Comments on: The Problem with Warp Drive

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:29:47 +0000

Overcoming these problems somehow will certainly be the biggest engineering obstacle to creating a warp drive. Deep down inside though I just KNOW somehow we will do it. We haven’t come this far in our understanding of how to create a warp drive just to be stopped by this. If we have too we will even working for centuries and keep digging for answers until we have every possible kink worked out in the building of our future warp engines! We will never give up, never give in, and never surrender to pessimism until we take flight to the stars and at last secure the survival of the human species!

By: Ronald

Ronald — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:18:15 +0000

drpayton January 7, 2010 at 1:19:

“What exactly is hypothesized to be outside the universe? What is the universe expanding through?”

Nothing, the universe itself is expanding, not into something else.

Then again: bear in mind that what we call our universe is only the visible (or rather: observable) part of the total universe, unto the light (or rather: event) horizon, from where light has reached us since the beginning.
A bit like someone standing on earth can only see a small part of the total earth, as far as the horizon.

The total universe is probably vastly larger, according to the cosmic inflation theory of Alan Guth at least 10^23 to 10^26 times larger. And this is a lower bound!

But to quote the good old (late) Arthur C. Clarke: “I am only a small town boy and hardly interested in anything beyond the Milky Way galaxy” (well, make that our supercluster).

By: drpayton

drpayton — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:19:36 +0000

Ahhhh… Now that makes sense… But I still can’t get my mind around absolute nothingness… What exactly is hypothesized to be outside the universe? What is the universe epanding through?

By: Terraformer (a.k.a Tobias Holbrook)

Terraformer (a.k.a Tobias Holbrook) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:05:19 +0000

The night sky *is* filled entirely with light… if you can see the cosmic background radiation. All that energy which filled the universe has been redshifted ut of the visible.

By: drpayton

drpayton — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:08:28 +0000

“Olber’s Paradox” a very interesting read…however something still bothers me about it. The universe is finite and has a beginning, which denotes size and expansion and velocity. If the expansion is less than the velocity of light and the size was very small before the expansion, I still don’t understand how the universe is not filled with light unless our big bang is not unique and there was a medium in which it existed. Sort of like a supernova only on a much larger scale. The trouble I have with that is Olber’s Paradox, the night sky is not filled with points of light so numerous that all we see is white light. It leaves me with a question that I am sure is fundamental to most of you lol… Does light have an infinate supply of energy that allows it to travel infinate distances though at a finite rate of speed?

By: drpayton

drpayton — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:56:01 +0000

Thanks very much for the comments. I love this stuff lol!

By: Mike Lorrey

Mike Lorrey — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:47:47 +0000

TUT, you make a very good point about this indicating the limited utility of semiclassical approximations. That said, I am curious about the distribution of energy in the center of the bubble, if this high temp is merely at the center or generally whats cooking throughout. If its merely a peak in the very center then this actually bodes well for using the warp field as an energy feedback/recycling method to help feed energy into a fusion reaction in the center of the bubble.

By: Athena Andreadis

Athena Andreadis — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:36:57 +0000

Drpayton, look up Olbers’ paradox. The night sky is black because the universe is not infinitely old, and the physical cosmos is expanding at less than light speed.

By: Duncan Ivry

Duncan Ivry — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:10:22 +0000

parmanello citing “When a distinguished scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

There is some truth in it. Let me take this one step further, going from possibility to probability: When someone (this doesn’t need a distinguished scientist) states, something is very *probably* wrong, then … er … what?

Asserting successfully that something is false may be difficult, but … seriously. Person A says “warp drive is impossible according to the laws of physics”. Person B responds by saying “there is anekdotal evidence that statements of this kind are false in too many cases”. Does this count as evidence or reason against person A’s statement? For me it counts as a warning to be careful.

By: drpayton

drpayton — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:25:59 +0000

Maybe omnipresent isn’t the right word… Its just that it seems obvious that the cosmos is expanding at speeds greater than the speed of light or light would have reflected and refracted so many times throughout history that the void would be full of light. Instead we observe that the opposite is true and there is actually almost a complete absence of light comparitively. I am probably missing something fundamental due to the fact that the math is beyond my knowledge base and my grasp of physics is limited by my choice of education. Incidentally does anyone know who I should speak to about donating art? My expertise actually falls into 3D graphic modeling and rendering. I would like to learn how to donate my time by creating visual representations of the ideas and concepts herein.