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Comment by natechols | Hacker News Reader

For someone used to working at nanoscale, 1µm seems enormous! There are entire free-living organisms that could fit inside that warp bubble.

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A warp bubble full of DNA could be an okay form of "FTL" communication.

Oh my! - George Takei

Think about the potential for mischief or warfare it would enable. You could warp a tiny blob of some potent toxin right into someone's body.

Fascinating.

I think we can already get that effect (tiny stuff into people some distance away) just using blow darts?

but not instantly and with very limited range.

There is a macroscale non-warp solution for that already available in the form of normal bullets. No need to make it more complex by adding microscopic warp particles.

Or toxins, for that matter.

With normal bullets the shooter has to be somewhere in the target's past light cone. With an FTL bullet the shooter could be outside the target's past light cone, which makes arranging an alibi easier.

"You see your honor, according to this spacetime diagram..."

I get the sense that it would be many other things easier as well.

In a world with warp drive, a light cone isn’t an alibi.

Bullets are loud and require you to transport a gun into the area and find a spot where you can snipe at your target, both of which could be very difficult in, for instance, an urban environment. You probably would get caught.

The poison warp bubble is much cooler and stealthier. And as someone else mentioned, you aren't restricted by the lightcone.

A warp drive is easier than a gun? I don’t think that’s likely even in the UK.

I have to save this posting somewhere. So many interesting ideas in a single place!

Also it could make wars even more obsolete then nukes make them. Yay :) But with all consequences - we should immediately start to cut down on bureaucracy ! ;)

And in case that article is not some pre- 1 April joke: how the heck you all here peoples can be so calm and "meh HFT will eat this" ??????

Cute. But over the distances where this even remotely makes sense your problem is targeting!

CIA made electric dart (instead of blobs) gun in like 1960, if not earlier with effective range of 100 meters.

or imagine a gray goo scenario where an advanced civilization shoots self replicating nanotech based microorganisms at FTL wrapped in this bubble and 'sanitize' a potential threat-planet.

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