You already inflicted tachyons on me.

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If you have any complaints about my behavior, please direct them to a brick wall.

EVO Guy - posting the same thing repeatedly will not make us care to answer you, but only have your IP banned very soon if it persists. I suggest you stop, and if you don't like the content of this topic, don't grace it with your presence.

Anyways, i'm off to church. I won't be able to answer anything for 3-4 hours

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It is not fear that will destroy you, but the absence of it.
(url="http://"http://pub51.ezboard.com/bevoadventures")EVEA Webstory Board(/url) -- (url="http://"http://roostermac.net")roostermac.net(/url)

Ok, simple facts of life that all scientists agree on, based on Einstein. No lightspeed. It is also nearly impossible to reach even close to lightspeed. You'd probably have to use more force/energy then is ever emitted by a supernova just to reach the halfway point.
Also, time travel is impossible, at least backwards beyond the establishment of a wormhole opening. FTL in speed terms is pretty much out as well. However, the concepts of squeezing, folding space, or using wormholes Are theoretically possible.
Those are the facts as we understand them, no amount of talking is ever gonna change em. Live with it.

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Life: Terminal, unrecoverable, completely useless phenomonon - Me

I believe scientists in America recently managed to get some light to travel faster than the ahem speed of light.

Apparently they shot it through a cloud of gasseous caesium or something. And the light was actually out the other side of the cloud and across the room before it had entered fully. It went back in time or something.

No I'm not making this up. I read it somewhere. I forget where.

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--

<>

That sounds like the attempt to store information in light. They shot a madulated beam into a cloud of gas, cooled the gas, which took on the pattern of the light, then heated it up and the light came out the other side with the same modulation, yet a bit later, so it effectively slowed down.

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Life: Terminal, unrecoverable, completely useless phenomonon - Me

Quote

Originally posted by scaryfish:
**I believe scientists in America recently managed to get some light to travel faster than the ahem speed of light.

Apparently they shot it through a cloud of gasseous caesium or something. And the light was actually out the other side of the cloud and across the room before it had entered fully. It went back in time or something.

No I'm not making this up. I read it somewhere. I forget where.
**

Um, yes and, more importantly, No.
The easiest explaination is that it isn't the light that going faster than light, it's the wave-form inherant in it. Imagine a bus moving at velocity X. Someone moving forward in that bus would appear, to an outside observer, to be moving forward at X+walking speed. Neat trick, but it makes no difference as he can't interact with anything ouside the bus.

That's a horribly simplistic explaination, but it will do.

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"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays." DNA
"And if it is on fire, it's probably the user's fault."

Quote

Originally posted by Harlan Quin:
**Lemme get back to you on zeropoint. Sounds like using the quantum fluctuations, but I can't see a good way to convert that to space travel.
**

Ugh. Sorry I made that statement.
For more info, though a bit dated, see http://www.padrak.co...e/ZPESCIAM.html
Here's a snip, fair use and all that:

Quote

The propulsion application depends on a speculation put forth in 1994 by Puthoff, Bernhard Haisch of Lockheed Pale Alto Research Laboratory and Alfonso Rueda of California State University at Long Beach. They suggested that inertia--the resistance that objects put up when they are accelerated--stems from the drag effects of moving through the zero-point field. Because the zeropoint field can be manipulated in quantum experiments, Puthoff reasons, it should be possible to lessen an object's inertia and hence, for a rocket, reduce the fuel burden. Puthoff and his colleagues have been trying to prove this inertia-origin hypothesis--a sensitive pendulum should be able to detect a zero-point-energy "wake" left by a moving object--but Puthoff says they have not managed to isolate their system well enough to do so.

More conventional scientists decried the channeling of NASA funds to a meeting where real science was lacking. "We hardly talked about the physics" of the proposals, complained Milonni, adding that during one of the breakout sessions "there was a guy talking about astral projection."

Certainly, there should be room for far-out, potentially revolutionary ideas, but not at the expense of solid science. "One has to keep an open mind, but the concepts I've seen so far would violate energy conservation," Milonni concludes. In sizing up zero-point-energy schemes, it may be best to keep in mind the old caveat emptor: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Keep that one in mind if you do a search on 'zeropoint' online. I kept running into perpetual motion machines, flying saucers, government conspiracy advocates, and much worse. Your mileage may vary.

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"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays." DNA
"And if it is on fire, it's probably the user's fault."

hehe, how do you know that all that farout stuff isn't usefull for solid science? And how solid is science anyway? The only way to make progress is to deny impossibility, and accept improbability, and some of those subjects are real, despite modern thinking. If you want more on the denial factor in science, look up the philosophy of Positivism. Science has taken the idea of excluding anything that doesnt fit it's theories to heart, and some of those nonconforming ideas do work.
On another subject, responding to those talking about solar sails, the sails arent necessary. NASA has discovered that by projecting a magnetic field (very easy in a vacuum like space) a spacecraft can be caught in the solar wind, and protected from it.
Heres the link. (url="http://"http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast04oct_1.htm")http://science.nasa..../ast04oct_1.htm(/url)

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Life: Terminal, unrecoverable, completely useless phenomonon - Me

Quote

Originally posted by Phaedrus De Fang:
**Science has taken the idea of excluding anything that doesnt fit it's theories to heart, and some of those nonconforming ideas do work.
**

Hey, as soon as you can demonstrate a violation of the conservation of energy, we can skip right back up to rooster's idea of using a laser fired from a ship to propel that same ship.

Yes, 'Science' has a tendancy to exclude perhaps more than it should from the realm of possible, but the easiest way around that is to prove/demonstrate something. This is how discoveries are made, and as far as I can tell, it's the way things have worked for a very long time now. Every advance goes through the "Impossible" to the "Well, maybe" stages. Good luck.

But again, most of what I found searching the web were so far off the scale of "yeah, maybe" to be ridiculous. Try (url="http://"http://www.dnai.com/~zap/")http://www.dnai.com/~zap/(/url) for an example, but only if you want your brain to hurt. Caveat lector.
<edit> incomplete url there, sorry.
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"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays." DNA
"And if it is on fire, it's probably the user's fault."

(This message has been edited by Harlan Quin (edited 06-09-2001).)

Ha, it's all in the dimensional SS. Here:

-

D/D/D/Local

or:

Local>D>D>D (> also indicates sub)

<0> = X

-

Thanks for listening. (Phoenix blasts the evil tachyons)

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"That is called a droid decoy. This is called a trap. And I'm calling you dead."
-Imp Phoenix

Since i left, several of you have again brought up the fact that the amount of energy needed to reach lightspeed is phenomenal. That is one of the reasons my laser propulsion system works better, the laser is fired and needs very little energy to maintain.

Scaryfish - All light travels at the speed of light. Hence the name. The problem is merely focusing it, which is commonly done. They are called lasers. I don't mean to be rude, but this discussion seems to be a bit too advanced for you.

Phaedrus - If you still don't understand, my point is that i realize it would take too much force. The laser requires very little energy to be fired, it is little more than the tactical lasers we use today. Thus if an extended arm shot the laser onto the back of the ship where the field was, it would push the ship just at the speed of light.

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It is not fear that will destroy you, but the absence of it.
(url="http://"http://pub51.ezboard.com/bevoadventures")EVEA Webstory Board(/url) -- (url="http://"http://roostermac.net")roostermac.net(/url)

Umm, please pardon me, but the concept of using a propulsion system where the pusher is attached to the craft is one of the most nieve ever. You cannot sail a ship by putting a fan on the back to fill your sails. It's one of the MOST BASIC ideas. If you have a laser on the back of your ship, it Will drive against the front, or whereever it is, and then it will destroy your vessel. Also, even in the case of light, as someone said in the bus example, the faster you go (assuming you get started at all) the faster the light from the laser goes, so it will not add anything to your velocity. If you doubt, talk to anyone who knows anything about science, they'll tell you it wont work, and probably have about 200 other reasons that i haven't mentioned about how it wouldn't work.

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Life: Terminal, unrecoverable, completely useless phenomonon - Me

Quote

Originally posted by SilverDragon:
**Also, if light travels at a speed that takes forever, how does it reach us?
**

It has no mass so time doesn't stand still for it.

Oh and jess... if this scares you just head on over to the Star Trek forums... now thats some scary people.

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Raptor
~If you find yourself trying to gather your thoughts ask yourself: 'How do you gather chaos...'

roostersw, your laser method will not work. I'm sorry to tell you that. We are trying to explain you, but you seem not to want to admit it. So I will try to explain again why it wouldn't work:

Basics:
When something fires something, it is pushed backwards.
When something is fired by something, it is pushed forwards.

You are counting on the second, but forgetting the first. You are then talking about an extended arm. Well, the arm fires the laser, so the arm would be pushed backwards. If you don't attach the arm to your ship you will loose it. If you attach it to your ship, then the whiole ship would be pushed backwards, as the backward push would be transmitted through the joint.

Try an experiment.
Go to an ice-skating place (the nearest to a non-friction system, like space). Take a plate with you, which will simulate your force field. Fire water with a hose against the plate (your laser firing against your force field). Your arms may be your extended arm. I bet you that you will not be pushed forward. Moreover, when you start to fire water you will begin to be pushed backwards, and once the water reaches your plate you will stop, you you will have moved on the opposite direction a short distance.

Please don't insist on your laser method. It violates the principle of conservation of energy, a basics in physics. Perhaps I'm not being able to explain it well to you, but please trust me, it will not work.

Greetings:
Juan

Ha ha. I didn't post my message twice. I was eading through the things and I saw it there twice....odd. so.....this is EVO related? That's fine by me. Ok, lightspeed, hmmm. I have no new input on this topic. Have a nice day.

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Can blatant rudeness get you kicked off? Oh well, I am as bad or worse than everyone else... Sorry

I will make only one more explanation, then we can just use this topic to discuss alternative travel methods.

Whatever the laser firing mechanism is (an arm, a jumper section, etc.), it is unnecessary, and for the sake of theory CAN just disconnect and float away. I'm trying to listen to all dispute to my theory, but you and Phaedrus have only the double force dispute remaining, which i believe i just responded to.

The ship would ride the laser, and the jumper would disconnect immediately after firing the laser and float away. It is not required to continue the laser, as it will go forever until the field dispels it by absorbing it.

Believe me, i'm not trying to be arrogant, it's just that there is a logical explanation to each of your disputes. I wanted this to be a critique, so i'm not fighting your disputes, i'm answering them.

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It is not fear that will destroy you, but the absence of it.
(url="http://"http://pub51.ezboard.com/bevoadventures")EVEA Webstory Board(/url) -- (url="http://"http://roostermac.net")roostermac.net(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by roostersw:
Since i left, several of you have again brought up the fact that the amount of energy needed to reach lightspeed is phenomenal. That is one of the reasons my laser propulsion system works better, the laser is fired and needs very little energy to maintain.

nonononono
you cant get more then 100% effiecency out of that laser. the laser would need just as much energy as anything else to reach ultra high speeds.
question: when a ship powered by a laser say, on a planet, reached near light speeds, wouldn't somthing happen with laser with the time effects of high speed? Cause if that ship was moving at the speed of light (impossible, but bare with me here) the laser would no longer reach it, because they would be going the same speed. but when the ship was aproching the speed of light, wouldn't the photons hit the ship less and less frequently until they stopped hitting it?
if this is true (i really dont know anything about this sort of thing, im only in grade 8 then wouldn't there be a very specific speed at which this sort of craft could travel?

huh, well, yea, reply to this if you can :p....

All i know to say to that is again that light always travels at the speed of light. You need not 'speed it up'...only focus it.

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It is not fear that will destroy you, but the absence of it.
(url="http://"http://pub51.ezboard.com/bevoadventures")EVEA Webstory Board(/url) -- (url="http://"http://roostermac.net")roostermac.net(/url)

Still wouldnt work. You're thinking about the wonderfull Ideal World they use in basic freshmen HS physical science. IT DOES NOT EXIST! IT CANNOT EXIST! You finally got your point across, and I must admit it does have an interesting idea. However, THERE IS NO WAY IT COULD WORK. You cannot attach yourself to light, since it has no mass, and is just waves. Also, if you could, you'd stop it immediatly. Light has the least inertia of Anything, as in it has NO carrying power AT ALL. Thus, it would not be able to pull you along.

There is something like what you're trying to talk about, but it doesn't reach nearly lightspeed. It's using a laser to lower the resistance of atmosphere, and also to power a craft. The only problem is it requires a constant laser beam. There are studies underway on this idea, and they have discovered it is necessary to have a laser that is external to the craft. You just cannot have the propulsion attached to the craft. Your idea about detaching the laser might work, as long as the laser keeps beaming at the craft to propell it.

Also, someone mentioned that as you get faster to light, it becomes more diffuse. It's called a doppler shift in sound, and the redshift in astronomy. Light is an absolute speed, at least for light, and the faster you go, the longer it takes light to catch up with you, lowering the energy. Almost all our understanding of the universe is based on that simple fact. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched to prove the redshift idea, which it did. Now don't you tell me the entire worlds intelligencia is wrong, and you're right. I think they have thought things through a lot more then you have.

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Life: Terminal, unrecoverable, completely useless phenomonon - Me

Interesting topic and ideas! But Phadeus(However you spell it) is right. Light is in waves, kind of sort of like water. You can't spray water in front of you and hold onto it because it isn't solid. However, if you droped the laser behind you(I think someone suggested this) and have it shoot the ship with a vicious amount of power, and the survived it, it WOULD propel it foreward. Or mabye if you shot the laser into a reflecting shield attached infron of the ship. There are lots of possiblities, if you have infinite energy supplies

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"Do not try to bend the spoon, that is impossible. Simply try to realize the truth." "What is that?" "There is no spoon" "There is no spoon..." Eirrrrnnn