Space travel thru folding space?
 

What are people opinions on whether space folding is actually possible in the future? Also opinions on the various theoretical methods of space travel, from conventional rocketry thru to ion drives?
There are many theoretical methods - space folding, conventional rocketry, sustained nuclear explosions, ramjet, particle acceleration drives, ion drives, the famed warp drive(which works on the space folding thing doesnt it?) and, the most interesting, transferring matter to energy, beaming it via laser or other light spectrum waves across space? Weird huh?:confused: :hmm: :crazy: :confused:

Space folding, sure. It essentially amounts to time folding, and time is as real a dimension as length, width, and heighth. As a three-dimensional being, you are able to verify it through a simple thought experiment.

Imagine yourself anywhere on Earth, and begin walking in a continuous straight line. Although you will never turn around, you will eventually wind up in a place that is one step before your starting point. The third dimension was folded back upon itself to make a sphere, and you could have arrived at the same ending point by stepping in the other direction with one simple step.

The fourth dimension should be equally malleable.

The problem with folding space is that it takes a LOT of energy. If one has that, it is doable.

Get the book titled "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension" -- by Michio Kaku.

He talks about harnessing the power of our planet and eventually our system and using it to manipulate space. Interesting read.

Anything by Michio Kaku is an interesting read.

As is his website

http://www.mkaku.org/

An interesting jaunt for any budding space/time traveller

I think that the folded space travel that was refered to was travelling through the already curved three dimensional space, not actually going to the effort of curving it (I have absolutely no idea how such a thing could be done).

Travvling through curved space can be explained by expanding on the analogy of the curved earth.

Place your fingers on two distant places on a map. Now draw a straight line between them, and measure the distance. (Remember that a straight line is defined as the shortest distance between two points). This measurement is the disatnce between the two points in two dimensions.

Now find the same two places on a globe. Now imagine joining these two places by an imaginary perfectly straight line. Not a line going over the surface of the the globe, but like a spike going through the globe. Now measure the distance between the locations. This is the distance between them in two dimensions. Both are straight line distances, but the former is confined to two dimensions.

The straight line in three dimensional space is shorter than the one in two dimensional space, hence if we were to burrow straight through the earth, we could concievably arrive at our destination much more quickly, given that we are travelling a shorter distance. (For obvious reasons this isn't possible due to the slowness of drlling).

Now extrapolate our findings. We can see that our two dimensional map can be curved into a three dimensional globe. Now imagine that we curve our three dimensional space around back onto itself. Now take two points in space, very far apart. It is concievable that the straight line drawn in three dimensional space between the two points is longer than the line drawn in four dimensional space*, if the three dimensional space is curved. If we could figure out a way to travel in the fourth dimension, then it is concievable that we could "burrow" to different points in space.

This is what I believe is refered to as "Warp Speed" by Star Trek, and many other science fictions shows and films.

*Bear in mind that I don't mean Time. Many people confuse this point, saying that the fourth dimension is time. Time is A dimension, not necessarily the fourth. When I refer to a fourth dimension, I mean a fourth spacial dimension. In this case you could consider time to be "the fifth dimension" but ultimately it doesn't really matter too much.

This of course raises the ultimate paradox. Could we use this technique to travel faster than light? Asuume that we have the technology to travel at a speed close to that of light. If at the moment of our departure we shone a light beam in the direction of our destination, then tunneled through the fourth dimension, could we arrive before the light reached us? Of course the answer is no. But how? We can only assume that any travel in the fourth spacial dimension will also have major implications for our travel through the dimension of time. We are not just taking a shortcut throught space, we are also traveling through time.
So in other words, we would presumably arrive at our destination some time after our light beam reaches it. So we are still slower then light, so our "burrowing" has proved useless? Have we still taken the same length of time to reach our destination that it would have taken had we travelled straight at a speed less than light? Well yes and no. Time is relative remember. As far as you are concerned, you would get there faster. The clock on board your ship would measure less time, "proving" that you went faster than the speed of light . But as far as an outsider is concerned, you would have traveled less than the speed of light. HIS clock confirms it. Of course putting your clocks side by-side would reveal that you had in fact travelled through time!

Others hypothesise the existence of wormholes. The idea that these tunnels already exist, waiting for us to pass through them. There are various takes on the presence of wormholes, which, while mathematically sound, have no real evidence in their favour. they are still purely speculative at best.

If you understand how gravity manifests itself by distorting three dimensional space, you can imagine that something as massive as a black hole could cause a wormhole. If the disortions we so great that it actually "broke through on the other side". Again there is conjecture that black holes represent "one-way" wormholes, sucking matter into themselves, with the exits being White holes, which spew matter out of themselves. Personally I don't buy it. Sounds too much like cheap science fiction to me.

Film & T.V. Science Fiction always portrays wormholes as huge gaping vortices, similar to miniature black holes. But more (imho) sensible scientific conjecture suggests that tiny wormholes could exist, and that their existence would be very transient. Not much good for transporting the several tons of metal that make up our spaceship then!

I am not familiar however with how an ion drive is supposed to work. I have, like everybody else, heard the phrase being bandied about in sci-fi films galore, but I am curious to see how they are proposed to work. Is there any real science behind them, or are they purely fiction?

What happens to light if it is shone into a worm hole? Does IT travel faster than...um...light? :hmm:

EDIT: Christ! thats a lot! I didn't mean to write so damn much! Appologies!

Ion drives do exist. They simply ionize a gas plasma which propels the ship forward as the charged particles are accelerated away from the ship. I think they have gotten a whopping 2.5 lbs. of thrust from them (but it is very efficient).

As I understand the idea of folding space, you can actually arrive at your destination before your light beam, there is no reason you couldn't, you have not surpassed the speed of light, you are just appearing at your destination.

The real conundrum comes when you enter the fold at near relativistic speeds, and the destination point is in your approach path. It is possible to time it just right so that you hit yourself, thus preventing your entry in the first place. If that doesn't make your head hurt, I don't know what will... :D

Ah I see, so it is just like ordinary jet propulsion. how boring ;) Whats so great about them? simply the extra efficiecy of being able to direct the expended particles, rather than just relying on the random movements of gas particles? (Which would be propelled away at angles, "wasting" much of their momenteum)

I suppose so, but in that case we could send a "signal" faster than the speed of light. The limit of light speed applies, not only to physical things, but also to the propagation of any signal. In other words somthing can't "affect" another thing in a time less than the time it takes a beam of light to get there. But again, it could be that the limit only applies to a propagation in three dimensional space, but it still messes things up alot!

I don't get what you are saying. Are you trying to say that you would travel back in time? How would that happen?

But we can. The speed limit only applies to massive objects. If the speed limit is not broken there is no harm, no foul. Rather like if you run down the stairs and I stand still in the elevator and beat you to the lobby. Signals have been sent well in excess of the speed of light (links below). Things can be affected at any time, there is nothing (in mainstream theory at any rate) that prohibits it.


Remember that time curves as well as space around massive objects. Traveling at relativistic speeds through a "shortcut" can, theoreticaly, displace you in time as well as space. Of course, as you mentioned, such shortcuts are extremely small and short lived, so unless you are the size of a muon, you don't have much to worry about.


http://www.space.com/scienceastronom..._c_000719.html

http://www.aip.org/physnews/update/536-2.html

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992796

looks like someone just saw "Event Horizon" :)

Signals can be sent faster than the speed of light. The experiment has to do with reversing the spin of one electron in a pair. the other will instantaneously change its spin to compensate, regardless of the distance between the two.

Ah ha, but you forget one vital thing. The spin of the electron is random. So no data could actually be sent via electon spin measuring.

i think we will learn to travel at the speed of light and break the 'light barrier' much the same as the sound barrier which less than 10 years was thought to be impossible due to force or friction i cant remember exactly, history channel had a thing on it the other day, but it was eventually done and has lead to supersonic travel and other things

and if you know the exact position of an electron that would be the next greatest discovery in science/math because all of the equations used now meerly do the probability of an electron being in a certain place in relation to the atom. ie energy shell

Check this link out....very interesting (and award-winning) issue of SA.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...FB809EC5880000

In old country, you don't go to spacial coordinates, spacial coordinates go to you!

Just as a note on the Ion Drives: the reason they're so efficient (from what I've seen) is that they actually send the projected particles from the back and recollect them in the front. It's of course not a perfect system, but if it gave more thrust it would work very well.

I always like my high school physics professors idea: place a giant scoop in the front that collect the particles in space. the more collected the faster you can go and the faster you go the more you can collect. And there's no air resistance, so it would theoretically work.

I'm just hoping commercial space travel becomes a reality in my life-time.

I don't think Warp drives fold space. It is more like you are moving forward, but the space is moving in the opposing direction somehow, increasing the rate of travel. I could be wrong. When I think about it, it doesn't make sense. Folding space sounds better.

I don't get it. Surely all of the positive gained from expelling the ions in reverse would be lost entirely by bringing them back up to the front?

I don't know if this thread is still active or not, but if it is, just a quick thing to throw out there... The Alcubierre Warp Drive... I did a class paper on FTL travel a while back and this was one of my sources... Very interesting one too...

http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/groups/rel...miguel94a.html

The two only seemingly viable methods I found were either through the creation of a stable wormhole and passing a vehicle through it (Requiring MASSIVE amounts of energy to keep open) or through space-folding such as this paper, requiring an exotic source of energy... I've seen the Casimir Effect tossed around very frequently as a solution to this (and wormholing), but it is an effect based on a very, very small scale (Look up Zero Point Energy if you're not familiar with it) and not on the large scale this would require... as far as for what I've come across, nothing looks good in that regard... anyone else come across some good information on this? And any other reasonable methods of FTL travel?

The Earth analgy is very flawed the earth is not on a single dimension. The earth does not cause a dimension to curve onto it's self. Instead you are mearly moving through an extra demension while walking around the earth. You change your direction with every step you take. Just because you don't turn on the XZ planes doesn't mean you didn't turn on the Y plane.

Now as for travel greater than the speed of light. Currently all we have is a hypothetical mathmatical model which says it is impossible to do. The only way to verify the modle is correct is to move the speed of light. So saying nothing can move faster than the speed of light is silly because mathematical models are typically highly simplified and rarely increadibly accuret.

Other than than that becareful stating theorys as fact. Warp drives/folding space/ect are all in theory.

Reading some of these posts is like reading a stargate forum where people argue about the physics of the stargate as real world fact.

Time for some star trek nerddom to correct stuff in this thread ;)

The warp drive doesn't fold space or make the universe move relative to you. It creates a bubble of normal space around the ship, then makes that bubble go faster than light by shaping the bubble so that the space surrounding the bubble squeezes on it - like what happens when you squeeze a watermelon seed between your fingers. It doesn't violate any known laws of physics (such as the light speed barrier) since the ship actually isn't moving within its bubble, and therefore you don't have any matter actually going faster than light.

It's as though you have a Yugo capable of 30mph. If you put it in a container truck capable of 60mph, the container truck doesn't suddenly find itself unable to go 60 because of the yugo's speed limit of 30. Similarly, the yugo finds itself going twice as fast as it normally could.

We're taking the ship, with the speed limit being that of matter (light speed), and putting it in a container truck that does not have that speed limit. The ship therefore can now travel faster than it should be able to.

Will it work in the real world? Well all I'll say for that is that, when Stephen Hawking was on the set of Star Trek: TNG for a cameo role, he looked at the warp engine in the engineering set and said "I'm working on that."

Example:

Person 1: I have one electron in this pair, and you have the other. As soon as the space armada comes into the sensor range of my outpost, I will change the spin on my electron.

Person 2: Righto. So I just watch this electron spin, and when it starts to do something else I ride through town like Paul Revere.

problem with the curved space theory and the globe is if u want to travel shortest route to other side of the world ud have to tunnel through a planet :P. in space u would have to find some way of tearing space joining it up with another tear, keeping the tear open and making sure u arnt creating a time machine in the process. problems with this is, 1: what is to say there is anything outside our universe that we could tear into? i mean ur inside a paper bag, u tear a hole and look out into a room... now theres no proof thats how our universe works, also blackholes dont tear space they curve it infinatly. there is nothing to suggest space can be 'torn' maybe u can curve it enough to bring our nearest star closer to use by folding it but no tearing, there is simply no evidence that is possible. sure u can say, but there are other dimensions, of THIS universe is my point, to tear space would require other things outside/inside our spacetime. I have read of an Albequerrie warp bubble, it an extreme curvature of space that manipultes relativity into creating and destroying space, however the theory is sound the reality is different. u would have no control and u would be cut off from the rest of the universe, unable to enter or leave the bubble. if u travelled to a nearby planet anything in ur way would be annihilated. oh btw the spin of an electron is anything but random. its actually 2 or something not sure of the exact notation but an elcetron needs to rotate 720 degrees before its facing the same way again.

i have just read all the previous posts sorry. Mr SelfDestruct is true what he says, i remember hearing about an experiment in which an exact replica, down to spin etc was created of an object (cant remember if it was electron or not) probably by high speed collisions causing particle anti particle pairs and the 2 objects being isolated then re collided to get an exact replica unsure as to the exact technique tho, and the replicas were seperated across the atlantic i think and a forced change on one was observed on the other. i remember this its true. tho it has nothing to do with ftl communication and everything to do with quantum mechanics. i.e this universe saw the 2 objects as the same thing.

and if u mean direction of spin that wont be random either but will be dependant on the enviroment and conditions in which the electron is present

shakran ur wrong m8, in star trek the ship moves thru subspace, or creates a bubble of subspace around the ship. thats the point subspace is still fiction not fact. However iv recently heard of d-brane theory, this says our whole universe is merely a dimension of another universe, or to be more accurate there are more dimensions to our universe (not rolled up ones that are forces or matter and not string theory of subatomic particleseither) that we are not aware of. its technical to undertsand and i barely grasp it (that might be over stretching too :D ). basiclly if u think of our universe as being like a sheet of paper then the other dimensions we arnt aware of are like where the pen would exist if u were writing (or rather the pen would be gravity existing in this other dimesnion we arnt aware of, the 3rd dimension for our sheet of paper) if our universe is 2d then there is a 3rd space dimension we artn aware of, our universe is in fact 3d so there is a 4th spatial dimension we arnt aware of. and it was mr hawkings who came up with this and if its correct the theory explains dark matter. but ill be damned if i try and explain it, look it up ursleves :)

I saw something in sciam a long time ago about travel faster than light i believe, it was to do with the bubble thoery that it seems star trek goes off. iirc it was as others said, a bubble of positive and negative energy surrounded the craft that made it possible, and then space was stretched behind the craft, while space infront to the location was compressed so the ship didnt move relativly in its bit of space, but someone on the outside would see it move from one place to another rather quickly. This negative energy also could be a force in keeping warpholes open etc.
Negative energy seemed to be given off everytime a positive action happened, in a opposite direction, the problem was separating it so it is not paired with its postitive, im sure someone else has this more accuratly explained heh it was a long time ago and this is half remembered so it aint the best of explainations but you get the jist.

http://www.sciamdigital.com/browse.c...885&sc=I100322

thats the sciam article, but you have to pay i believe, its a interesting read, im gonna dig through my old copies and see if i can find it