Introducing the Warpship 361
astroengine writes "Dr. Richard Obousy, a guy who has put modern science into the warp drive, has designed his very own warpship. Now, for the first time, he's shared it with the world. It might not be the sleek Starship Enterprise, but its structure has been optimized to harness local 'dark energy,' generating a warp bubble so faster-than-light velocities are possible." Now, the only question is: will the ship achieve faster-than-light travel ... or will the company hit those speeds once it has enough money from investors?
Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Informative)
Throw yourself at a clock, and miss. What's so hard about that?
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No, there's a finite improbability that we'll get where we want to go.
Before we can get an infinite improbability drive, we have to master finite probability physics. At that point, we can simply figure out the finite improbability of the existence of an infinite improbability drive, hook the system up to a nice, hot cup of tea, see it pop into existence, and then get beaten to death by a group of scientists who finally realize that the one thing that they really can't stand is a smartass.
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To fix this, assign all bugs with error code "42" to him.
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Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:4, Funny)
How about we figure out how to warp time first and then figure out a ship to utilize that science for the sake of travel?
Where's the fun in that?!
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
Where's the fun in that?!
Not where, when.
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The other 63/64 don't understand fractions.
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Einsteins space-time says that all that will ever be is mapped out and exists, just like XY and Z. Just because you and I see chemical entropy as elapsing time doesn't mean that the dimension of time is any different from XY and Z. If you have any special insight into what time is I am sure the world would be deeply interested to hear about it. Physics doesnt have a clue what time is, all of the math in physics says that there is absolutely no difference between what happens and what happens when you look a
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah - Here's the kicker, found on Page 2 of TFA:
Exactly how the 11th dimension would be expanded and shrunk is still unknown.
Sounds pretty similar to the way I walk - I move my feet and the Earth rotates beneath me. I'm planning on starting to fly instead, it's just maintaining altitude after lift-off. But I won't let that small detail stop me from making travel plans - I'll work that out after jumping.
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:4, Interesting)
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"Orbo is based upon time variant magnetic interactions, i.e. magnetic interactions whose efficiency varies as a function of transaction timeframes."
So. Are they selling electric motors or perpetual energy devices?
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a false dichotomy. The great thing about pseudoscience is that it's "experts" can sell you anything you want!
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Actually, wouldn't a faster-than-light device be both? Use an electric engine and a hyperdrive to get a flywheel going faster than light, then extract energy; as it slows down, it's mass increases, and consequently its kinetic energy and rotational momentum, so it'll never slow down to speed of light.
Isn't it wonderful how once you break some of physics the rest will also unravel ?-)
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all hail Orbo!
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds pretty similar to the way I walk - I move my feet and the Earth rotates beneath me. I'm planning on starting to fly instead, it's just maintaining altitude after lift-off. But I won't let that small detail stop me from making travel plans - I'll work that out after jumping.
Oh that part is relatively simple: Just throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
Oh that part is relatively simple: Just throw yourself at the ground and miss.
I never knew I had such good aim.
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That's not really what happens at all. The rotation of the earth has absolutely nothing to do with satellite orbit. With the exception of the tiny amount of matter that gets shifted by the earth's rotation, the movement of the satellite would be exactly the same if the earth did not spin at all.
The direction of the satellite's forward motion (provided by momentum and thrust to overcome what friction there is) is altered by the force of gravity toward the earth. That change in direction creates the accele
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You know what sound it makes when you jump and miss the ground?
Whoosh!
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Insightful)
So deciding to do something is the very first step in learning how to do it. Nothing is invented in reverse. Except in computing, where a lot of solutions seem to always be in search of a problem.
Your last sentence speaks the truth, but negates your argument. Yes, heavier than air flight was considered impossible, and yet boeing 747s are commonplace. But it all started from a few nutters jumping out of trees.
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11th dimension? hell, have you even tried working in 5D?
http://www.gravitation3d.com/magiccube5d/ [gravitation3d.com]
But it looks just like a DC-8... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:4, Funny)
Being half serious:
How will those, that are aware in the 11th dimension, experience this when WE expand their Universe?
"Honey, does this warpship make my ass look fat?"
And the 11th dimensional husband heads out to the 9th dimension for a drink before he answers that question.
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
"Honey, does this warpship make my ass look fat?"
--
Just because you aren't asking the question doesn't mean you aren't going to get the answer.
If those are at all related, I'm guessing you're single. If you're going to tell your wife that her ass looks like it's bending space-time, at least let her ask the question first. That's not the kind of thing you volunteer.
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
Steal their invention, then travel back in space-time and patent it.
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:4, Funny)
Write up the button pushing process part of it, get that filed and then claim prior art?
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Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Let's not put the cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory Futurama Quote (Score:5, Funny)
The Professor: Where's the device that lets to speed up or slow down the passage of time?
Fry: [pulls out a bong] Under the seat.
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Guaranteed it takes a month.
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I agree that it is way to soon to be talking about engineering designs for a warp drive as anything more than speculative curiosities. But that said, if such a drive works, it isn't time that will be warped. It is space.
The basic theory behind how that could be done was worked out in a physic's paper published in the 1990s. It requires a large source of negative energy to sustain the warp "bubble" though, and its not clear how or even if that is possible. I presume this is why "dark energy" is being bro
Is it powered by bovine excretions? (Score:5, Insightful)
The physics behind the warpship is purely theoretical, however. 'Dark energy' needs to be understood and harnessed, plus vast amounts of energy needs to be generated, meaning the warpship is a technology that could only be conceived in the far future. That said, Dr. Obousy's warpship design uses our current knowledge of spacetime and superstring theory to arrive at this futuristic concept.
Translation: We have a theory based on a lack of theory.
Re:Is it powered by bovine excretions? (Score:5, Funny)
Instead, the design relies upon our future knowledge of spacetime and superstring[1] theory. That's the nice thing about it... warping space time in a bubble around the ship can result not only in FTL travel, but also time travel. So why should I constrain myself to the currently available theory?
[1] Also a little bit of sillystring theory, but it gets messy at that point, so I won't go into details.
Hrmph (Score:5, Funny)
I think you're just stringing us along.
Re:Is it powered by bovine excretions? (Score:5, Informative)
The basic idea, which you can probably get from the article, is to construct an Alcubierre bubble or Alcubierre warp drive. The Alcubierre bubble is a genuine solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity; it is a spacetime metric which could conceivably exist. Part of the trouble with making one is that you (at least naively) need exotic matter of some sort (tachyons, negative mass, etc) in order to do it, but we obviously don't know of any exotic matter at all presently. What you really want is to make spacetime contract ahead of you and expand behind you. Well, we do know of something that makes spacetime expand: dark energy! So, if we had some way of manipulating the local strength of dark energy, then we could make spacetime expand behind us faster than normal and expand in front of us slower than normal (or maybe contract, I can't remember exactly how far that side of things went). There are apparently some suggestive features of superstring theory that indicate that we might be able to use the Casimir effect and/or cause an expansion or contraction of string theory's predicted extra compact dimensions to affect the local strength of dark energy. Here's another failure in memory, as I remember that the Casimir effect and extra dimensions were both involved, but don't remember which one was supposed to affect the other and which was supposed to affect dark energy. This is about all I can remember. My apologies that it is not more complete.
Now, all this is of course very speculative. It depends on some things being true which might or might not be true. The existence of dark energy is at least strongly indicated by astrophysical data, whether or not it has a local strength is not known at all. The Casimir effect is quite well established. Compact extra dimensions and the rest of string theory remain a very good candidate for physics, but are of course notoriously difficult to test. If all of these things eventually work out, then Richard's ideas should work quite nicely. If any of them don't, then all bets are off; I don't know how his analysis would change then.
Of course, even a few years ago when I heard all this presented, it was much more thoroughly developed. You have my poor memory to blame for a very incomplete and fuzzy account. I have no doubt he's been developing it further in the last couple of years.
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Get a basic tech right, then make a warp drive (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, I'm all for manipulating dark matter and delving into the 11th dimension as the next guy...
But we can't even get operating systems to work as we want. And car gas mileage hasn't increased much in the past few decades. [No, I don't consider it to be an huge accomplishment that some tiny 1500lb car now gets ~33mpg on the highway when my 6 year old V6 Camry gets an actual 30mpg on the highway at 70mph. Should I be thrilled if you show me a car getting 40mpg? ].
I think we have much more pressing (easier)
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duke@3drealms.com
Re:Is it powered by bovine excretions? (Score:5, Insightful)
100 years ago, many scientists thought that almost everything had been discovered, and they only needed to work out the details. Turns out there were completely new worlds hidden in those details.
We know for sure that there are gaps in our scientific knowledge. Who knows what kind of worlds are hidden in those gaps? It's too early to definitively rule out warp travel.
Right after they make the flying car. (Score:2)
Venture capitalists (Score:3, Insightful)
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What was it someone said about "a fool and his money"?
That they're soul-mates and stay together forever?
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Re:Venture capitalists (Score:5, Insightful)
What was it someone said about "a fool and his money"?
... are my best friends
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Investing in insane pipe-dreams is simply a rational hedge in a portfolio overly weighted toward sane endeavors.
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Well why not invest in this? It's bound to get a better return than most stocks nowadays!
Only solving half the problem... (Score:4, Interesting)
You still end up with global causality violation if an object can communicate outside its light cone.
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I thought causality didn't require faster than light travel to be impossible, only travelling backwards in time at more than 1s/s (i.e. cancelling the normal flow of time out and stopping) to be impossible?
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If you can travel faster than light, then you should, by our current scientific understanding (general relativity) be able to travel backward in time. If you can send a message faster than light, then you should be able to send that message back in time.
It's a bit tough to explain, and it would help to be able to give a diagram, but it has to do with the "light cone" the GP post refers to. If you can find information on a "light cone", Einstein said that anything outside of a light cone may be viewed as
Re:Only solving half the problem... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Only solving half the problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Didn't Novikov solve that problem [wikipedia.org]?
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Perhaps a knowledgable phycisist can clarify: is the light cone thingy a fundamental rule necessary to make our current theories work, or is it merely a consequence following from the fact that our current theories generally do not allow for faster-than-light travel? If the latter, a warp drive wouldn't "violate" any causality rule.
Re:Only solving half the problem... (Score:5, Informative)
I'll give a couple of examples, one using special relativity and one involving some general relativity, to amplify a little on what Geoffrey Landis said above.
Let's start with a couple of definitions. An "event" in relativity means a combination of time and place. Event B is defined as lying outside event A's light cone if the distance from A to B, in light-years, is greater than the time-difference between A and B, in years.
Example #1: Suppose that faster-than-light (FTL) were possible. Then it would be possible for event A to cause event B, where B lies outside A's light cone. You could simply travel in your FTL spaceship, starting at A and ending up at B, where you'd deliver a message. But according to special relativity, the time-ordering of events is not as absolute as in classical physics, because observers in different frames of reference disagree on the flow of time. Suppose the original setup was described according to one observer, O1, and now we have a second observer, O2, who is moving relative to O1 at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. If the speed of the relative motion is high enough, then you can always get a situation where O2 says B happened before A, rather than after A. (This only happens if B is outside A's light cone.) So O1 says A caused B, but O2 says B caused A.
Example #2: In general relativity, wormhole is a possible way to travel between different places, but since time and space are treated on the same footing in general relativity, there's every reason to believe that if wormholes exist, they would also go between different times, i.e., they would be time machines. But let's suppose for the sake of argument that you come across a wormhole that only goes between different places, with both mouths being synchronized in time. This would seem like FTL without time travel. But such a wormhole can always be used for time-travel as well. One method is to use gravitational fields to accelerate one mouth of the wormhole in some direction, bring it to a stop, and then use a similar acceleration and deceleration to bring it back to where it started. When you do this, you get something exactly like the twin "paradox" of special relavitity; the wormholes' times are no longer synchronized. So now if your no-time-travel FTL has been turned into FTL with time travel.
There's nothing special about these two examples. The idea that FTL naturally makes time travel possible is tightly bound to the structure of relativity. Since time travel seems to lead to causality paradoxes (e.g., going back in time and killing yourself), the conclusion seems to be that FTL leads to paradoxes, and that makes physicists suspect that FTL isn't actually physically possible.
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Don't worry, you can just buy a causality default swap as a hedge, and then tranche the resulting multiverse into marketable reality instruments.
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What if you can only "change lanes" to other parallel dimensions, and can't "change speed" relative to our own timeline?
Then stay out of the left lane. Your slowing the rest of us down.
Scotty (Score:2)
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All characters, no gameplay (Score:2)
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Reminds me of my preteen years making dozens and dozens of D&D characters, even though I had no idea (at the time) how to play the game. But man, making those characters sure was fun....let's just do that! What's 'psyche'? I don't know, but let's roll a d20 for it! WHEE!
Sorry, Psyche is Marvel Super Heroes. You'd roll d% for it and consult the chart. Maybe you were having trouble learning the games because you were mixing the two (they were both TSR). That could have been fun... ... There are there are seven ogres surrounding you."
"Galstaff, you have entered the door to the north. You are now by yourself standing in a dark room; the pungent stench of mildew emanates from the wet dungeon walls.
"Colossus prepares to throw Wolverine with a Fastball Special"
"OGRES!?!
A consultant said it so it *must* be true (Score:4, Funny)
Well when he's done and had his turn, I've got some marvelous things to show you. I wouldn't show just anybody, it's our secret. Everyone will want one and we'll be rich and famous so get them while you can now!
Better than the Enterprise (Score:2, Insightful)
Understand your target audience (Score:5, Funny)
love the graphics (Score:2)
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No, it's DS9.
Something about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't they get anything right? (Score:3, Informative)
I told them to say warship instead of worship. Stupid spiders.
(will be downmodded before anyone gets the reference.)
I'm not against thinking outside the box (Score:5, Insightful)
but this fully speculative article will only confuse people.
I can already hear my non-scientific-inclined friends assuring that it has been demonstrated by Dr. Blah that faster-than-light travel is absolutely possible and we even have the ship ready.
When Jules Verne wrote his masterpieces he made it clear that it was scientific fiction, and people thrilled shuffling the pages. He was later called a visionary, but he did not pretend to be a scientist, merely a very intelligent writer.
It bothers me when plausibly smart people make interesting points but place them in the wrong category - nothing wrong with being smart, creative, and wild but, please, let us distinguish science from speculation.
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Science fiction is mostly about the relationship between people and technology, or people and ideas, or people and people, and how those relationships grow over time. In many cases, the main technology is a plot device, as i
Dune. (Score:2)
"with astronomical amounts of energy" (Score:5, Insightful)
"but by manipulating extra dimensions with astronomical amounts of energy dot dot dot"
Well, if we could manipulate astronomical amounts of energy, instead of sailing off to Alpha Centauri or Wolf 359, we could:
But we can't. I know this is a fun dream. But before you try to replicate the Federation, take a look at the world that they were based upon. The Earth of Roddenberry is VERY different than this one. Let us strive to achieve THAT before we strive for the fastest way off of here.
Re:"with astronomical amounts of energy" (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA #2:
"but by manipulating extra dimensions with astronomical amounts of energy dot dot dot"
Well, if we could manipulate astronomical amounts of energy, instead of sailing off to Alpha Centauri or Wolf 359, we could:
But we can't. I know this is a fun dream. But before you try to replicate the Federation, take a look at the world that they were based upon. The Earth of Roddenberry is VERY different than this one. Let us strive to achieve THAT before we strive for the fastest way off of here.
Imagine charities researching the causes you mention. Now imagine everyone giving a dollar to those causes every time someone repeats the "let's solve all the problems on Earth before we start exploring space" mantra. Those causes would then have enough money to fix all those problems, we'd have our utopia on Earth, and then we'd be free to go on exploring space.
Personally, between 6 billion of us, I think we should be capable of working on more than one project at once.
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This would seem to be very bad for the substantial portion of the world's population living on $1/day or less, as the usage of the mantra on Slashdot alone would force them to donate several dozen times their total income.
Damned Romulans (Score:2)
From TFA:
Apparently the Romulans threatened a patent infringement suit if our warp ships do that.
Much cooler than the Enterprise... (Score:2)
...which is really rather tacky looking.
William Shatner said it perfectly (Score:5, Interesting)
Futurama? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The tricky part is that the ship wouldn't actually move; space itself would move underneath the stationary spacecraft. "
FTA
"I understand how the engines work now. It came to me in a dream. The engines don't move the ship at all. The ship stays where it is, and the engines move the universe around it."
Cubert J. Farnsworth
Wormhole? (Score:2, Insightful)
This sounds somewhat like the way the "Stargate" works in Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, the main difference is this is a bubble rather than a tube between locations that are generating the "extremely large amounts of energy". We just need to find a few Zero Point Modules. Problem solved!
tsk tsk, editors (Score:4, Funny)
Whoops, you spelled his name wrong, it should be "Zephram Cochrane".
Saucer (Score:2)
That there's a flying saucer, if ever I saw one.
Wait, what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ugh, every thing said in that article is basically a re-hash of the hit parade of technologies that "sounded really good at the time, but don't really work". Casmir effect, Alcuberre warp drive, extra spatial dimensions, etc. are just things that sound neat, but practical applications of them are impossible, misunderstood, or just plain useless.
I want a warp drive as much as anyone, but I'm beginning to tire of hearing people keep spitting out the same concepts that anyone who can read the Wikipedia entries for them already knows are not practical or are probably not possible.
Vacuum energy may exist in some form, but the apparatus to generate any significant amount of it would probably take orders of magnitude more energy to operate. No break even. Virtual particles are a hypothesis based on the logic of the Uncertainty Principle, but even if this logic is not simply explained away at a latter point, one needs to only look at what apparatus is needed to demonstrate the Casmir effect to get an idea how you would need to scale in order to get anything out of it.
The warp drive not only requires us to somehow warp space time, but to actually survive in those conditions. There's only one known thing that combines significant warping of space time with a small area. We call those... black holes. Also, Alcuberre also acknowledged a number of problems with his drive including the fact that it wouldn't be able to see where it was going.
As for extra dimensions, besides the fact that most places I have read indicate that those dimensions are probably extremely tiny, they would probably require the Planck energy to explore, which no one knows if it is even possible to attain. So, you would spend an incredible amount of energy to be able to go from one side of a quark to another, maybe even quickly.
Or not at all, considering that a spatial dimension isn't just what's on the other side of a magic wardrobe. Either our 4 dimensions couldn't fit in the smaller ones, or we could, but we'd end up like 2-D Flatlanders walking around in a 3-D world. How could we interact with such a reality? How would it benefit us at all, even if we could survive the experience?
In the matter of dimensions, there are benefits we can glean from trying to understand if they are real and learning about them, and maybe even the Casmir effect would be good for something like generating antimatter or something. Having said that, planning a spaceship based on these ideas is like planning a ship to sail the Phogiston. It's gibberish, and what's more, its stale gibberish.
We dont need more horses (Score:2, Interesting)
We use cars now...because some guy decided at some point to hook up an engine to a belt to turn a wheel to make a cart go without horses.
At some point science has take the crap or get off the pot, stop endlessly theorising about doing and just try and do it.
This warpship will fly (Score:4, Funny)
I always wondered... (Score:3, Interesting)
I always wondered about Faster-then-light travel and all the muck in the universe getting in the way whilst zipping through space.
Think about it.
That galaxy might be well out of our path when that path is calculated, but where the hell will it be when we are actually passing through that area, and just how, exactly, does our mucking around with time effect our spatial relationship to other celestial bodies, especially since some of them display complex interactions with both time and space?
Wouldn't that galaxy be in a different location in space since it is in a different location in time (assuming it was moving to begin with, as Big Bang Theory suggests)? One would think we would have to map all the trajectories, and not just locations, of damn near every celestial body simply to avoid crashing into them.
But hey, since we could go forward in time, we should also be able to go backward as well, right? If that is the case, it might as well be "Full speed ahead...and pass the bong." Anything goes wrong, you just go back.
But then, I could be wrong. Or could have been...or will be...man, my head hurts.
Discover Magazine covered this (Score:4, Interesting)
It was several years ago, illustrated by Larry Gonick [larrygonick.com] in his cartoon science series, "Light Elements". Same premise, same idea, but the biggest problem that was mentioned in the cartoon, has not been mentioned in this article?
You can start the compression in front of the ship, and also start the expansion behind the ship, which will get it moving.
However, once you've generated the compression/expansion wave, its self-sustaining. That brings up the problem, just how do you get the forward compression to stop??? What sort of "signal" do you send ahead of the compression wave to nullify it and allow you to stop? According to the Discover article, it "involved some sort of 'anti-gravity'.", which so far hasn't been invented yet.
So what you've got is a one-way, warp-speed trip around existence for all of eternity.
Too Slow (Score:3, Interesting)
Warp Drive is soooo slow :-(
Stargates FTW.
(Sorry, just got a 14 day EVE trial and getting a bit too immersed).
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first
Only if you mastered time travel.
Re:Investors? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't see this venture returning capital on anything that remotely resembles "short term". As such, I envision only government entities or wealthy individuals uninterested in ROI funding a project such as this.
Honestly, what kind of question could there be about investors in this type of technology? I didn't see anything remotely relevant to a business plan in any of the links.
I didn't either, but I do see a catastrophic sense of humor failure in your post.
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Problem is the definition of FTL is assumed. Faster than light travel and even scientists think that you are talking of a speed greater than C.
it MEANS travelling to a point in space faster than travelling to it than you can at the speed of light.
If I punch a hole through space via a wormhole and travel at 45mph on a moped through the wormhole to travel a normal space distance of 600 light-years... I just traveled FTL. and THAT does not violate causality.