OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

So I'm puttering around, coming up with low-tech space stuff for no particular reason, when I started thinking about FTL travel. Well, naturally, the ones I could think of (Warp space, wormholes, making the speed of light higher, newtonian space, hyperspace) are all 'handwavium-heavy'.

What I'm wondering is are there any that are 'handwavium-light'?

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

If even wormholes are "handwavium-heavy" I don't know what you'd consider acceptable... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Well, according to physicists, last I checked, if you had enough recources to throw at the project, and some way to make and store negative energy, you could make a wormhole from one point to another. It's just insane.

You need:
Two rings the size of Pluto's orbit (must be made of very tough stuff).
Negative energy roughly equivalent to twice the mass of jupiter.
Some way to spin those rings up to nearly the speed of light.
A way to get one of the rings to your destination.

Proceedure:
Charge each ring with negative energy roughly equivalent to the mass of jupiter.
Spin each ring up to nearly the speed of light (this is where the tuff stuff comes in handy).
Synchronize them - exactly - same shape, same size, same amount of negative energy, same spin, et cetera.

What you get, is a wormhole, approximately one meter in diameter, going from the center of one ring to the center of the other.

Yeah, um... I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime....

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Though I heartily wish there was a theoretically practical form of FTL travel, I can't think of any off-hand.

But remember, humanity's knowledge of physics has grown tremendously in the past century...who knows what advances and new ideas will come in the future. Perhaps physicists will uncover a method of feasible FTL travel; it's entirely possible.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

I've heard a theory that says a black hole may actually be an opening into a different (perhaps separate) part of the universe. If that's true, all we need to figure out is how to keep from being crushed out of existence during the passage.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Not to mention the time effects.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

One idea - I've heard that gravity is FTL - I'm not sure if that's been tested. But if we handwave the ability to manipulate gravity, could that accelarate something faster than the speed of light? (Since mass has *no effect on acceleration by gravity?)

* That I know of.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

I think gravity is thought to be instantaneously propagating, but I don't think its been proven yet.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Of course not. It takes an infinite amount of energy to make a massy object go arbitrarily close to the speed of light.

If you can manipulate gravity with arbitrary energy levels, though, wormholes and space warps are quite possible.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

One possibility for FTL travel is other dimensions. Many theories of quantum physics predict several other dimensions, besides the 4 we know and interact with every day. If it would be possible to use those other dimensions for travel, it could be possible that distances are closer in those dimensions than in our familiar three, which doesn't actually break the light speed barrier in that dimension, but has the effect of seemingly breaking the light speed barrier in our own dimensions.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Your talk about dimensions made me remember a low-tech FTL method described in an old Sci-FI novel... I can´t remember the name of the novel or the author, but the method was very ingenuous (even if scientifically ridiculous): Mirrors!

You noticed that images in mirrors are always in opossite alignment with the real images being reflected? Something right-handed is left-handed in the mirror and vice-versa... while this have a very simple explanation in optics, in this sci-fi novel it was stated that this happened because mirrors, beyond our three physical dimensions, also reflected one additional dimension, not perceptible by any other means, and in this novel, by combining several hundred mirrors with minute adjustments among them, you can generate a "composite reflection" (in the book it was decribed as an "apparently solid block of light, floating in midair in the center of the mirrors arrangement") that would allow a physical object to transverse this "additional dimension" and appear instantly in a place light years apart... the only needed basics would be the correct alignment of the mirrors and that at least a single beam of light reach the mirrors from the place you wish to travel for... in the book they used the light of distant stars to travel to the vicinity of these stars... also, the mirrors needed to have all the same size and format and the "composite reflection" would be the exact size of the mirror, only in 3d instead of 2d.

If i remember the title of the book or even the author i´ll post here, but it was a long time ago (like 12 or 13 years ago) that i read it, and the story was a little crappy, but the FTL travel idea was what i found most interesting about the book.

Edit: some spelling errors and additional memories that i had from the book.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Since 'the speed of light' is a fundamental constant, and limitation, of the universe it does make one wonder just what he wants. How and why would you even expect an 'easy' way to evade or exceed the basic laws of the universe?

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Er...Excessive energy levels?

I don't expect anything. Science isn't always about expecting anything, sometimes it's just about asking.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Some ways of evading the laws of the universe are easier than others. That and the "laws" are our best approximations of reality.

But any form of FTL is going to be handwavium high. Best to figure out what you're using, its limitations, and the implications thereof.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Ok, then, handwavium-lower. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Picky, picky.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Narf, what you need is some cheesy science!

Like the Cheese Engine it runs on cheese. It instantly displaces the ship further along it vector of travel based on the amount of cheese infused into its core. A rat’s next of complex components. It was invented by pinky the brain.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

One thing I haven't seen mentioned (or not directly) is the Alcubierre drive

It is the closest thing to non-hand-wavey that I know of.

It still requires the ability to manipulate "strange" matter, so there is a decent amount of hand waving. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to violate General Relativity, so there is a bonus there.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

the speed of light in vaccuum - when not acted on by external forces - is thought to be constant, in so far as we have the ability to measure.

we can accelerate light or decelerate it by passing it through other mediums. and every few years, vaccuum turns out to be less empty than we thought it was.

as in "oh, quantum particles seem to spontaniously generate out of nothingness" or as in "odd, there seems to be energy where there is no mass"

the easy (and rather possible with modern science) trick to FTL travel, is to slow light down to a crawl and then just go faster than it.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

this might be more helpful towards the original question, though:

most sci-fi FTL travel relies on somehow bending / folding space. this happens in one of a few ways:

a wormhole, or warp-point, or whatever: is a stationary point in space, existing by whacky natural phenominon or created artificially or held in place by some device. it bends space between its self, and its destination point.

a jump drive (may be other names) is a portable, non-sustained version of this. its is carried on a ship and bends space from the ships location to the ships destination. it usually takes a great deal of energy, and either the range or number of uses is limited before refueling / recharging.

a warp drive (again, more names exist), is a portable constant effect space-bending device. it either lets the ship travel a short distance instantly and then repeats, or it lets the ship cross space much much faster than normal. it doesnt bend space for instant travel between very distant points, but it bends local space for quick movement, and keeps doing it constantly.

There are other methods of FTL travel that involve riding gravity waves or other whackyness, but they seem to hold even less credability than those I just described. But the VAST majority of all sci-fi FTL travel are variants of the three ideas above.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Gravity waves are expected to travel at the speed of light. We have not yet successfully detected them, but the detectors we have build are not sensitive enough to detect the largest gravity waves we think exist.

While this includes a lot of handwavium, it is still a possibility that they could travel at faster than light and we could end up using them to power a ship.

We could just use Brin's Epacharch and "believe" reality away. "Beleive we could go faster than light and it will happen. Those people that claim to come from out there, I mean how do we know... They might be right.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

gravity is currently expected to propogate at FTL speeds by about half the scientific community. There is currently a large divide on the topic, and a great deal of experimentation being done.

The experiments show conclusively that there is relativistic effect acting, but they are ambiguous to the point that the reasearchers havent decided WHICH relativistic effect is acting.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Yeah, gravity follows the light speed rule too. Of all the things found so far, we haven't found anything that allows you to send information or matter faster than the speed of light. You can make wormholes and move it at lightspeed to your target, but that's not really going FTL. You're just altering spacetime.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

That sounds like acceptable hand-waving. However, my math is a little weak to be following the formulas they have - What are the energy requirements like?

Let's see if I got this right - Basically, the drive pulls space from the front of the ship to the back of the ship?

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Its main problem is the inability to control it from the inside.
So you pretty much have to have a slinger and stopper base at both ends of your trip.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

About how difficult would it be to hand-wave that restriction away?

(Cause otherwise, interstellar warfare would be near-impossible.)

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

not impossible, just harder and with more casualties. if you dont have a stopper for your ship, then you have a planet that acts as a stopper for your projectile.

or maybe the slinger creates a field that dies before it reaches the target, and the ship "falls out of warp"

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

That seems to be an inaccurate statement. It hasn't been proven either way how fast gravity propagates. Hell, we don't even know what works to transmit gravity, or even why mass and gravity go hand in hand.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Hmm...I think that second method would be more desirable. So invasions would be possible, just slower.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

You all are still thinking within the box.

Don’t worry about moving the ship. Just relocate the galaxy relative to your ship. Simple?


There is a theory that some time in the future computers will be powerful enough to simulate reality. Sometime after that point there will be more so many simulated realities that the odds of an individual actually being a member of the one true reality will be vanishing small. Now the neat thing about existing in a simulated reality is that by making a small change or patch to the simulator reality you could relocate an object such as a ship to a new location within that simulated reality. All you need is a way to hack reality. (The “Well of Souls” used a method where they patched the equations of reality to move the supper computer moon about.)

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

Here's a star drive classification chart that I've used before to help come up with ideas. It classifies every single drive system in sci fi.

http://www.projectrho.com/stardrv.txt

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

That particular vision is reminiscent of the world in "The Matrix."

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

and about a million other sci-fi stories since about 1960. maybe before.

relocating the universe is only a viable method (for the purposes of on-topic arguement) if your relocating the ACTUAL universe and not some simulated one. we must assume we are operating in the acutal one for the purposes of practoical discussion...

now the idea that reality can be "disbelieved" or reprogramed based on concensus is one that i am willing to entertain. so is the idea that the whole universe can be moved based on "glitches" or "loopholes" in physics or thermodynamics.

Although I dont place any particular weight in the idea, I'm rather fond of the suggestion that reality is completly defined (even on a macro level) by observation. Laws of science exists because people largely agree that they exist, and that belief has been reinforced over time. its harder and harder to rationalize new things without overwriting pre-existing observations and introducing parodoxes, but wouldnt the world be wild if we just observed it a different way 2000 years ago?

sure, its an absolutely farcical and unproveable theory -- but it sure is fun.

Re: OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?
 

And thanks, everyone. Much helpfull, as always.