Warp Drive: Silly as Thinking People can Fly

"Warp Speed, Scotty? Star Trek's FTL Drive May Actually Work"
Jillian Scharr, Space.com (May 14, 2013)

"In the 'Star Trek' TV shows and films, the U.S.S. Enterprise's warp engine allows the ship to move faster than light, an ability that is, as Spock would say, 'highly illogical.'

However, there's a loophole in Einstein's general theory of relativity that could allow a ship to traverse vast distances in less time than it would take light. The trick? It's not the starship that's moving - it's the space around it.

In fact, scientists at NASA are right now working on the first practical field test toward proving the possibility of warp drives and faster-than-light travel. Maybe the warp drive in 'Star Trek Into Darkness,' the franchise's latest film opening this week, is possible after all. [Warp Drive: Can It Be Done? (Video)]..."

NASA working on a warp drive? That's as silly as thinking people could fly - or walk on the moon. Building a spaceship with an Alcubierre-White drive is beyond today's technology.

Building a White-Juday warp field interferometer, which is what NASA may still be working on? That's well within what humans can do, mostly with off-the-shelf hardware.

Tech, Time, and Congress

Maybe it'll take a thousand years for tech to catch up with theoretical physics. Or maybe it's a matter of decades.

If the American Congress decides to save a few dollars by scrapping the White-Juday interferometer project, someone else will almost certainly build pretty much the same equipment. Discussion of Alcubierre's equations started as a global debate, and stayed that way.

It's the Lemming's opinion that today's fast communication gets partial credit - or blame - for the 'blink and you'll miss it' pace of change in technology and science. The Lemming likes the Information Age, some folks don't, and that's another topic.

Lots of "Ifs"

Then there's quantum entanglement. It  may be communication at infinite speed, only happen at about 10,000 times speed of light, or not be inter-particle communication at all.

If quantum entanglement involves signals that travel faster than light, and if the effect can applied to matter as well as information, and if it can be scaled up to include stuff that's big enough: warp drives might not be the fastest way to get from here to there.

And that is definitely another topic. Topics.

Related posts:

• "Quantum Entanglement and a Babbling Lemming"
  (May 3, 2013)
• "Another Step Closer to a Practical Warp Drive: Maybe"
  (November 30, 2012)
• "Antimatter Rocket Motor: Physics, Straightforward; Engineering, Not So Much"
  (October 26, 2012)
• "Time, the Universe, and Space Aliens"
  (April 20, 2012)
  Particularly
  • From Theoretical Physics to Working Spaceships
• "When it's Time to Build Spaceships, People Will Build Spaceships"
  (October 4, 2009)

Lemming Tracks: Yearning for a Nice, Quiet, Dull, Humdrum Weekend

The Lemming has never been on a cruise, Caribbean or otherwise: unless you count a short voyage across Leech Lake in Minnesota; a body of water is notable for the the size of its main body, and of its leeches.

On the other hand, the Lemming feels as if few weekends have passed of late without an expedition, peregrination, run, or trek of some sort.

The journeys were necessary: the sort of activity which, although pleasant in some ways, would not be done if a practical purpose prompted purposeful processes.

Alas! Alliterative assertions accumulate! It's time for the Lemming to call it a day. Or a morning, or whatever.

The Lemming is sincerely looking forward to a nice, quiet, dull, humdrum weekend. Wait a minute - - - Oh, dear. Maybe next weekend.

Not-totally-unrelated posts:

• "Asteroid Miners"
  (January 25, 2013)
• "Lemming Tracks: Instagram; Intellectual Property; and Underage Models"
  (December 21, 2012)
• "The Lemming's Back: Or, Flight Characteristics of Wet Dust"
  (September 28, 2012)
• "Roomba Review, and Dancing Robots"
  (August 17, 2012)
• "Google's New Bike is Green: and Yellow; and Red; and Blue; and- - -"
  (April 18, 2012)

Quantum Entanglement and a Babbling Lemming

"Loophole in spooky quantum entanglement theory closed"
Tia Ghose, LiveScience, via FoxNews.com (April 22, 2013)

"The weird way entangled particles stay connected even when separated by large distances a phenomenon Albert Einstein called 'spooky' has been confirmed once again, this time with a key loophole in the experiment eliminated.

"The results from the new experiment confirm one of the wildest predictions of quantum mechanics: that a pair of 'entangled' particles, once measured, can somehow instantly communicate with each other so that their states always match...."

Quantum entanglement is really quite simple.

If two photons are entangled and Photon A is in an up-spin state, Photon B is in a down-spin state, unless Photon A is in a down-spin state and Photon B is in Montana, in which case it would be in an up-spin state: even if it was in Siberia, which isn't all that different from Montana. In terms of climate, anyway.

This isn't really so odd, since the state of one thing can affect another thing. It happens all the time. What's odd about quantum entanglement is that it happens fast. Really fast. Really, really fast.

Maybe instantly. Except that's not supposed to happen, because the speed of light is the fastest anything can go. Except for whatever happens in quantum entanglement: which may not be instant. It could be only 10,000 time faster than the speed of light.

That's still fast.

This infographic should make the basics of quantum entanglement slightly less turgid. Or, not.


(Karl Tate, via LiveScience)

Sort-of-related posts:

• "Betelgeuse, Stellar Wind, and Exploding Eggs"
  (February 8, 2013)
• "WR 104: Gamma Ray Bursts and a Musing Lemming"
  (January 4, 2013)
• "Another Step Closer to a Practical Warp Drive: Maybe"
  (November 30, 2012)
• "Faster Than the Speed of Light: Maybe"
  (November 25, 2011)