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Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
-Terry Pratchett |
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Warp Speed!
One of the more interesting stories to come out of the science world recently has been coverage of the idea that a faster-than-light drive - a warp drive - may become a reality.
As usual, much of the science reporting is breathless and exuberant - and misleading.
First, some of the articles:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/warp-drive-plausible/
"NASA scientists now think that the famous warp drive concept is a realistic possibility, and that in the far future humans could regularly travel faster than the speed of light."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/18/nasa_eagleworks_warp_drive/
"A top NASA boffin has outlined ongoing lab experiments at the space agency aimed at first steps towards the building of a warp-drive spacecraft theoretically capable of travelling at 10 times the speed of light."
http://news.discovery.com/space/how-to-make-an-energy-efficient-warp-drive-12092...
"Our everyday experience of interstellar travel usually comes in the shape of the U.S.S. Enterprise zooming around the galaxy at warp speed. Unfortunately, the warp drive is primarily used as a tool by scriptwriters to condense the extreme interstellar distances into hour-long episodes. But there's a growing field of study that actually attaches some physics -- albeit rather "exotic" physics -- to superluminal (a.k.a. faster-than-light) travel."
Some of the articles I'd read that I can't find now gloss over the whole "in the far future" part as noted by the Wired link up there.
But here are some of the important points, especially to us as writers:
The idea of cheating the laws of physics to travel faster than light isn't new. It's been known for a few decades (don't make me look it up) that the Universe is expanding, and that we can only see out to a certain distance (several billion light years). Beyond that, we can't see - because any matter past that point is moving away faster than the speed of light. How is this possible? Because while no object can travel through space faster than the speed of light, space itself can expand faster than that.
That's the theoretical underpinning behind Alcubierre's idea, which got proposed back in 1994, but dismissed as unfeasible because, by some estimations, it would require more energy than you could ever get in one place.
So, no, no one's broken Einstein's theories; this is completely in line with relativity.
The big thing that caused headlines this month isn't the theory, but the idea that, well, maybe it wouldn't take that much energy after all, but some amount that we could actually contemplate harnessing - years and years from now.
It does, however, require things we can't do: manipulating dark energy, for example, or using strange matter, which is... strange.
Is this the only way we have of fast interstellar travel? Maybe; maybe not. For instance, the possibility of using wormholes - tunnels through reaches of spacetime - exists, if only in theory. And as writers, we're free to come up with other ideas, of course. Just be consistent.
It's a big universe out there. It would be a shame if we didn't have a realistic means of exploring at least a part of it.
Finally, NASA's take on the whole superluminal travel thing:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/warpstat.html |
Because I'm talking about FTL drives, here's some science fiction for you this week:
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Last time, in "Fantasy Newsletter (August 29, 2012)" , I talked about grounding magic in science.
Raine  : It all comes back to that "willing suspension of disbelief". Make the magic too unbelievable and you violate this unspoken pact with the reader and they stop reading. Even if the reader isn't a biochemist or physicist, most people understand the basic laws of nature and physics and they are expecting them to apply to a certain extent.
Or at least be told WHY they don't apply.
Lunarmirror : I really loved this newsletter one of the best parts you stated was give a reason which even a random postmodernist one is good enough. Great job!
Thanks!
Quick-Quill  [Submitted Item: "Space Exploration" [13+]]: My attempt as Sci-fi. I tried to keep to the perimeters of their world. I hope you like it.
Thanks for the submitted item!
jim1184  : Good News Letter, I am a fantasy/ Sci-fi writer who occasionally puts in some Mythology. I have been known to slide between worlds. I wrote tactical Intellegance for Fleet Command Staff in a previous life. So I agree with you, the facts of science make the fiction better. I have a thing with Dragons. I wonder about Pterosaurs. Are there any flamible gases lighter than air?
Thanks - I like mythology too. As for flammable gases lighter than air, hydrogen gas is, of course, extremely flammable and was the cause of the Hindenburg zeppelin disaster.
Joto-Kai  : Why not teleportation? Quanta do it all the time, so if they were to act in concert, if they were to move all at once in a way that would otherwise be statistically inconceivable, would that not be a teleportation?
As I understand it, it's a matter of information. If you were able to teleport all the particles in your body all at once, would their interdependence be preserved, and how do you account for the possibility of information loss in such an enormous database? Any teleportation is purely hypothetical now, of course, so these might not be as big a deal as I imagine.
And that's it for this month - see you in October! Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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Fantasy: September 26, 2012 Issue [#5273]
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