Travel faster than the speed of light?

I have Event Horizon on DVD, just never got around to watching it. Guess I have to now.

JoeyM wrote: Sounds more like the Spacing Guild in Dune. The book said they folded space-time to reduce distances between locations.

IIRC, the thing in Dune was that they still had the engines, but didn't have computers capable of the navigation anymore due to an ancient war with sentient machines ("Thou shalt not create a machine that functions like the human mind": Orange Catholic Bible?).

The Spice was so important because it could get the navigators high enough to do the calculations in their heads. No drugs, no space travel.

One for Snowdoggie..

gimpstang wrote:

carguy123 wrote: If warp drive is possible then how soon will we be able to say "Beam me up Scotty"?

Never, unfortunately. The Uncertainty Principle dictates that one can never know the exact position and velocity of sub atomic particles. Since beaming is a dissolution of all atomic particles into energy waveforms, (according to one theory) we would never be able to reassemble the particles exactly as they were because we wouldn't be able to determine where they were.

Duh, that's why they created the Heisenberg compensator!

PHeller wrote: Sure its theoretically possible, but does anyone have any idea how to create the bubble?

I did that for Science Fair in 7th grade. Got a blue ribbon!

N Sperlo wrote: I believe the ion engine can at least achieve it.

That's not even remotely how things work, unless we're completely re-writing physics.

vwcorvette wrote:

carguy123 wrote: If warp drive is possible then how soon will we be able to say "Beam me up Scotty"?

Never, unfortunately. The Uncertainty Principle dictates that one can never know the exact position and velocity of sub atomic particles. Since beaming is a dissolution of all atomic particles into energy waveforms, (according to one theory) we would never be able to reassemble the particles exactly as they were because we wouldn't be able to determine where they were.

It is worth noting that there's some uncertainty about the Uncertainty Principle these days:

An experiment conducted at the University of Toronto has thrown a fundamental aspect of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle into doubt. For decades, we've believed that you can't measure a quantum state without inducing uncertainty — but now, we're not so sure about that.

friedgreencorrado wrote:

JoeyM wrote: Sounds more like the Spacing Guild in Dune. The book said they folded space-time to reduce distances between locations.

IIRC, the thing in Dune was that they still had the engines, but didn't have computers capable of the navigation anymore due to an ancient war with sentient machines ("Thou shalt not create a machine that functions like the human mind": Orange Catholic Bible?). The Spice was so important because it could get the navigators high enough to do the calculations in their heads. No drugs, no space travel.

Yup. Same reason everybody else had mentats (humans trained/bred to calculate like a computer.) The spacing guild were just a bit beyond that mentally and physically. ("I heard they used to be human.")

BTW, last year's picture of a tiny hydrothermal vent worm reminded a lot of people of Dune.