Science |
Warp Speed
I was watching an old science fiction movie the other day and I couldn't help but laugh. Today a lot of the science fiction movies are based on events that some scientists think might be possible in the future, such as bending space to beat the light speed barrier. In this movie, which was supposed to be taking place in the middle of the 22 nd century, they were using a three stage chemical rocket to travel between galaxies. To make matters even worse, the trip took 10 days. In reality they wouldn't have even been able to reach any planets in our solar system in that time and never would have made it to another galaxy. Who ever made this film just didn't care about the facts. One of the new ideas that some scientists are putting forward is that we CAN travel faster than light. Miguel Alcubierre a Mexican scientist has stated that when Einstein created his famous theory of relatively, he never considered the existence of negative matter. This sets the business about not being able to break light speed, right on its ear.
Warp Speed The theory about bending space is very interesting and completely baffles me. The idea is that you really go almost nowhere, bringing the universe to you. This concept is so foreign to me that I do not think I can ever get my brain around it. Would this mean that we would be essentially disrupting the positions of heavenly bodies? That certainly seems impossible with our technology does it not? We are always given examples of folding a piece of paper until two points meet. The first point is where your ship is and the second point is some distant planet, or star system. Does folding space under any circumstances seem possible to you? Sure I know that we have heard it so many times that the idea has been beaten into our brains, so many of us take it as second nature, but does that mean that it will become a reality? Some people agree with me about this folding of space theory. They think that we will never be able to actually fold space, although we might be able to bend it a miniscule amount. The bending would take place if we had enough gravity at our disposal. Would this accomplish anything that would help us travel through space? Probably not. If wormholes exit then maybe we could use them in the future to travel to distant points. We might even figure out a way of surviving a trip through a black hole and come out the other end many light years away, but will we be able to bend space enough to make incredibly distant destinations become short trips? I just don't see how. Sure I know that many physicists would argue the point with me, but so what. They have never done it, they just say that it is possible. There is an old saying, “show me the money.” In other words do it if you can.
Wormhole Many people interested in space travel have been primed for this type of event becoming reality, when in truth, it may never happen because it could destroy the universe. Couldn't you just see us perfecting some incredibly powerful device that bends space and time and we knock out many stars and planets from their orbits? I personally am not worried about this because I do not believe that we will ever possess the power necessary to do anything like bending space for space travel and I believe there is only one way to accomplish these long trips and that is with more speed. When the Big Bang took place, you don't think that the expanding universe was limited by light speed do you? It wasn't. Material was being blown out at many times the speed of light. That is if you believe the Big Bang theory in the first place. For now lets assume it was correct. There was all this material that almost instantly traveled many light years. It is said that material traveled so fast, that in a fraction of a second the universe had expanded by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. When Einstein's light speed theory is applied to the Big Bang, it fails. This is known in scientific circles as "falsifiability". That is why it is called a theory and not doctrine. This makes some of us very uncomfortable. We are relying on a theory that has its flaws. Just knowing that this flaw exists means to me that light speed and beyond is a possibility. There are other problems however. We would have to travel much faster than just light speed to really get anywhere in the universe in a reasonable time.
Galaxy Let's make believe we built a star ship that is able to travel at the incredible rate of 10,000 times the speed of light. It would have to be protected from the tiniest amount of debris striking it at these incredible speeds. Can you imagine the energy that would be released by a grain of sand hitting a ship at this speed? Some sort of energy shield would be required, like a force field around our ship. We are starting to discover how to build these things now, but the work is just in its infancy. The force field would also be necessary to protect the ship's passengers from radiation. The next thing is, we would have to find out what effect this would have on the human body. It might turn out that we would have to take Herculean efforts before humans could travel this fast. This might include very special modification to the ship. Another problem is we do not know what happens to things that travel this fast. For all we know, we could break into another dimension. Assuming we are able to get up to this speed without harming the humans in the ship, we could not reach the farthest objects in a human lifetime. we are still finding objects that are so far out that our ship might never make it to them. We just keep discovering objects that are further and further away. So far the most distant object is recorded at 13.1 billion light years away, SO FAR. |
|
 |