another universe

Oh Yeeeea.......Try Alpha Centauri. It's closer to being our twin star than you think.

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http://homepage.sunrise.ch/homepage/schatzer/Alpha-Centauri.html

 

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I don't get your point. You said;

And the answer is yes. It is not about what technology we have right now, but what technology we can make to achieve our goals. Tsiolkovksy knew we would need a multiple stage rocket powered by hydrogen and oxygen, he'd done the maths, he was a scientist, it's just that his work wasn't published outside Russia, and at the time, they didn't have the need or resources to test his theories.

Scientists today are also looking at such things as wormholes for future exploitation, but sadly, wormholes are practically impossible for travel. (and I don't mean nearly impossible, I mean impossible in reality).

Physics isn't going to change over time. Our understanding of what can and can't be done may change, but increased technology is not going to alter the Universe. We may refine the models we have, but I doubt a total rewrite will happen, one that exposes shortcuts, and ways to defy conservation of energy, as that appears to be a fundamental property of the Universe.

As for moving without a reaction engine, ... how is that going to work? You are in free space, and somehow manage to create an asymmetric field which propels you in one direction by doing what? Warping space, the very fabric of the Universe, and surfing down the gradient? While I think it may be possible to warp space, I think the asymmetry needed to use it as a propulsion system will be elusive. Imagine you are floating on a lake, and you want to move. You aren't allowed to paddle, that would be reaction drive. You aren't allowed to squirt water, that again, is a reaction. You are allowed to make the water slope somehow though. How do you make that work? Answer me this, and you may have an analogy for warping space asymmetrically.

 

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I think we may possibly find a way of warping spacetime around a probe or spacecraft someday. Most people are at least a little familiar with the Higgs field and the Higgs boson. The Higgs field is more or less 'spacetime' and the Higgs boson is the particle that gives baryonic matter (ordinary matter) the property of mass. IF a method can be found to create a 'void', or bubble, in spacetime within which the Higgs boson does not penetrate, the objects inside the void would have no mass. A tiny amount of propulsion would move the 'void' through spacetime itself, the objects inside the void would feel no acceleration effects or inertia because they are massless. Interstellar dust and gas would simply follow the curved spacetime around the void, no collisions or interaction of any kind. Could it someday be possible? I don't know, but scientist are today attempting to understand how some energetic particles are given mass and others are not.

A similiar concept is this article by a Dr. Smith at Duke University. He proposes a method by which a void may be created in which electromagnetic waves curve around an object inside. The object would be invisible because of no interaction with the EM spectrum. Here is a link to his page:
http://www.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith/cloaking.html

 

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I wasn’t talking about religion or life after death when I said that we could chose to continue living like primitive apes or evolve into gods. I’m an atheist, but my definition of god is an entity or life form that has full control of the space in which it exists. (The molecules, atoms, Ect.) I believe that we have the potential to evolve into better life forms if we use our technology in the right way. (Genetic engineering, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, Ect.) We don’t know how to travel to other galaxies or universes because our primitive brains are incapable of building the devices to accomplish this goal, but that could change in the future.

 

My point was that even if a couple of people present a theory on space travel today, it doesn't equate to being an established viability until the technology is there. You made my point pretty well by saying usage of worm holes seemed impossible despite the fact with the right knowledge and technology it might just be possible.

Your posts assume that humans won't progress much beyond our current methods of space travel and although I am probably niave, I am not even thinking about the present day or the next 100 years or so, but thousands. If we are still zipping around in simple and inefficient reaction machines in 10,000 years then yes - perhaps it will be impossible to go to any star except perhaps the very closest.

I am thinking that there could be some huge discoveries waiting to be made that we don't even have theories for at present. And I am not suggesting that the physics of the universe will change, but our understanding of it and exploitation of it surely will.

 

I used to have a forum on the multiverse but I found it too specialised so I merged it with physics.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/paralleluni.shtml

 

No, that's exactly NOT what I said! I said they were possible in theory, but not in practice; to actually make one would require more energy than there is in the entire Universe!

Again, exactly NOT what I was saying! I was saying that physics will be physics despite the level of technology that humans have. You seem to think that it's inevitable these problems can be conquered. Some problems are looking pretty solid, like the size of the Universe, and speed limit of 'c'. I said I doubt there will be a major rewrite of physics which undermines these limits.

Well, we don't a the GUT yet, but the theories we do have fit pretty well with the data, and there isn't much wiggle room for fantastic new discoveries. Now, you might say 'We thought that about Newtonian Mechanics', but that scenario was perhaps more hopeful, in that it did not imply speed limits. Our paradigm shift to relativity meant we could only progress at a fixed top speed. Everything agrees with that fact. We have lots to learn about the large scale Universe, and sub atomic matter, but the problem of moving through space is about matter, and moving a few tens of lights years. We do not have many big questions left for these scales.

 

Every existing technology is limited by physics. Even if you could get to a good velocity (which is impossible given our fueling solutions) there is still the problem of acceleration.

Moreover you should look at Moore's Law. It was predicted that processing speed would double very 18 months. It did...until now. Now we have "hyper-threading" and "dual-core" processing. There is such a thing as a technology ceiling. The world does actually have a physics barrier.

No qualified physicist ever said any of those things. Two of these are countermanded by naturalistic observation. The last was theoretical as it could not be observed on Earth. However atomic manipulation is a natural process that is neccessary to Solar Fusion. I don't think anyone ever underestimated the Strong Force and the amazing amount of energy unlocked in the split. On the other hand who knows maybe superposition holds the ultimate answer to space travel (not likely

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). But fundamentally phsyics has not changed.

Questioning my knowledge of technology is not a valid counterargument. In all my knowledge of technology I cannot place a single serious proposition for space travel. It's less science and more science fiction.

Yeah...what he said.

 

Say you could "warp" space, and cheat the light-speed barrier. I think it reasonable to assume that you would need to send some kind of a signal to space to initiate the warping. And that signal would be relegated to light speed. What happens when you outrun it?