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[Trekkin]

It's lucky, then, that the Amish are notorious Early Adopters of new scientific and technological developments!

Given the average understanding of genetics, it's only a matter of time before someone's trying to peddle Amish blood as an anti-aging cream or something.

[Jopax]

Factory farmed Amish blood, now there's a horrific but hillariously ironic concept.

[Madman198237]

In the interests of not derailing another thread any more than we already have, have a debate over the validity of FTL...or something. I lost track of what the argument actually was about.

It is still pretty noneuclidian...

Yes, so it is. Welcome to modern physics. Curved spacetime is, itself, non-Euclidian, yet it is the basis of the most important large-scale theory of physics that we have.

No amount of three-dimensional space will let a one-dimensional path be less than a one-dimensional path.

We've moved on from three dimensions, RAM.

What is far more likely from that perspective -snip for brevity-

I'm...not entirely sure you picked up on it, but we're talking about one extra dimension here. Picture the Z dimension, that dimension that protrudes out of the paper when you draw out a classic Cartesian graph (graph of x and y, with x being the horizontal axis). Now, fold the picture into a cylinder, any way you choose. Now, if you were a dot on that paper, you would have to travel pi radians times the radius of the cylinder in order to go from a point on the top to a point directly opposite it on the bottom, right? For simplicity, let's say the radius is 1 cm, and thus the point must travel ~3.142 centimeters to get from point A on top to point B on the bottom. However, now we're going to imagine that a second point is three-dimensional, and can travel along the Z dimension, travelling a distance of 2 cm (The diameter of the cylinder) to reach point B. Can we agree that this has shortened the distance you must travel?

It also doesn't apply if you go the "alternate dimensions" -snip-

Luckily for our collective sanity, none of those is on the table as a reasonable, physics-supported option, so far as I know. Just *leaving* our dimensions would probably require you to go to a new universe, which might be possible with a wormhole in the center of a black hole, but good luck, I guess. Also, good luck getting back. As for teleportation, quantum teleportation works, but can't be done faster than the speed of light and definitely isn't a good option for actual movement, since you need a complete copy of whatever you're sending to already be "there" anyway.

[smjjames]

Is there any specific method of FTL that you were discussing? You mentioned wormholes and it sort of sounds like you're talking about wormholes but you also sound like you might be talking about warp travel.

[Maximum Spin]

Is there any specific method of FTL that you were discussing? You mentioned wormholes and it sort of sounds like you're talking about wormholes but you also sound like you might be talking about warp travel.

The proximal case was Alcubierre, but we were discussing other forms as well.

[smjjames]

Unless KittyTac wants to go hard science fiction, I'd say just go with whatever you guys think is cooler for that forum game.

[Madman198237]

Oh don't worry, it's clearly not hard sci-fi at *all*. It went to a mention of false-vacuum collapse, and then things went somewhat debate-like from there.

[Trekkin]

Oh don't worry, it's clearly not hard sci-fi at *all*. It went to a mention of false-vacuum collapse, and then things went somewhat debate-like from there.

Did no one bring up the Alcubierre drive's prohibitive exotic matter requirements?

Or how it's a time machine?

[Madman198237]

I did.

However, it doesn't really matter, the other side of the argument/discussion has...dissolved. Nothing more is likely to be gained from the discussion.

[Maximum Spin]

Or how it's a time machine?

That was actually the source of the conversation.

[smjjames]

Oh don't worry, it's clearly not hard sci-fi at *all*. It went to a mention of false-vacuum collapse, and then things went somewhat debate-like from there.

Did no one bring up the Alcubierre drive's prohibitive exotic matter requirements?

Or how it's a time machine?

I thought the Alcubierre was a type of warp drive and that it doesn't time travel because it doesn't touch the time dimension or attempt to circumvent relativity?

[Trekkin]

Oh don't worry, it's clearly not hard sci-fi at *all*. It went to a mention of false-vacuum collapse, and then things went somewhat debate-like from there.

Did no one bring up the Alcubierre drive's prohibitive exotic matter requirements?

Or how it's a time machine?

I thought the Alcubierre was a type of warp drive and that it doesn't time travel because it doesn't touch the time dimension or attempt to circumvent relativity?

Causality, relativity, FTL: pick two.

Or, more informatively, anything that lets you travel from inside an event's light cone to outside it necessarily either breaks causality (if you arrive because of something somewhere it hasn't happened yet) or relativity (if you just ignore their frame of reference entirely.)

[Max™]

If you can move faster than light it isn't a matter of "time travel" being difficult, you can simply plot a course and end up in your past light cone, poof, time machine.

[smjjames]

Well yeah, if you warp somewhere from a star that just exploded, you won't see the star exploding yet at the new location, but that's not breaking physics.

Though technically a warp drive which stretches/compresses the fabric of space isn't a FTL drive in the absolute definition because you aren't physically trying to move faster than light.

If you can move faster than light it isn't a matter of "time travel" being difficult, you can simply plot a course and end up in your past light cone, poof, time machine.

The universe does this all the time already, we don't see stars exploding right at the moment they explode, we see them centuries later when the light reaches us. Betelguese could go supernova right now but we won't see it for another 640 years (give or take a year or so).

Also, this isn't quite time travel in the sense it gets portrayed in science fiction.

Also. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say light sphere than cone? I get what you meant by cone, but unless you were shining a flashlight, it'd be a sphere of everywhere from that point.

[TalonisWolf]

PTW- didn't even know Bay12 had a science thread.