Link: http://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw61.html

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For the moment I think you will have to settle for Electrostatic Ion Thrusters:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Ion_engine.svg/300px-Ion_engine.svg.png
Figure 2: A diagram of how a gridded electrostatic ion engine works

Interesting...

Reiku---

Check out a paper that a friend of mine wrote: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0512152.

He describes how one might, in principle (!), build a warp drive based on locally varying the cosmological constant.

Very interesting paper. Thanks

It is interesting, but pretty speculative, considering we don't even really know what the cosmological constant IS.

Reiku---

In the future, please just post a link to the article, as opposed to cutting and pasting the entire text:

http://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw61.html

It is interesting, but pretty speculative, considering we don't even really know what the cosmological constant IS.

Hum, I've heard that cosmological constant is the energy charge that "empty" space has.

In the big bang space was much, much smaller than now, maybe even singularity, but after the big bang the universe began to expand.
The universe is that energy which is expanding, therefore space is also that energy which is expanding.

Therefore cosmological constant maybe could be the energetic charge of space.

I'm probably wrong, yes?

Therefore cosmological constant maybe could be the energetic charge of space.

Well sure, but what IS it? :) What causes it, why does it have the value that it does, and could one change it if they wanted to?

Either way, these are topics for another thread.

Allow for the last offtopic post or maybe you could create another thread.

Well, at the big bang there was a particular ammount of energy (law of the conservation of energy). Everything that didn't take up other forms of energy like particles might be the equally distributed charge of space.

And about the value -> say you took a bag full of marbles and then opened the bag for a moment, a particular number of marbles would fall out and they could be counted and a specific number then written down, but that number would have no other meaning than just to state how many marbles are there on the floor. Same with the CC - it tells what is the charge of energy that didn't take up other forms at the big bang.

This does not address the question on the creation of new particles from "empty" space.

Just some ideas...

I speculate that the cosmological constant should be the the so-called zero-point energy field.

Well, i've just read the small cutting of thoughts, and i suppose the warp drive is just as credible as any design i've heard... only that controlling the cosmological constant is and should be almost impossible to do.

I speculate that the cosmological constant should be the the so-called zero-point energy field.

We've already thought of that. It's wrong by 120 orders of magnitude.

I know.

If it isn't the cosmological constant, then something must cancel it out... And right now, there is nothing i can speculate that could, than some similar, but oppositely charged field.

Well cancelling it out is no real problem---one can always add or subtract an arbitrary constant from the Lagrangian.

I never thought of it that way, but assuming you know this to be true, we are still then left with a non-zero total yeh?

Reiku---

In the future, please just post a link to the article, as opposed to cutting and pasting the entire text:

http://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw61.html

You might want to replace the OP with this link, since the article explicitly says
All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

Ooops... I am sure Dr. Cramer wouldn't mind.

I'll ask him tonight. Keep it there.

Here is a PDF page from a 1997 conference on Propulsion Physics

http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/1997/TM-97-206241.pdf

Ooops... I am sure Dr. Cramer wouldn't mind.

Large copy/pasting is against forum rules and also a violation of Fair Use.

I apologize, as i was not aware of this. I never intended for any rule breaking. Just for a general discussion on Dr. Cramers work.

Soz again.

I won't bother asking Dr. Cramer. I have only spoke to him once, and i think its too much trouble in the long run.

The chronology protection conjecture was termed by Professor Stephen Hawking which basically states that time travel is imposable on all but sub-microscopic scales.

The time travel paradox. S. Krasnikov. covers the fact the exotic matters can be used to create a stable bubble or wormhole that would facilitate time travel.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0109/0109029v2.pdf


The definition of a exotic particle is one that violates one or more classical conditions, in the case of a Tachyon it violates this condition because it always travels faster then light. According to Wikipedia.com there is no tconfirmed existence of tachyons.

The existence of tachyons is allowed by the equations of Einstein's special theory of relativity.


NASA says that even if Tachyons were proven it would be hard to utilize there potential with our given understanding of Physics.

YEah---

I think the data showing the electron neutrino with a small imaginary mass is largely doubted by people who work in the field today.

Also, the electron neutrino couples so weakly to matter that it is not clear to me how one could encode a message, much less receive a message made of neutrinos. PLUS there's the fact that we have observed neutrino mass oscillation, which means that if you send a message encoded in electron neutrinos, by the time it got to where it was going, the electron neutrinos would have turned into other neutrinos!

This is what i mean about todays dogma. If scientists and physicists alike were to just keep an open mind, even when concerning what is classed under psuedoscience, there would be a lot less controversy, and i dare say, even better progress.

Myself... My area is psychophysics, and i have already realized that so many around here are shit-scared to even talk about a subject... and i ask why?

Is it because nothing testable can arise of it? If this is true, why is there more scientists who tolerate string theory? Is there really any difference in the long run?

If there is a chance the electron-Neutrino indeed does have a value of imaginary mass, then the option should never be disregarded, until there is empiracle and incontravertible proof to suggest it is wrong.

No?

If there is a chance the electron-Neutrino indeed does have a value of imaginary mass, then the option should never be disregarded, until there is empiracle and incontravertible proof to suggest it is wrong.

No?

Well, typically in physics we hate it when things stick out. If the electron neutrino is the only particle with a negative mass squared...that sticks out. When things stick out, we do our best to get rid of them.

But, the data do seem to indicate that a tachyonic neutrino is at least possible. See this page (http://cupp.oulu.fi/neutrino/nd-mass.html) for updated numbers. The measurement is dominated by systematic errors, it looks like.

I do have to say, though, that neutrino mixing (which has been observed) pretty much rules out the electron neutrino as a tachyon.

I've been contemplating tachyons for quite some time now. I've read article upon article of how the physics works (or is supposed to work). I'm beginning to think that physics changes when v>c. Time is no longer a constant, or even an invariable. In fact time may not exist at all. So traveling back in time in my humble opinion is a pipe dream. But institanious travel anywhere in the universe is a real possibility. We are also trying to quantify objects with mass (imaginary or not) where according to Einstein, at the speed of light mass becomes infinite. Therefore at c+1 mass cannot exist. I know... I know... that's why it's called IMAGINARY mass. The point is that the physics changes. At least that's what I'm working on now. In the mean time, last month the history channel aired a program that claimed that 2 facilities, one in Tokyo and one in Chicago "captured" 12 tachyons. They did not of course mention WHO! I have been unable to find any colabaration. Any guesses out there?

Hi there, welcome.

Time doesn't exist at c... but a thing can oscillate throughout the time dimension at v>c.

Hi Reiku, pleased to meet you.

You have a good point. However time needs to be asymmetric and in order to achieve this an additional time is introduced in which the rate of time is directionally periodic to the THING (I like the way you put it) with respect to it's oscillations. We also have to assume that time is homogeneous, the law of conservation of energy holds true, and that rest energy and rest mass are constants.

Yes we can observe true time by a star's red-shift, but I would point out that the speed of light in this case is something less than c because the light is not traveling in a true vacuum. So does true time really hold "true" above c? I know I'm violating the fundamental Principle of Time here but what the heck... question everything right?

I'm trying to work on the assumption that mass can't exist above c... imaginary or otherwise. Imagine the encyclopedia of questions I just opened. Maybe I've been working on the other side of the fense too long. Our THING has to be something else.