Re: Re: starship-design: crossing the light speed barrier?

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/24/98 5:43:03 PM, stk@sunherald.infi.net wrote:

>Kevin Houston wrote:
>
>> What if a ship, going just below light speed, could cause each
>> of it's subatomic particles to tunnel in the same direction and
>> at the same time.  Wouldn't the ship be traveling faster than
>> the speed of light? 
>
>Technically, yes, if you do it right. But how do you cause an entire
>ship to quantum tunnel at once? Heisenberg's uncertainty principle would
>give you problems.
>
>> Firing retro rockets at that point, would
>> cause the ship to travel even faster, and when we re-emerged
>> from the tunneling, we would find ourselves going just a bit
>> higher than light speed.
>
>I have no idea what would happen in this case.
>
>> could it be
>> possible to make a macroscopic item behave quantumly, by making
>> all of the object's atoms behave quantumly, at the same time and
>> in the same manner. 
>
>Absolutely. Its called a "Bose-Einstein Condensate." Do a search about
>superfluid helium. But still, how do you get this to quantum tunnel? And
>how do you convert a manned ship to a quantum entity without
>killing/damaging the crew/ship? 
>
>> Of course this level of control is not even remotely possible,
>
>With a B-E condensate, if I understand it correctly, you need not
>control each atom. The condensate behaves as one single quantum entity.
>Therefore you may need to control only one entity. 

Ah the problem is that a B-E condensate is where a large number of atoms or
particals are condensed into a single atomic/partical volumn.  In theory you
could store toms of hydrogen in the area of one H atom, but if you condensed a
ship down to that volume you would not have a ship anymore.


>
>Kyle R. Mcallister

Kelly