Warp vs hyperspace

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2004-12-08 06:49pm

Translation: I'm pulling a load of shit from my ass and isnt it pretty...oh, and the words are similar therefore it's more realistic!

Grow a fucking brain and stop using bad google searches as a fucking substitute.

Edit: I should add you are quite the merry little semantics whore arent you?

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2004-12-08 06:52pm

The warp drive comment was farfetched, I'll grant that. Sorry, Spoofe.

Now, Keevan, you are kindly invited to stop 'translating' selected portions of my posts. I may not know much about martial arts, but physics I know.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2004-12-08 07:05pm

drachefly wrote:The warp drive comment was farfetched, I'll grant that. Sorry, Spoofe.

Now, Keevan, you are kindly invited to stop 'translating' selected portions of my posts. I may not know much about martial arts, but physics I know.

Really, I'd love to hear what qualifications you've got...because from what you've posted your knowledge of physics is appropriate for a BS* rather than any real qualification. You are demonstrating an inability to apply basic principles of logic which are required to get anywhere in science...so, either you're a google scholar as I've said or you're gonna flunk whatever it is you're doing now. Playing the name game is so unscientific I feel that dropping a copy of Principia Mathematica on your head just so some of science can get redress for the abuse.

As for my translating your posts, stop posting stupid shit and you'll stop having it mocked. That's the way things work here.

Also, as you seem to be conceeding again that you're posting shite, you are kindly invited fuck off with the red herring bullshit.

*Bull Shit not Bachelor of Science.

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2004-12-08 08:24pm

I have a bachelors in Physics from Haverford College
results from courses in relevant topics:
Particle Physics: 4.0
Wave Mechanics: 3.7
Quantum Mechanics: 3.7

Currently enrolled in a Physics PhD program at UPenn, taking, among other things, General Relativity.

Now that we have that out of the way, I would like to have a list of some places my knowledge of physics has seemed lacking. Either I will re-analyze and admit error or I will explain how I am right and you are simultaneously talking out of your ass and falsely accusing me of the same.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2004-12-08 08:33pm

If you actually didn't snip parts or what not...perhaps people would take your thoughts more seriously.

You snipped both Wong's and SPOOFE's point to go "maybe, but not as wild."

If you think that passes for logic, then you're doing no more better then the variety of other people who think that because they can engage in nitpicking makes their points come across better.

Winston Blake · Post by **Winston Blake** » 2004-12-08 08:36pm

drachefly wrote:I have a bachelors in Physics from Haverford College
results from courses in relevant topics:
Particle Physics: 4.0
Wave Mechanics: 3.7
Quantum Mechanics: 3.7

Currently enrolled in a Physics PhD program at UPenn, taking, among other things, General Relativity.

Now that we have that out of the way, I would like to have a list of some places my knowledge of physics has seemed lacking. Either I will re-analyze and admit error or I will explain how I am right and you are simultaneously talking out of your ass and falsely accusing me of the same.

I think the thing is that your description of the properties of tachyons (ie limited to 2c) doesn't fit with the description by Dr Saxton in his rationalisation of hyperspace.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2004-12-08 08:57pm

I would have expected someone with a bachelors degree in physics to understand why semantic games are utter bullshit, yet you keep on engaging in them.

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2004-12-08 09:13pm

Interesting... This may be a different tachyonic theory than the one to which I was exposed. You learn something every day, I guess.

Ghost Rider:
(note: though broken up, the entire post is reproduced here)

If you actually didn't snip parts or what not...perhaps people would take your thoughts more seriously.

My snips were kept brief not to reduce context or to quibble, but merely to contextualize my comments. This has never caused confusion in any of the other forums I have frequented, so I'm somewhat surprised it is a problem here.

You snipped both Wong's and SPOOFE's point to go "maybe, but not as wild."

To SPOOFE, kind of yes and kind of no -- the basic idea that negative energy could conceivably be used to screw around with the metric in a way that shortens transit distances does make sense, kind of, in principle. He flatly denied it. My response was very poorly written, focusing on the poorness of the hyperspace model instead of the quasi-sensibility of the warp model, and I think that is what caused this confusion.

My response to the illustrious Darth Wong was strong disagreement -- a far cry from "maybe, but not as wild."

If you think that passes for logic, then you're doing no more better then the variety of other people who think that because they can engage in nitpicking makes their points come across better.

I tend not to dispute those statements I agree with; in a debate forum, the opposite seems reasonable. If that makes me a nitpicker, I'll try to throttle back.

Winston Blake · Post by **Winston Blake** » 2004-12-08 10:52pm

Regarding the Alcubierre warp drive, i've been wondering if you really need negative energy for it. Now i'm sure as hell no expert, so could people more knowledgable than me explain why this is wrong: if in those neat pictures of the Alcubierre metric with the peak-flat-trough, the negative energy is needed because the peak 'rises above' normal spacetime, what if you dropped the whole thing below the surrounding spacetime (further than the height of the peak), so that the entire thing only needs positive energy/mass?

ie not this:

Code: Select all

          |\
          | \
__________|   \_    ________   
                \  |
                  \|

....but this:

Code: Select all

______                   ______
      \                 /
       |  |\           |
       |  | \          |
       |__|   \_    ___|
                \  |
                  \|

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-12-08 11:28pm

....Ugh, my head, she hurts. But I think you could, maybe do it. Maybe. Unfortunately, the quantity of real energy would be mind-beggaring, not to mention some way to protect the starship from the forces around it.

Cyborg Stan · Post by **Cyborg Stan** » 2004-12-08 11:44pm

The positive-mass variant would just clump all together and stay put like good positive masses should. Otherwise, you'd get a warp drive every time you place a lighter mass (or even no mass) between two more massive objects.

I think.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2004-12-09 06:51am

drachefly wrote:Interesting... This may be a different tachyonic theory than the one to which I was exposed. You learn something every day, I guess.

Interesting as I've never heard the theory you've been spouting. Care to cite some refrences for it?

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2004-12-09 08:55am

There is a simple reason you can't just 'dip it below':

It's not the height that matters, its the curvature. Stretching space around more like that will just raise the ratio of metric distance to coordinate distance, i.e. make matters worse.

As for tachyons, well, they were explained in my astrophysics class briefly a few years back. It could be that the professor goofed when deriving their properties on the board, and improperly concluded that in order to prevent tachyons from achieving arbitrarily low energies (i.e. so they could have the equivalent of a rest mass, which he thought would be needed for their momentum to be nonzero), their velocity would have to be cut off at 2c. In any case, upon reviewing the literature (which is rather thin, but existent), I can see that this line of reasoning has not been considered a problem. I will gather more information and see whether the version I heard was an early discarded form or a simple error.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-12-09 01:36pm

...'My professor said so'. My my, but how the old phrases rekindle the Suspicious Bastard Node.

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2004-12-09 02:16pm

In the words of Jay Leno, "As you know, for insurance purposes, I have to have camera crews film every minute of my life."

And once again, in case you didn't notice, I have dropped the 2c objection on the grounds that there do seem to be coherent theories which do involve faster tachyons.

Enola Straight · Post by **Enola Straight** » 2004-12-11 09:03am

I felt that the "negative energy" proposed by theory could be the basis of Trek subspace: that a negative analogue of Einsteinian 4d spacetime
(x*y*z*t)
which, when distorted by mass, produces gravity,
would be complimented by a subspace continuum which is matched point for point, dimension by dimension.
(-x*-y*-z*-t)

These negative dimensions below spacetime are by definition"sub-space", and if projected around a ship, creates a spatial discontinuity around the ship, thus bypassing the distortions and limits of luminal flight.

Of course, you could also throw some quarternions in there
(i*j*k*l) or negative quarternions (-i*-j*-k*-l)

Has anybody calculated a Reinmann geometry matrix for such sets?

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2004-12-11 09:33am

SirNitram wrote:...'My professor said so'. My my, but how the old phrases rekindle the Suspicious Bastard Node.

Pavlov would be proud.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2004-12-11 02:58pm

This guy has written some suggestions on how subspace and FTL in Star Trek might be rationalized:

http://www.physicsguy.com/physandtrek/index.html

I don't posess the skill needed to analyze it thoroughly, but it seems that he envisions subspace as a kind of Absolute Space MK2, with each point in spacetime being assigned a unique reference frame that represents a point in subspace...

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2004-12-11 03:18pm

Lord Zentei wrote:This guy has written some suggestions on how subspace and FTL in Star Trek might be rationalized:

http://www.physicsguy.com/physandtrek/index.html

I don't posess the skill needed to analyze it thoroughly, but it seems that he envisions subspace as a kind of Absolute Space MK2, with each point in spacetime being assigned a unique reference frame that represents a point in subspace...

So in essence it's the old hyperspace model, in which hyperpace is "superimposed" upon our normal universe, its distances still being shorter?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-11 03:33pm

That "2c ceiling" objection has been raised before, and I seem to recall that there was an underlying (and unnecessary) assumption involved.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2004-12-11 03:34pm

Eleas wrote:So in essence it's the old hyperspace model, in which hyperpace is "superimposed" upon our normal universe, its distances still being shorter?

He is amending Alcubierrie's model as far as I can tell.

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2004-12-11 03:42pm

Lord Zentei wrote:
Eleas wrote:So in essence it's the old hyperspace model, in which hyperpace is "superimposed" upon our normal universe, its distances still being shorter?
He is amending Alcubierrie's model as far as I can tell.

Wasn't that one broken on the grounds of gravity propagating at c? *ponders*

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-12-11 03:42pm

Lord Zentei wrote:
Eleas wrote:So in essence it's the old hyperspace model, in which hyperpace is "superimposed" upon our normal universe, its distances still being shorter?
He is amending Alcubierrie's model as far as I can tell.

Alucubrrie's model doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with 'subspace' or points in an alternate dimension existing in a coterminous nature with our own. This is a textbook revision of the old sci-fi explanation of hyperspace being another dimension with either shorter distances or a higher speed of light.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2004-12-11 03:50pm

SirNitram wrote:Alucubrrie's model doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with 'subspace' or points in an alternate dimension existing in a coterminous nature with our own.

I know. He did mention Alcubierrie, and offered suggestions on what he felt what was lacking, this included an alternate dimension existing in a coterminous nature with our own.

SirNitram wrote:This is a textbook revision of the old sci-fi explanation of hyperspace being another dimension with either shorter distances or a higher speed of light.

Indeed. He presented it as an attempt to rationalize ST warpdrive. I'm well aware of the fact that his suggestion is unlike the stuff that has been previously suggested for ST. Since people were discussing various ideas for FTL speculation I just thought I'd mention it, that's all.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-12-11 03:53pm

Lord Zentei wrote:
SirNitram wrote:Indeed. He presented it as an attempt to rationalize ST warpdrive. I'm well aware of the fact that his suggestion is unlike the stuff that has been previously suggested for ST. Since people were discussing various ideas for FTL speculation I just thought I'd mention it, that's all.

It's the effects of trying to rationalize the Star Trek Warp Drive(Which is alternate-dimension hyperdrive, calling the other realm subspace), with Alucubrrie Warp Drive. Why? Because Trekkies like to jack off to the idea that warp drive actually makes a modicum of sense. Sorry, but that's the observable state of things from my time on 'The front'.

As for realism. Well, subspace is as unsupported and fantastical as the old hyperspace ever was, and thus is probably best ignored in any discussion of realism.