Re: Re: Re: starship-design: RE: Bugs again

["N. Lindberg" <nlindber@u.washington.edu>]

Steve, 
There's a good letter on the Alcubierre drive at
<http://www.iop.org/PEL/article/cq14011l1/full/>
if you've got the mental energy to try to understand it. (not on a Monday)
As for "regions of negative energy density" i believe they are referring
to regions where the ambient quantum noise is less than that of the
vacuum, called the "zero point," similar to the region twixt a pair of
Casmir plates. but i also recall that this had something to do with a
"false vacuum" But my memory's bad and the above is probably mixed
up somehow. Anyway, the link is the important thing, enjoy.
Best Regards,
Nels Lindberg



On Mon, 19 Oct 1998, Steve VanDevender wrote:

> KellySt@aol.com writes:
>  > The Alberquen (sp) warp drive (see the NASA site WARP drive when?) is a design
>  > for a warp drive by a physist of the same name.  (He realized the Star Trek
>  > technobable actually made sence.  The ship isn't moving, it shoves a bubble of
>  > space around the ship at hyper light speeds.  No relativity effects).
> 
> The Alcubierre drive requires some physically dubious stuff in
> order to actually work -- mainly a region of "negative energy
> density".  Find me some negative energy and we'll talk then.
> 
>  > Certain quantum effects do work instently over measurable distences (hence
>  > faster then light, thou most don't involve mass traveling).
> 
> None involve mass traveling over macroscopic distances at all.
> "Quantum interconnectedness" is also proven to be unable to
> communicate information.
> 
>  > Also Einstines equations don't say you can't go faster then light.  Then say
>  > you can't go AT the speed of light.  How you get from slower then to faster
>  > then is a big trick, but travel at eiather is 'legal'.
> 
> You can plug values of v > c into special relativity equations,
> at the cost of ending up with things like time and mass values
> that are complex numbers.  I don't know if I'd call that "legal."
> Find me some complex mass and we'll talk then.  A quantum
> mechanical analysis also indicates that you can either have FTL
> particles that aren't localizable (i.e. observable) or you can't
> have FTL particles at all.
> 
>  > Good news: a lot of pysisist now see FTL and time travel as legal (thou if
>  > they are possible a lot of the rest of physics could get run through a
>  > blender).  Bad news, no one has a clue how to build a machine to do it.  (The
>  > theories suggest power levels that would dwarf a stars output.)
> 
> General relativity seems to offer the best potential for allowing
> FTL effects, but no one has proven (even theoretically) that FTL
> travel could be achieved using things that actually exist or
> could be made from things that exist in the universe.  The
> implications are, though, that it would indeed take absolutely
> incredible amounts of energy to create anything like a wormhole
> or a "warp bubble".
>