OK, I have a theory about warp travel, but I need one thing to do it, I know this has been posted before but it hasnt given me a very clear answer. Space and/or Spacetime has to have some sort of fabric, otherwise gravity couldnt warp it right? So what in the world is it? Because even the vacuum of space can be warped by extreme gravity fields like quasars and black holes.

hum,
My simple vision of space time is that it is a mesh of tiny loops (<i>you may be too young to remember chain mail</i>).
These of course appear 3 dimensional ( but they really are multi dimensional objects that can transform into all the forces and particles we see, as well as being `space` an `time`)

http://www.sukidog.com/jpierre/strings/

WarpTraveler:

...So what in the world is it?

This is a damn fine question, that may never have any good answer for us poor, 3D bound earthlings...

Space and/or Spacetime has to have some sort of fabric, otherwise gravity couldnt warp it right?

Not according to the General Theory of Relativity.

You're talking about an aether, which is a superfluous concept in modern physics.

one way to look at it is that space is a potential aether. In that a vacant piece of space doesn't have any value until an object is placed with in it. so therefore pure vacuum has a potential only and no substance.

just to describe my point a little better, imagine:

You are in a space ship positioned about an earth distance from a star.
100 earth meters to your right is vacant space. You look and you see nothing, you even try to measure what is there from your ship and you get nothing.
However you take a sheet of paper and place it 100 meters away and immediately you can realise the potential value of that position that the paper fills. [light reflected, gravity effects, radiations and other EM] take the paper away and you have nothing - put the paper back and you again have something. So that bit of space 100 meters away has a potential but no substance until that potential is able to be realised.
"A light or EM event can only happen if there is something to reflect it or absorb it"
"Spacetime can only exist if there is movement [change] and movement can only exist within spacetime"

just to describe my point a little better, imagine:

You are in a space ship positioned about an earth distance from a star.
100 earth meters to your right is vacant space. You look and you see nothing, you even try to measure what is there from your ship and you get nothing.
However you take a sheet of paper and place it 100 meters away and immediately you can realise the potential value of that position that the paper fills. [light reflected, gravity effects, radiations and other EM] take the paper away and you have nothing - put the paper back and you again have something. So that bit of space 100 meters away has a potential but no substance until that potential is able to be realised.
"A light or EM event can only happen if there is something to reflect it or absorb it"
"Spacetime can only exist if there is movement [change] and movement can only exist within spacetime"

Logically, without question, if space-time were nothing then you would have no seperation between objects. In contrast to the view advocated by Relativity of space-time not being some form of fabric with physical qualities such as permeability and permittivity, the ability to be contracted, warped or to be traversed (d) at some velocity (v) in a period of time (t) and ALL other physics can and does transpire.

These functions cannot proceed where space-time = "0" or "Nothing".

Without space-time being "Something" all existance becomes a singularity and 3D or 4D reality is shear imagination about something that is otherwise not physical or does not exist.

d = vt

d/vt = 1, NOT "0"

F = ma

F/ma = 1, NOT "0"

Mathematically space-time = 1 NOT "0".

These functions cannot proceed where space-time = "0" or "Nothing".

I'm not arguing with this point, but I have heard people saying, that you can't take the term "fabric of space-time" too literally, for many times. I agree that it is something but not something you can apply the term "fabric" to.

Its not something, that you can cut a hole to, hop off, and move any distance without moving through space-time, and therefore not use any energy, cut another hole, and hop back on the fabric.

I'm not arguing with this point, but I have heard people saying, that you can't take the term "fabric of space-time" too literally, for many times. I agree that it is something but not something you can apply the term "fabric" to.

Its not something, that you can cut a hole to, hop off, and move any distance without moving through space-time, and therefore not use any energy, cut another hole, and hop back on the fabric.


I would agree that we probably need a better adjective to describe it but as to cutting a hole and jumping from one hole to another without expending time or energy, that would seem an apt description for known and observed tunneling affects. :D or for the theoretical concepts of "Worm Holes" etc.

You all have good points, in response to blobrana, I don't remember chain mail, but i know what you mean, its a concept of multidimensional spacial objects that occupy every point in space, I believe the current term in superstring theory is the Calbi-Yao Cubes (even though they arent cubes). And I agree that if space were nothingness it would end up becoming a singularity. Space may not be physical but it cant be pure nothingness or else matter could not exist inside it because it would become nothing. The question then becomes, if space is simply dimensions housing objects, How are the dimensions put together or concieved. Such a complex thing couldnt be made of nothing could it?

How are the dimensions put together or conceived.

Yeah, one of the newest problems... ;)
(<i>Though Roger Penrose seems to tackle the subject with his spinor ideas quite well…
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000154.html </i>)

As it has been pointed out...



However you take a sheet of paper and place it 100 meters away and immediately you can realise the potential value of that position that the paper fills. Take the paper away and you have nothing - put the paper back and you again have something. So that bit of space 100 meters away has a potential but no substance until that potential is able to be realised.

Yeah, so that there is no such thing as `one` bit of paper, there are lots of bits of paper . Each one popping in and out of existence from that space-time potential...Creating an illusion that `things` are moving through space time.

(Oh, sry, I’ve suddenly become all mystical)

I would agree that we probably need a better adjective to describe it but as to cutting a hole and jumping from one hole to another without expending time or energy, that would seem an apt description for known and observed tunneling affects. :D or for the theoretical concepts of "Worm Holes" etc.

Well a black hole is a hole in the space time fabric also, technically. probably :D.
But as to the worm-holes, I assume that you can't simply "cut a hole" and create a worm-hole for your purpouses.

Hum,

i have the opinion that black holes just bend space time to almost a bottomless gravity well (though there would be a minimum size of 10^-42cm)

But, i wonder if you could pump energy into empty space and cause the space-time `fabric` ;) to boil...

(the individual strings would expand and create voids)

What that would look like I have no idea…