Yesterday I read a magazine(Popular Mechanic???) from San Francisco Main Library. I remember there is an article about NASA is spending funds to explore the idea of faster than light travel, such as warp travel from Star Trek.

There are few things in the science field,if any,that would please me more than a discovery like this,if the interstellar travel becomes possible:

All those beautiful sights of multiple systems,pulsars,differently coloured stars from alien landscapes...

And the answer for the question if there s life out there¡¡

Personally I don't think it's possible to travel faster then light.
This is a little to much hollywood/SF minded.

It's against all physics laws I've ever learned....
And I'm not a 'believer'.

If you're not a believer KneD, then why do you have a picture of an alien as an avatar? Just curious. Also, how in the world can you not be a believer when the universe is aparently infinite?

Let's say I just find it a nice picture, I believe in life somewhere else in universe, but not in life that is able to visit us and more of that sci-fi crap.

With a 'believer' I mean someone who believes in supernatural things very fast....I want to see facts and scientific explanations first.
And I still want to see that although the universe in infinite.

And what I don't understand, why should I believe in warp-speed when the universe in infinite....that doesn't make any difference to me.

NASA only spent half million on that project. So don't hold your breath.

Whenever faster than light travel comes up, we get hung up on the light speed. I have a question for the physics experts. If I find a way to compress two points in space five light years apart and enter at point A and arrive at point B in 1 hour, am I breaking any laws? How so?

In Babylon 5, they called it hyperspace during transit.

Hi kmguru,

If you can manage to get the points within 1 lighthour distance, then you're not breaking any physical laws. If you could get these points A and B close enough, then light would also need less time to travel the distance you're travelling using your shortcut. So that does not qualify as faster than light travel, only as interstellar travel ;).

Bye!

Crisp

Well then, let us work on that. Can I do the experiments on the surface of our planet or have to go in space to do that? Is anybody working on such projects?

Hi kmguru,

What you are looking for is the warping of space and time. The theory on warpengines has been written by Alcubierre (1994) and has recently been refined by Van den Broeck (Belgian physicist, 1999).

Bye!

Crisp

According to them, energy requirement is so huge that we need to harness a few suns energy if not the whole galaxy to make it possible.

Need to find another method....

The article you saw was an earlier issue of Popular Science, I'd look it up, but I don't feel like going in my room. Anyways, warp travel doesn't mean always traveling faster than light. Their main purpose was to develop a more efficient and faster version of space travel than chemical propulsion, or even plasma.

In the conventional sense you can't travel faster than light. But to move over huge distances you don't have too. If you can manipulate space, bending it and such you can create a cosmic shortcut, traveling a long distance in a short amount of time, but not traveling excessively fast. It would be like taking a perfectly straight road from your house to the store, instead of taking a curving, turning, road, which would take comparatively longer. I'm sure if you look around on the internet you'll find interesting articles on the subject. Try warp drive, or advanced propulsion.

Yes, I read about different propulsion in Popular Science too. My point of finding different method is that, to cross a river while travelling on the road in an automobile, you need a bridge, not an automobile that floats on water.

May be we could design a space bridge (or tunnel) that compresses the space between two points....

Any ideas?

Kind of like the one in the movie Lost in Space? In the movie they were making what you called a space bridge to Alpha Centari in order to evacute our planet.

papa smirf knows.

long live and prosper....

die young and fail...

Thank you...you are so kind...considerate...made my day. Same to you too.

Sorry if that sounded bad. Its a joke I have with my friends. Like if you live long you may prosper but if you die young then you fail. At least thats how I meant it. Hope you have a good one ;)

Nasa has a number of very interesting futuristic research, check this out.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/summ.htm#Cramer Task

Thank you DJeka, it is one of the best link I have seen so far.

Interesting

According to them, energy requirement is so huge that we need to harness a few suns energy if not the whole galaxy to make it possible.

Need to find another method....

I have the method for traveling with warp spead

Just think that 200 years ago physics didn't exist at all and they could never had thought that humans could fly let alone go to the moon and beyond. Physics will keep experimenting and perhaps one day breakthroughs will occur and many new pathways will be opened. I'm just happy that the scientists are allowed to experiment with all types of ideas that may or may not work, but at least they tried! :)

I just hope they don't blow the Earth to hell! :eek:

NASA only spent half million on that project. So don't hold your breath.

all this is purely theoretical research. They have to make the maths work before they can start with actual experiments.

So half a million for pencils, paper and coffee sounds about right :)

I just hope they don't blow the Earth to hell!

If that happens, you wont be here to think about. And, the Universe will go on, creating life and the life will keep experimenting...there are plenty of planets out there and plenty of time. Since it takes only a few million years to develop bipeds and another 10,000 years to fly, there can be many cycles within which someone will find a solution.

All it takes is that someone...somewhere...has the Eureka moment...

An interesting book...Black Swan...

Yesterday I read a magazine(Popular Mechanic???) from San Francisco Main Library. I remember there is an article about NASA is spending funds to explore the idea of faster than light travel, such as warp travel from Star Trek.

you have been misinformed, no such funding is done by NASA

Try http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/

Thanks for the link kmguru. :)

Fake...hacked into nasa's site.

Ha! Start with http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/home/index.html

nnnooo....I refuse to believe NASA would even think in investing/trashing money on this insanity.


No wonder NASA get underfunded these days...

When you are low on money you need wacky ideas to get creative.

When you are low on money you need wacky ideas to get creative.

no...you need robust ideas that have been over-tested and proved effective...

like using a can of used trash jar from previous century to get to another planet and beyond. :D

likewise I cant forget the story about US investing millions into a space pen just so that the ink gets to flow properly...and Russia using a pencil instead. :cool::p

Which pen was that?

At least NASA is finally trying some new things. They've seemed to be on idle for the past so and so years.

Which pen was that?

you haven't heard the famous engineering history embarrassment story?!!! :eek:

"There exists a common urban legend claiming that because a standard ballpoint pen would not work in zero gravity, NASA spent millions of dollars developing the zero-g capable Space Pen, with the humorous note that the Russian space agency opted to simply use pencils" wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen)

Pencils? Whats wrong with a quill and squid ink?

Which pen was that?

It's that pen that can write upside down.

They used the same quote on the movie "Primer".

Pencils? Whats wrong with a quill and squid ink?

wohoooo...gravity absence....how's the ink supposed to flow out?

Capillary action

Capillary action

yeah sure...unequal distribution of droplets...bubble formation and also capillary action means the thing has to be reaal thin.

We cannot achieve faster-than-light speeds. This can only be left for ethereal cocepts, like information... But it [might] be possible to create a quantum tunnelling effect for macroscopic objects, but the power required for this is astronomical.

nnnooo....I refuse to believe NASA would even think in investing/trashing money on this insanity.


No wonder NASA get underfunded these days...

When you are low on money you need wacky ideas to get creative.

I've been applying for a job at national labs lately (MIT Lincoln Lab, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, etc) and in the literature provided about one they spoke about a new initiative they've had in recent years. They created a budget to specifically fund high risk research ideas that wouldn't normally receive funding through traditional means. Though the budget for this is only a small fraction of the total research dollars spent, that risky research ends up accounting for something like half iirc of the patents and papers the lab produces.

In my last few years of working in university labs I've found that because their's so much competition for a limited and decreasing amount of funding, for the most part only the safe, conservative research proposals receive grants. This research doesn't produce anything actually new. It only produces a better understanding of what we already know. From what I've read, in the good old days (70's and earlier) there was a lot more ambitious, risky stuff being researched. Not surprisingly, just about all of the really sweet technology and theory we have now (as far as I can think of) is really just refined discoveries and inventions from that time period.

So in my opinion..... research money should be spent partially on conservative and partially on risky research--even under a limited budget. This should include FTL research for NASA and I'm rather disappointed that they dropped funding for BPP several years ago.

I think, there is a book on this called The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I am involved in the management of Clinical Trials of new drugs. What I find is that people are rehashing the same formula through Combinatorial Chemistry than making leaps and bounds...

A split in research money is the ideal way to go.