Near Light Speed Travel Possible After All? 539
DrStrabismus writes "PhysOrg has a story about research that may indicate that close to light speed travel is possible. From the article: 'New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century, he predicts. On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light.'"
Make sure you account for everything (Score:4, Funny)
Mind that planet!
What planet?
SPLAT
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Funny)
They arn't weapons until they stop
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Funny)
My blender would disagree with you, as would my flamethrower. Both are pretty harmless when stopped, but when they get started can cause all kids of carnage.
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly don't know, but the idea of stopping a meteor from hitting earth came to mind.
Near light speed weapons are desirable (Score:3, Informative)
They would be more difficult to intercept.
They could be smaller, same kinetic energy yield for less mass.
You do realize we nearly have light speed weapons? Lasers. One of the benefits is that for practical purposes flight time from weapon to target is zero. No more having to lead the target. It makes interception of fast moving things far more practical.
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, you're probably right. These sorts of things are sometimes called relativistic kill vehicles in sci-fi, and come in handy during fictional interstellar warfare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_kill_veh icle [wikipedia.org]
A relativistic kill vehicle (RKV) or relativistic bomb is a hypothetical weapon system sometimes found in science fiction. The details of such systems
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, considering that the nearest star systems are greater than 4.3 light years away [ucsd.edu], you do not have to worry about it, as you would be dead from starvation.
It's the same reason that Nuclear subs are not limited by how much time they can stay underwater, but how much food they can carry. The need for food makes such long distances impractical, if not intolerable. "Growing" food along the way would mean a very limited diet for eight years (assuming you want to come home), something else that is intolerable.
The first use of this could be unmanned probes - but a four year wait time for signals to travel means that it would be impossible controlling it, and would have to have it's own artificial inteligence.
Of course, if you just wanted to visit the Mars and breath its clean fresh air and gaze upon its deep green pastures then this...oh wait...Mars doesn't have that.
I think the best way to travel long distances is by using a stargate. Mondays on the sci-fi channel.
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:2, Insightful)
Stargates are still the only way to go
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Insightful)
For a traveller on the ship it would only seem like months. For the people left behind it would be years.
Look here. http://members.tripod.com/wmhxbigguy/Theory/time.
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, that was exactly my point. There's another odd effect caused by near light-speed travel: If you fly straight at an observer at near light-speed, the observer sees you approaching faster than the speed of light. This is, of course, an illusion, but an illusion that affects all measuring devices (e.g., radar, eyes, telescopes, etc.). This happens because your ship is following very closely
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Insightful)
If you were headed right at someone at the speed of light, you would just seem INCREDIBLY blue-shifted (more energetic). You would not, ever, at any time, seem to be moving faster than light.
If a person is travelling at substantial portions of light speed they will experience time dilation. People moving at near the speed of light would experience, say, a 4.3 LY trip at high speed as, perhaps, several months, but an outside observer would, from whatever position they were standing, see the trip as taking at a minimum 4.3 years + whatever extra time was needed because the ship was slower than light.
You seem to be confusing time dilation (an effect on those moving at high speed) with
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes you would be incredibly blue-shifted, but you would in fact appear to be coming in faster than light:
Suppose I fire a missile at you from 10 light-seconds away. If the missile is travelling at 90% of the speed of light, it'll take just over 11 seconds to hit you. You'll see it 10 seconds after I fire it, and the missile itself reaches you 1 second later. From your perspective, it looks & feels as though that missile was travelling at nearly 10 times the speed of light.
The same effect has bee
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Informative)
He's talking about this:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/S peedOfLight/Superluminal/superluminal.html [ucr.edu]
And he's right, in that yes, sometimes things CAN appear to be moving faster than light at first calculation. I don't think it would work exactly as he described with an object coming straight at you, however.
Bruce
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Interesting)
To an observer, the minimum time for another object to move from a point to another a light-year away is one year, yes; that's what makes c invariant. However, for the object moving, experinced time goes down asympotically as the speed of light is approached. If you were moving at c, you would experience literally no passage of time on the trip to Alpha Centauri from Earth, even though it would take you 4.3 years to an observer on Earth.
Another way to state it is that from the perspective of someone moving near the speed of light, the distance from Earth to Alpha Centauri shrinks; with the distance shorter, of course it takes less time to travel. However, the distance is still the same to the observer on Earth, and so the time for the trip as viewed by the observer is much longer.
(By the way, this is part of the reason why nothing can go faster than the speed of light; the distance between two points can't shrink to less than zero.)
This difference in space-or-time from different perspectives is why the theory is called relativity; space and time are not absolute constants for everyone evverywhere, but always exist relative to your reference frame.
Re:Why not faster than light (Score:3, Insightful)
His peers DID NOT MOB HIM. Bush's fundamentalist political appointees are suppressing scientists all over the spectrum (as you know, of course). On global warming, reproduction, evolutionary biology, space science. Fundamentalist overseers and corporate lobbyists are running the show at all the agencies.
His peers have more to lose than Hansen does. Everyone is just wait
Re:Why not faster than light (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong, wrong, wrong, and a thousand times wrong!
The whole basis of science is that everything is open to question. There are few things more prestigious in science than to refute a previously accepted theory. Ever heard of a guy named Albert Einstein? Yeah, thought you might have. Used to be that Newton's theories were the accepted way in which the universe worked, but Einstein showed differently.
The main reason it seems like some theories are "unquestionable" is simply because most of the ways in which people choose to challenge them have been shown time and time and time again to be false.
If you get 100 people a day proposing a design for a perpetual motion machine using a series of cogs, wheels, and magnets, you're not going to take the time to explain to each and every one why their design won't work, instead, you're just going to tell them to bugger off and leave you alone.
Of course, scientists are human, and at times they will reject things inadvertently which they shouldn't. However, if you think you have a good explanation as to how/why we can, in fact, travel faster than the speed of light, instead of whining to Slashdot about how stuck in the mud scientists are, why not publish it? You'd be the next Einstein!
Re:Why not faster than light (Score:4, Insightful)
The parent also mentioned that scientific theory is based on authority. This is utter nonsense. Authority counts for nothing in science.
We accept Einstein's theories as being correct. Why? Because he was a really smart guy, and therefore must have been right? No. Because he showed exactly how and why his theories were correct.
If I tell you that water turns to ice or steam sometimes, and that's the way it is, because I say so, and because I'm smarter than you, then you'd probably tell me to get stuffed (and rightly so)
On the other hand, if I tell you that cooling water to 0C causes it to freeze into ice, and heating it to 100C causes it to boil, giving off steam, then you can try for yourself in your own kitchen. It doesn't matter if you think I'm a genius or a raving lunatic - it doesn't even matter if I actually AM a raving lunatic. The only thing that counts is whether it works or not. And the things we accept in science are those that work - and if we don't know, we run with our best current explanation based on the avaliable data until a better one comes along.
That's the wonderful thing about science. It's perfectly possible for some unknown, uneducated nobody with a bright idea to overturn hundreds of years of accepted science.
(of course, it's also rather unlikely, as the simple fact is the vast amount of unknown, uneducated nobodies who try to do that are completely off the mark, and don't have the first clue what they're talking about... doesn't mean it can't happen though.)
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:2)
Time Dilation: Not a Panacea (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyhoo, I typed "relativistic acceleration" into google, and two clicks later I was h [ucr.edu]
Re:Time Dilation: Not a Panacea (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:3, Interesting)
This problem is handily defeated by human hibernation technology.
And I think we are closer [scienceblog.com] to realizing that technology than near-light-speed spacecraft.
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:3, Funny)
Especially when thrown at near light speed.
Can (Score:4, Funny)
Can
Can't
Can
Can't
Wake me when someone actually accomplishes something. I'm sick and tired or the back and forth debate over ethereal concepts that can neither be proven or disproven in our lifetime.
Re:Can (Score:5, Funny)
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
The forces reducing a human travelling near the speed of light to a greasy patch on the back of the spacecraft. From TFA:
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
So weeks or months of acceleration wont hurt at all... in fact they would act as a convinient way of creating "artificial gravity" on the ship.
And even 1G adds up after a few days, and in a matter of a few months you are _highly_ relativistic.
I did some calculations. (Score:3, Informative)
However, this is actually an underestimate since relativistic effects make it harder to get that close to the speed of light, the closer you get. If you could achieve a constant 1G, that is how long it would take, but this is physically impossible since effective mass increases with velocity.
I calculated it on Google calculator with the following formula (just
Re:I did some calculations. (Score:3, Informative)
try;
(c / g) in days = 353.823183 days
(the 'in days' is needed so g insn't taken to mean 'grams')
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
What if, after you have been accellerating for months, but are still at only 50% the speed of light, you hit a 1 lb chunk of rock/dust/ice that fell off some asteroid...
50% of speed of light = 1.5 x 10^8
1 pound = 0.4536 kg
Kinetic energy = (.5) (mass) (velocity) (velocity)
Kinetic energy = (.5) (.4536 kg) (1.5 x 10^8) (1.5 x 10^8)
Kinetic energy = (5.1 x 10^15)
Ouch.
The energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was only ~ 5.2 x 10^13
Even hitting a piece of sand at half the speed of light is gonna do waaaaaay more than just scratch your paint job. You want to get to get up to speed where you have the antigravity-clearing path for you as soon as possible, because every second going less than that speed is extremely dangerous. (That's if his theory isn't entirely bogus.)
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the point of view of the rock, all that would happen is that a solid object inside that spaceship is going to create a nice cylindrical hole in the nonmoving rock.
Come on, even a few electrons in vacuum that slam into a solid target at a velocity of c/2 (about 10^5 eV) will generate loads of X-rays by kicking out electrons that are in the deepest shells inside the atoms. With heavier
The subjunctive case (Score:2, Insightful)
And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
I think that this guy has been pushing his anti-gravity solution of general relativity for a
Re:The subjunctive case (Score:5, Informative)
Nonono: he's saying that a mass travelling near the speed of light creates an "antigravity beam" in front of it. This sounds hokey, but it's not unprecedented - frame dragging is a similar situation where general relativity basically says that a moving body can "push" others nearby. So in this case the near-light-speed object is "dragging" its frame forward. Calling it an "antigravity beam" sounds wacko, but it's probably quite straightforward. It's almost like the objects would be riding the "wake" of the NLS object, caused by the fact that the object is moving faster than space can respond.
He's essentially saying that you can pretty much effortlessly accelerate something to really high velocities with little effort by hitching a ride on a bigger object.
(Where to find a star moving at greater than
Re:The subjunctive case (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The subjunctive case (Score:3, Informative)
Weight is more like mass * gravity.
Unfortunately the weight of the fuel doesn't determine how useful it is, its the mass. I actually thought up that several years ago, before I remembered that mass != weight.
Re:The subjunctive case (Score:3, Informative)
Stock Symbol? (Score:2, Funny)
Near the End of the Century (Score:2)
2 cents,
Queen B
Actual papers... (Score:5, Informative)
Weak 'Antigravity' Fields in General Relativity [arxiv.org]
Exact Relativistic 'Antigravity' Propulsion [arxiv.org]
Personally I'm a bit skeptical about his claims, however energy appears to be conserved. This method uses gravitationally-mediated kinetic energy exchange - this is the same principle that allows gravitational slingshot [wikipedia.org] to work.
Re:Actual papers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also this story is basically based on a press release from Starmark, the company that this so-called "noted scientist" founded himself, so basically he wrote the press release I'm guessing.
Also the fact that he's giving a talk at a conference means nothing, I've been to plenty of conferences where they let a few cranks give talks. I sat through a talk on Creation and the Big Bang at a Astrophysics conference once and the guy was a loon.
That said the biggest proof that this guy could be a crank is the fact that this story got posted on Slashdot, where something like 90% of the science stories are crap.
Stopping (Score:2)
Re:Stopping (Score:5, Interesting)
.00001kg x (2.998 x 10^8 m/s)^2
898800400000 Newtons
9806 or so Newtons Per Ton
1,000,000 tons per MegaTon
20 Megatons per Hydrogen bomb
Thats 4.6 Hydrogen Bombs of energy that the dust particle has relative to you. Do you want to collide with 4.6 Hydrogen Bombs? I don't think that NLST is practicle, even if it turns out to be possible. What we need is a way to simultaniously transport stuff.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
now (Score:2, Funny)
Re:now (Score:2, Informative)
Regards,
Steve
Re:now (Score:2, Funny)
All right! Practical interstellar travel! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No anti-gravity necessary with the ramjet (Score:5, Insightful)
But the physics dont work out.
You get at most 2% or so of the mass converted into energy by the fusion process, even if you could fuse everything together perfectly efficient. But once your spaceship is moving quite fast (more than 10% or so of the speed of light), you will need to use more energy to move and collect the particles in your flightpath than you could possibly get by fusing them together.
It just doesnt work out if you look at the big picture.
Re:No anti-gravity necessary with the ramjet (Score:2)
Go fast enough to look like a black hole? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Go fast enough to look like a black hole? (Score:4, Informative)
> would look like a black hole relative to a laboratory frame?
No [ucr.edu].
Has Slashdot become crackpot central? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Has Slashdot become crackpot central? (Score:3, Insightful)
because, of course, no physical phenomenon can operate only for masses travelling above a fixed speed like that because such a phenomenon would violate Lorentz invariance.
.577c. Blockquoth the abstract fo
Actually I read this to mean that the repulsion effect requires that the relative velocity is greater than
Re:Has Slashdot become crackpot central? (Score:2)
Truly unique concepts are always met with opposition. There is a quote that I love (don't know the source) "Don't worry about having a unique idea stolen, if it's truly unique you will have to beat them over the head with it."
I'm not saying I support grandparent, I'm just saying that your comment is anti-science. Just because someone has a new idea does in no way make them a crackpot... most (if not
Re:Has Slashdot become crackpot central? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Has Slashdot become crackpot central? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's true, he didn't, it came from the formula E=MV^2 that was found by a French woman dropping steel balls into clay, it was a correction to Newtons erroneous E=MV. The C is just a constant V, Einstein got the idea because of experiments around the time had shown the puzzling result that light travels at the same speed in all directions.
Now when Einstien published his paper he assumed it was all just a mathematical curiosity, he did not think it translated to t
Re:Has Slashdot become crackpot central? (Score:5, Informative)
No. (For one thing, Cerenkov radiation is a physical phenomenon that operates only for masses travelling above a fixed speed.)
All this is saying is that if you've got an object (say object A) at rest, and another object (say object B) approaching object A at more than 0.577c in object A's reference frame, object A will be pushed forward (away from object B). Obviously if object A and object B are aligned exactly, they'll collide - but if object A is off-axis from object B, it will be "pushed along" with object B.
Since the relative velocity is measured in one object's rest frame, it's Lorentz invariant. (Object B sees object A approaching it at 0.577c, and sees object A pushing object B backwards).
It's very similar to frame dragging, actually. With frame dragging, there is likely a "critical rotational velocity" above which an object near the rotating object will be forced into an orbit. There's probably a "critical rotational velocity" above which an object deflects every incident object away from it.
And as with frame dragging, it likely exists for lower velocities - but the "push" is probably not along the axis of object A's direction, which means it won't "push" the object along.
Re:Has Slashdot become crackpot central? (Score:3, Funny)
This means that, all I have to do to get accelerated to a significant proportion of c is to get someone else to sling something at me at over half the speed of light, with a high degree of accuracy.
Now, who's going to volunteer to test that out?!
Justin.
Re:Has Slashdot become crackpot central? (Score:3, Interesting)
Near light speed was always possible (Score:2)
Re:Near light speed was always possible (Score:2)
There is no antigravity device to take along (Score:3, Interesting)
Now even when Dr. Felbers calculations are true, you'd first have to find a star speeding at a speed of 57%+ of lights speed(or accelerate one yourself
obLinks: Google "pushing gravity" or (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=pushing%20g
Re:There is no antigravity device to take along (Score:3, Interesting)
You're not building an antigravity device. The star acts as an 'antigravity' device, which is a crappy name for it anyway. Just think of it as "forward frame dragging". If a massive object travelling close to c moves close to you, it drags your frame of reference violently along with it. You're "riding its wake."
Now even when Dr. Felbers calculations are true, you'd first have to find a star speeding at a speed of 57%+ of lights speed(or
New form of investing (Score:2)
"noted physicist"? (Score:2)
"Franklin Felber" [google.dk] has less than 40 hits on google. For that reason I very much doubt he is a noted physicist. By association, I am not going to take his claims seriously...
Re:"noted physicist"? (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, 2+2 is not any more valid when posed by the pope than by Hitler. Or to go less concrete, Relativity would have been no more or less likely if Hitler has proposed it rather than Einstein.
Judge the good doctors ideas on their merits rather than on his merits.
Near Light Speed Travel Possible (Score:4, Funny)
Er, or maybe when I don't see it.
-S
The travelor would die from radiation (Score:5, Interesting)
The density of interstellar space is about one atom per cubic centimeter [hypertextbook.com]. If the spaceship were going near the speed of light (3 x 10^10 cm/sec), it would be hit by 3 x 10^10 relativistic particles per cm^2/sec. This is about the equivalent of one Curie [wikipedia.org] per cm^2, which would kill a human and cripple any electronics on board
A very heavy magnet could deflect the protons, but the neutral atoms would be unaffected by the magnetic field.
Re:The travelor would die from radiation (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Moving faster than 57.7% of c? Relative to what?
Right now, the earth is moving through space at a speed greater than 57.7% relative to something. No, I don't know what, or where, but rest assured there's some body out there somewhere in whose frame of reference the Earth is moving at greater than 57.7% of c. And there's some other body in whose frame of reference the Earth is moving at greater than 10% of c, and another body where Earth is moving at 95% of c, and another body where Earth isn't moving at all (Hey, like me!).
So why isn't the Earth emitting such an antigravity beam, repelling masses in its path? Rest assured that if it were, we'd be seeing its effect, like ferinstance as it played havoc with GPS satellites.
Or, heck, there are cosmic rays which occasionally smack into the Earth's atmosphere at a speed that's only infinitesimally smaller than c in Earth's FOR. They should *definitely* be emitting some sort of antigravity, if this guy's correct. Should be trivial to observe, but we haven't seen it.
This smells like bullshit.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
My analysis as a physicist (Score:3, Insightful)
First, this guy is not a "noted" physicist, let alone a noted gravitational physicist, as far as I can tell. He published some papers [stanford.edu] in accelerator physics while affiliated with the Naval Research Lab. He has no publications, or as far as I can tell, training in general relativity. He's now affiliated with some company ("Starmark, Inc.") in San Diego. Furthermore, gravitational physicists generally give talks at gravity conferences (or at least physics conferences), not space engineering conferences (which have drastically lower standards when it comes to gravity, since the organizers of the conference typically have no GR background).
Second, I skimmed the preprint of his (unpublished) "antigravity" paper. He claims that a distant observer watching a particle fall into a black hole, in the (initial, local) rest frame of the particle, will see the black hole to approach the particle, and then cause the particle to accelerate away from the black hole. This is not in any weird "warp drive" spacetime, but in ordinary Schwarzschild spacetime — such as the spacetime outside of a star or a planet (!). Yes, you read that right, according to him, even planets create antigravity (if you're traveling fast enough). This bears no relation to anything I know about orbits of particles in Schwarzschild spacetime.
Then he mentions performing a Lorentz transformation of a particle trajectory into the frame of a distant observer. This is impossible. You can only apply a global Lorentz transformation to a flat (Minkowski) spacetime, not a curved spacetime (such as Schwarzschild). Well, you can apply a transformation to a flat tangent space at a point in a curved spacetime, but you can only transform a vector in the tangent space at that point, not an entire trajectory that spans a continuum of points. It is true that Schwarzschild geometry is asymptotically flat for "distant" observers, and he's speaking of transforming into the frame of a distant observer, but the fact remains that you cannot Lorentz transform a worldline that is not entirely within an approximately flat region of spacetime (and his trajectories definitely aren't always far from the gravitating body).
Now, you're free not to buy my suspicions, because as I said I haven't the time to go through all his calculations and see what's up (general relativity calculations are a pain in the ass). My bet, however, is that he's simply misinterpreting a coordinate quantity as having physical meaning. This is a common error for GR beginners (and you can see a prime example of it in the crackpot A. Mitra, who claims that black holes contradict the Einstein field equations based on his misinterpretation of coordinate derivatives in Schwarzschild spacetime). The thing about GR is that you can write solutions in any coordinate system you want, and you have to make sure that the quantities you're calculating are physically meaningful, and not just an artifact of whatever coordinates you happened to choose. Anyway, that's my guess based on what this guy has written so far and the kind of errors I see people make when making "wild" claims in GR. But it's also possible he simply made a math error. I am not betting, however, that he has suddenly discovered antigravity lurking within the ordinary Schwarzschild metric.
And it's not just any object (Score:2)
And we're not just talking about any old object here. From the article:
So we've reduced the problem of how to accelerate a ship to near light speed to the problem of how to accelerate a star to near light speed.
Big improvement.
-- MarkusQ
Re:And it's not just any object (Score:2, Funny)
Re:And it's not just any object (Score:2)
Re:And it's not just any object (Score:5, Funny)
No, we have reduced to the problem of how to accelerate only part of the ship, while the other parts can hitch a ride on the first. I suspect the sweet spot would be the first part at 2/3 of the total mass.
If you're correct, then we're done:
--MarkusQ
Oh wait, I almost forgot:
Re:Is there anything (Score:2)
Re:Missing Something (Score:2)
Re:Missing Something (Score:3, Informative)
What complete and utter nonsense. While I doubt I will see working antigravity in my lifetime (or if it is even possible at all), the idea that you must "know the exact cause" of something to manipulate it effectively is rubbish. Electromagnetic fields were not well explained until many decades after they had been suc
Excuse me, Mr. QuantumFTL: (Score:2)
Ah ha. I see. May I be the first to volunteer you for the most incredible ride of your life? Or the shortest. We're not really sure. Game?
Re:Excuse me, Mr. QuantumFTL: (Score:2)
Provided this theory turns out to be mathematically sound, then yes, please do sign me up. There is nothing I can conceive of that I can accomplish on this world that compares with the chance to see the stars - even if it means no return trip.
Re:Missing Something (Score:3, Interesting)
There are quite a few ideas kicking about:
scalar-tensor-vector gravity (STVG) [newscientistspace.com]
Modified Newtonian Dynamics [umd.edu]
General Relativity [uiuc.edu],
Quantum Gravity [cam.ac.uk],
The http://www.halexandria.org/dward155.htm">Zero-poin t Field,
Superstring Theory [superstringtheory.com],
M-theory [cam.ac.uk],
Inflation/Cosmology [cam.ac.uk],
Yilmaz gravitation [wikipedia.org], and
Membrane Gravity [hesston.edu]
Law of Universal Gravitation, [tripod.com]
And there's also Intelligent Gravity [bringyou.to]
Unfortunately, there is no one simple experiment to prove any of
Re:Yeah, OK (Score:2)
The Crackpot Index... (Score:2)
Re:Pretty cool but useless (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, some people [hpcc-space.de] (warning, PDF) seem to think we could. This has been on /. before too.
About 2 and a half hours using the principles linked above. The star Procyon would be 80 days away.
Re:Pretty cool but useless (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Pretty cool but useless (Score:2)
There are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy... all of these stars less than 300000 light-years away. I'd say that's pretty
Re:Pretty cool but useless (Score:2)
A ship accelerating at 1g half way to alpha centuri, then decelerating on the second half of the trip can get there in less than 10 years as perceived by the travellers. The problem is that no known engine system, with the possible exception of a Bussard Ramjet, could power the ship. In the age of sail sea voyages often lasted 5 years or more, just because we now
Speed of light is not a limit in that sense (Score:2)
Finding the energy to accelerate to such speeds is another matter.
Re:name recognition (Score:3, Informative)
But interestingly, when I researched "Franklin S. Felber", I found conflicting dates for his degrees. At USC it says M.A. Physics, 1973; Ph.D. Physics, 1975. http://physics.usc.edu/Alumni/F.html [usc.edu]. But the Universi
Re:Bah. (Score:3, Insightful)
My fealing in the subject is that the speed of light is just a mental barrier.
Well, your feeling is wrong. There are very hard problems (i.e. all of Relativity) involved in making things go at lightspeed. The faster you go, the more you weigh - try getting around that.
Re:Bah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you comfotable with the notion of time travel?
Re:Bah. (Score:5, Funny)