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[andrea]

yes and no.

EDIT: everything beyond this point is not to be trusted. I didn't check it before posting, and I am working on memory alone.

you get a particle-anti particle pair. which poofs into existance, but it is fine because the energy in those particles is the same that will eventually be released when they collide again so at the end of the universe all this particle creation ends up even.

hawking radiation is when one of those gets separated from the other, so they won't rejoin before the big crunch or whatever.
but that, once again, is fine because antimatter will eventually find another particle to pair with, and at the end no matter is created nor destroyed.
in the middle, however, both happen.

if this sounds like insane babbling it is because I don't really know what I am taking about, beyond the most basic stuff.
and I have no clue of how that drive works, but it is several levels of cool.

[RedKing]

But wait...if the particles poof into existence, and then collide a femtosecond later, doesn't the energy released violate the law of conservation? Or does the energy poof out of existence too? And if so, where does it go?

...I'm starting to feel like Insane Clown Posse might have been on to something. FUCKING QUANTUM VACUUM, HOW DOES IT WORK?

[andrea]

they do release energy when they collide. but that just pays the energy debt created when they poofed into existance.

[10ebbor10]

But wait...if the particles poof into existence, and then collide a femtosecond later, doesn't the energy released violate the law of conservation? Or does the energy poof out of existence too? And if so, where does it go?

...I'm starting to feel like Insane Clown Posse might have been on to something. FUCKING QUANTUM VACUUM, HOW DOES IT WORK?

It depends on where the energy came from. In most cases, the energy used to create the particles comes for the natural background temperature of the universe. Hence, when the particles poof away again, the energy is kinda restored.

I think. Not sure.

[andrea]

is there a way to distinguish between full on insanity and actual quantum theory?
rereading the last posts, we seem mad. But I am fairly sure that what we all said is correct.

somebody give me back my determinist universe!

[RedKing]

Okay, that sort of makes sense. Sort of. I guess I conceptualize it as the background energy of the universe "condensing" into matter for a split second, then "evaporating" again. Since matter is really just ridiculously dense energy, thanks to Einstein.

[MonkeyHead]

Well, quantum behaviours simply seem strange as they are unlike common sense macro scale observations, but they nevertheless are "true" or observable, for a certain degree of mathematical proof. I wouldnt call it insane as such, but when I talk about "Infinite potential wells" people do tend to look at me strange.

[andrea]

yes, it isn't  insane. there is proof behind it.

but if you say anything from a quantum mechanics textbook out loud, it surely does sound crazy.

[Bauglir]

The way I'd once heard it explained is that you could think of those particle/anti-particle pairs as a single particle stuck in a time loop, but then again I am pretty sure that book was published in the late 80s or something and I haven't read it in years, so my memory could be way off on top of the facts being way off. Then presumably if you fuck with one and not the other, it just makes that time loop obnoxiously complicated.

[Euld]

yes, it isn't  insane. there is proof behind it.

but if you say anything from a quantum mechanics textbook out loud, it surely does sound crazy.

I tried that once.  It went something like:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

[Osmosis Jones]

Yeah. Quantum theory is screwed up. Best of all, it get's weirder the deeper you go.

Quantised energy levels? Piece of piss.
Particle/wave duality? A little mind bending, but not too bad.
Pertuabation theory? Uhhhh....
Quantum chromodynamics? 

[Scoops Novel]

The wake might blink in and out of existance until the oscillations are damped by some mechanism within the planck foam. You probably dont want to follow a craft making some kind of antimatter wake.

Why do i feel like we're talking about the warp? Complete with mindbending horrors therein?

[Another]

Perturbation theory just means that small effects can be simply added together to produce final results. If you want more precision - just go one level up and again sum all the linear parts of individual corrections. Sometimes you can construct a series of all the levels and find a limit to it which should coincide with the real precise answer. Other times you get infinity and have to introduce assumptions and math tricks to kill it.

Non-linear theories and mathematical anomalies (which people have special methods to calculate around) are conceptually more difficult.

[Starver]

(Actually, redoing those calculations: 1G = 9,81m/s²  c=299,792,458 m/s meaning that you need about 30*10⁶. seconds or slightly under a year to get to 1 g. Do note that this doesn't incorporate any discrepancy caused by relativistic stuff.)

Do you mean that 1g (little 'g', different from big 'G', although I can't claim to be consistent on that point myself) would take you under a year to get to 1 c?

Anyway, the 'discrepancy caused by relativistic stuff' is mostly the point.  You'd never reach 1c (either objectively or subjectively), but as you asymptotically headed c-wards (from an external POV) you'd just be continually accelerating at your chosen capability of acceleration (fuel/energy allowing) and experiencing (from your own POV) a length-distorted rest-of-the-universe universe "accelerating the other way" for a shorter period of time, as you closed in on the target quicker than you might have imagined you should without those effects...

(Obviously, after half way it'd be decelerating to a stop, and back to 'normal' dimensions, at which point you'd wonder how you got from where you did in the time you experienced.  If you were totally unaware of the concept of dilation, of course.)

[Starver]

The way I'd once heard it explained is that you could think of those particle/anti-particle pairs as a single particle stuck in a time loop, but then again I am pretty sure that book was published in the late 80s or something and I haven't read it in years, so my memory could be way off on top of the facts being way off. Then presumably if you fuck with one and not the other, it just makes that time loop obnoxiously complicated.

I know what you mean, particle goes forward from creation point to annihilation point and the anti-particle it annihilates is itself going back in time, with (from the anti-particle POV) the later point in time is the point of creation and the earlier the point of annihilation.

It needn't be a 'loop', but it can still involve bidirectional (or effectively undeterminably-directioned) time...

Imagine the following (with limitations of ASCII graphics not helping, but let's give it a go anyway.


P₊ -----------------*====== energy
                   /
                  /
                 /
                /  P_-
               /
energy =======*------------- P₊


(Noting that where I've labelled "+" could equally have been labelled "-", with the "-" changed to "+".  So particle/anti-particle could as easily be anti-particle/particle.)

Scenario 1: Particle is merrily travelling forward in time (left to right).  Spontaneous creation of a particle/anti-particle pair, from who-knows-what stock of energy, happens nearby.  The anti-particle of this pair annihilates with the pre-existing particle, paying back all the energy it was given, or borrowed.

Scenario 1a: Pretty much the same, except that everything's travelling backwards in time (right to left).  Who's to say which direction everything is moving?  (You know, as well as the troll race in Pratchett books, there actually is at least one human tribe (Amazonian?) who think of the future as being behind them and the past as in front of them... because you can see what's in the past but you can't see the future.  Not that this is relevant, just saying.)

Scenario 2: Particle travels forward until it 'reflects' at a point.  This might be due to hitting some stray energy that may (or may not) consider time to be reversed.  I don't think the universe need care about this, but it's the upper lot of energy in this diagram.  Anyway, Particle bounces back in time as an anti-particle, which then has another 'bounce' (the energy opposing this being the lower line of energy in the diagram) to travel forward again as a 'new' Anti-Anti-Particle.  Or 'Particle'.


Redking: "But wait...if the particles poof into existence, and then collide a femtosecond later, doesn't the energy released violate the law of conservation? Or does the energy poof out of existence too? And if so, where does it go?"

However you consider it (one particle or three, in the above; or one particle in an eternal back-and-forth/two particles involved in self0re-annihilation in a more standard way), it's conservation of matter+energy  Energy may becomes matter, then back to energy, and it all equals out.  Or matter's matter (whatever direction it's going) and energy is eternal in the tapestry of time, as it plays its part.

Bauglir: "Then presumably if you fuck with one and not the other, it just makes that time loop obnoxiously complicated."
It's a time loop.  (Or a time-bounce.)  If you're "fucking with it", then you're part of it, already involved in the loop, as far as anybody observing from 'outside of time' would be concerned.  At least that's one way to look at it.  The universe basically works.  Anything that didn't wouldn't be part of the viable universe, so we'd never see it.