is precisely why mathematics should be mandatory, for longer, at school. Trying to have a conversation about anything (meaningful  ) will normally involve maths to a lesser or greater extent at some point; the frightening post script to this posters comments is the underlying innumeracy. Product of modern pedagogical pupil-friendly breast-fed-till-teenage-sharing-the-bed-with-mummy type progressive education that marks the departure from traditional rod-rules-and-rote-learing of the pre-baby-boomer generation.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ah, but sir, there is a fatal flaw in thine argument! Thou assumest that the child will be listening (or present) in class to learn.

[metadigital]

Just have a proper "exit" exam: pass or die.

[Darth Flatus]

Pass or die, excellent. I will implement that in my world order

 

That EHB made another post about Tales of The Jedi.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Product of modern pedagogical pupil-friendly breast-fed-till-teenage-sharing-the-bed-with-mummy type progressive education

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Rote learners may be able to calculate distances in space, but can they tell you how many yoghurt pots will fit into a cardboard box? I spent four weeks of my GCSE (age 14) working that out.

[metadigital]

I would expect that to be a reasonable conclusion, yes. After all, the rote-learning is for the basic arithmetic components and algorithms necessary to compute more complex calculations.

 

For example, if you don't know your times table, you have to add seven to itself seven times to find seven times eight: the lack of basic mathematical "language" skills leads to more and more entropy in a mathematical conversation. If I can converse with you about the angular components of a particle, given the particles overall velocity, then I don't have to waste bandwidth discussing cos and sin to derive the angular components, so we can use that information, rather than re-hashing it.

 

(Just shows you how much the GCSEs have gone to pot: that sort of question should be worth five percent in a three hour paper. )

[metadigital]

As someone (mentioning no names, Ender) spammed the "Do you like Maths" thread, earlier, I have performed some threadromancy on this venerable favourite.

 

Reading the Sunday Times, there is a new book out from Lisa Randall called Membranes and higher dimensions.

 

It is intersting because in it, she propounds her theory of the higher dimensions and how our four dimensional universe -- called a "brane", as in a membrane -- may exist in a much larger reality -- called a "bulk" -- much the same way as a page (our universe, or brane) fits into a large book (bulk).

 

What is interesting about her theory is that -- in contrast to the earlier proponents in the late twentieth century -- e.g. gravity, can travel between these branes, and so our universe may be subject to our neighbouring branes.

 

This is pretty exciting for physicists trying to understand why gravity is such a weak force, comparitively: perhaps it is leaking away into the bulk, so that the force we feel here in our universe is just a residual ghost.

 

While these theories are familiar to SF fans (e.g. in Star Trek), the theories are now used to predict behaviours with equations. (We'll have to get the book for the equations, unless someone can google it faster than me ...).

 

 

Reference: WARPED PASSAGES Unravelling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions, by [Professor] Lisa Randall.

[taks]

odd that such a weak force, as gravity is always referred, is inescapable and acts at infinite distance with the same force (uh, a rather redundant phrase i suppose). contrast that with the strong magnetic force, which decays quite rapidly.

 

taks

[Calax]

big number and words making brain mush, Isn't time dialation only possible when you have a massive gravitational flux? and Why not force the creation of a wormhole between planets in space (sry i'm a sg1 fan)

[Kaftan Barlast]

What the heck is a darn flux? I don' figure much out of these fancy word yer usin'

[213374U]

odd that such a weak force, as gravity is always referred, is inescapable and acts at infinite distance with the same force (uh, a rather redundant phrase i suppose).  contrast that with the strong magnetic force, which decays quite rapidly.

Comparatively, gravity is pretty weak. In fact, for it to be representative, it needs to be produced by a really massive body (a planetary or stellar body), while electromagnetic interactions are observable with much smaller amounts of their generating particles. However, since gravitons haven't been discovered as of yet, this is just speculation.

And gravity doesn't act at infinite distance with the same force. At an infinite distance from the point of origin, the force caused by a gravitational field is zero. It decreases proportionally to the inverse of the square of the distance.

 

 

What the heck is a darn flux? I don' figure much out of these fancy word yer usin'

Flux is a mathematical concept that is defined as the amount of field lines that cross a given surface. It is useful because choosing an convenient surface and calculating the flux through that surface is a good way to indirectly measure the cause of the field.

[taks]

It decreases proportionally to the inverse of the square of the distance.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

aye, tis true. magnetic fields vary with the inverse square as well, though they are not directly dependent upon the mass of the two bodies as with gravity. well, i suppose that depends upon the magnet (lodestone, for example).

 

it would have been fitting to say seemingly more powerful.

 

 

taks

[EnderAndrew]

There are physicists currently really pushing wormhole theories as the only viable means of faster than light travel. Even that wouldn't necessarily be true faster than light travel, but a means to circumvent standard distances at what would appear to be faster than light speeds.

 

Faster than light travel has been problems, such as propulsion, inertia, charting safe courses, etc. Imagine for a second what a tiny rock chip can do to your window at 60 miles per hour. Now imagine a rock or ice chip in space at say something like 674 million miles per hour.

 

Add to that theoretical complications from the theory of relativity, that would suggest even if we could leap the immediate hurdles, travelling faster than the speed of light just isn't possible.

 

And I also maintain the math thread was full of spam before I got there. I just threw in two math puns. God forbid I joke on-topic. Apparently that is spam. It's not like I screamed the B word, or made 3 pages of posts that consisted solely of emoticons.

[Kaftan Barlast]

It's not like I screamed the B word..

 

 

 

 

 

Anyways, arent the wormhole theories aswellas the "warp" thingies very much along the line of "We believe space may be able to bend but we havent got a clue on how to actually bend it"?

 

 

..or was that the thing were you would slingshot yourself using the gravity well of a black hole?