Quote:
Originally Posted by Prince Charon
Not to me, due to having read (but not having the mathematics or physics knowledge to really understand) a number of magazine articles on exotic drive systems that various scientists are working on. One of the critiques I recall was that some other scientists think that while you could have a drive that warps space, you couldn't have one that exceeds the speed of light in a vacuum. Obviously I hope that they're wrong, or that there's another (not-horribly-expensive) way around the light-speed limit, but it's something that stuck in my mind, and no-one in the main discussion/development thread on SB.com objected to the title. Do you have any interest in joining SB.com, and perhaps saving me from errors like that (I really can't think of a better title, and it's a bit late to change it). |
There are ways around the "can't exceed the speed of light in a vacuum" aspect of Relativity. Isaac Arthur's
FTL03: Alcubierre Warp Drives goes into this.
The Science of Star Trek - Warp Drive gives the cliff notes on the process,
The way it works is
spacetime itself can move FTL. So a "bubble" of spacetime is formed around the ship and that piece of spacetime (with the ship inside) is moved through universe spacetime. Yes it requires some exotic things (like negative mass) that haven't been discovered but per our current models they
could exist.
I have found that many articles, even by scientists, over look this method of FTL and over focus on the ship
itself going FTL. But from the standpoint of it own little bubble of spacetime
the ship doesn't move at all.
It is the bubble of spacetime with the ship inside of it that is going FTL.
This differs from hyperdrive FTL which is basically a way to create wormholes allowing one to bypass normal spacetime.
As side note I have added Isaac Arthur's channel as an additional material option for ''GURPS Space'' in the GURPSwiki article.
Edit: I followed your advice adding the relevant points to the thread and got "This message is awaiting moderator approval, and is invisible to normal visitors."
With pre moderation over on that site the no one challenged/contested argument falls to pieces; they could have been dozens of challenges that for whatever reason didn't pass the moderator. So the argument no one challenged/contested this and anything like it regarding posts over on spacebattles is deader then the Passenger Pigeon