Star Trek's Warp Drive: Not Impossible | Hacker News Reader

Star Trek's Warp Drive: Not Impossible

space.com

11 pointsca98am7910 comments

This isn't new; see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Not only is it not new, it's a very fluffy article about something that's not new. In addition, serious new questions have been raised recently about this idea -- none of which are mentioned.

what would you expect? they're just trying to ride the star trek PR wave to generate new traffic. might pull in new interest for space.

Didn't I just see something a month or so ago about how scientists now think Alcubierre drive IS impossible...

Ahh yes: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23292/

How would that avoid violating Special Relativity (and giving rise to all sorts of nasty paradoxes)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity#Causality_an...

While the exact way it could happen is unclear (and whether or not it is at all possible is subject of debate) it would be analog to the way Special Relativity violates Newton's mechanics: it covers special cases that demanded new models that explain them.

SR is not a law (as Newton's laws are not "laws" in the strict sense) but a model we use to explain certain phenomena.

So, it would violate SR under certain conditions (just as SR/QM violate newtonian mechanics under certain conditions?).

Boy, we really need a unified field theory to work out the kinks in physics ... I guess this could be a chance for String theory to provide a falsifiable prediction that differs from relativity and quantum physics.

Don't worry. We will find ways to violate any unified theory we can come up with ;-)

We have to agree experiments that could falsify String Theory are long overdue. If ST physicists can't come up with something, people will start calling it "String Hypothesis".

A friend explaining to another friend why he was leaving grad school to start a startup:

"Hey, and it could actually work, so it beats studying string theory!"

"Yeah, but it could also fail. So that's a disadvantage versus string theory."

"The best thing you can say about string theory is that it's internally consistent"

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