Ultimate Tech Thread

[smartquin]

Ok, im a noob, so go easy.
How about thinking how to make the technologies seen in stargate a reality? I got some ideas for inertial dampeners, a crude 'ZPM' device, and FTL travel

Inertial dampeners/artificial gravity:
(idea 1) simply put, a rotating heavy mass. Imagine a hollow torus filled with a heavy plasma. Electromagnets on the exterior of the torus accelerate the plasma to relativistic speeds. Then, general relativity takes over by 'increasing' the mass of the plasma, and increasing the gravitational pull of the plasma. Any matter near the device would conduct itself relative to the device rather than an external gravity source. (Based on the theory of the late Proffessor Robert Foreward)

(idea 2) electrogravity: some experimental work done in the 1940's has shown that high voltage DC current, when applied to parrallel plates (ie capacitor) results in a distortion of the surrounding gravity field. Dr Townsend Brown demonstrated this technology to the US army in the early part of last century. Needless to say, that research all of a sudden stopped...

Now for ZPE...
actually, im not sure weather this is exactly ZPE, but if magnets store potential energy, and can repell against each other, why not set 3 up 120 degrees apart on an axel, use 2 additional magnets to get the axel moving, and hook it up to a generator?

and FTL travel (Faster than Light)
according to einstein, nothing can go superluminal. I rekon that is only partially true. Sure you cant travel AT 'c', but why not use quantum mechanics to get around it? If time is quantum (plank time), then all you would need is to time your acceleration so that you go from C-X kph, to C+Y kph in less than the plank time (10^-43 seconds). From there, you'll easily get up to twice 'c', before you have to accelerate more to go faster (it makes sense when you plot reletivistic effect to speed via rel=abs(1/sqrt(1-(V^2/C^2)))). The energy required is mc^2 of course, and the accelerations required to get around the light speed barrier without much reletevistic effect on mass are enormous.... until you put inertial dampeners in the vessel.

So, what have you to say people? Please, let me know what you think. If anyone else has true scientific ideas that they think can be applied to the real world, drop a post off.

[Three PhDs]

Ok, im a noob, so go easy.
How about thinking how to make the technologies seen in stargate a reality? I got some ideas for inertial dampeners, a crude 'ZPM' device, and FTL travel

Inertial dampeners/artificial gravity:
(idea 1) simply put, a rotating heavy mass. Imagine a hollow torus filled with a heavy plasma. Electromagnets on the exterior of the torus accelerate the plasma to relativistic speeds. Then, general relativity takes over by 'increasing' the mass of the plasma, and increasing the gravitational pull of the plasma. Any matter near the device would conduct itself relative to the device rather than an external gravity source. (Based on the theory of the late Proffessor Robert Foreward)

Tidal forces. Th gravity at your head would be a lot less than at your feet. I believe the term is spaghettification.

(idea 2) electrogravity: some experimental work done in the 1940's has shown that high voltage DC current, when applied to parrallel plates (ie capacitor) results in a distortion of the surrounding gravity field. Dr Townsend Brown demonstrated this technology to the US army in the early part of last century. Needless to say, that research all of a sudden stopped...

What research, do you have some more info, links, sources? I think if it were so easy that anyone could know about it (and mention it here) then it would have been very easy to test and if anyone can test it and we haven't seen a real application of it then it's likely that the reason it was dropped was because it was of no use.

Now for ZPE...
actually, im not sure weather this is exactly ZPE, but if magnets store potential energy, and can repell against each other, why not set 3 up 120 degrees apart on an axel, use 2 additional magnets to get the axel moving, and hook it up to a generator?

Because it would be a perpetual motion device and because you can't apply a force to yourself, just as I can't use my arms to lift my legs up into the air and thus fly.

and FTL travel (Faster than Light)
according to einstein, nothing can go superluminal. I rekon that is only partially true. Sure you cant travel AT 'c', but why not use quantum mechanics to get around it? If time is quantum (plank time), then all you would need is to time your acceleration so that you go from C-X kph, to C+Y kph in less than the plank time (10^-43 seconds). From there, you'll easily get up to twice 'c', before you have to accelerate more to go faster (it makes sense when you plot reletivistic effect to speed via rel=1/(1-(V^2/C^2))). The energy required is mc^2 of course, and the accelerations required to get around the light speed barrier without much reletevistic effect on mass are enormous.... until you put inertial dampeners in the vessel.

So, what have you to say people? Please, let me know what you think, or if you have any other ideas.

Perhaps the most interesting of your suggestions, but since you need time in which to accelerate and there is none between 10^-43 intervals... acceleration is impossible.

[Three PhDs]

Nobody else gonna pitch in?

[Qasim]

I saw this earlier theres not much else to say

[immhotep]

i just browsed and went 'huh!??'

[Helo]

FTL is impossible according to The Theory of Relativity, heck even light speed is impossible according to that. And we can't change that but we can get around it. How do we do that? Say you want to get from one end of a piece of paper to the other. The fastest way is a straight line, well if you bend the paper so the two points almost touch that distance is shorter then the length of the paper. And it IS possible, we havn't figured it out yet but it is. Black holes literally bend space like when you put a lead ball on the middle of a piece of paper and you hold the ends the paper bends. Then when you take the ball off it goes back to normal. So space can conform to these bends and go back to normal like memory foam. But how we do all that I have no idea and if you do well then you should be working for nasa and not on these boards. Oh I got all that from a video we watched in science class last year.

[Qasim]

The fastest way is a straight line, well if you bend the paper so the two points almost touch that distance is shorter then the length of the paper. And it IS possible

I know that theory exists but it doesnt mean that its true

[Ryuu]

(idea 2) electrogravity: some experimental work done in the 1940's has shown that high voltage DC current, when applied to parrallel plates (ie capacitor) results in a distortion of the surrounding gravity field. Dr Townsend Brown demonstrated this technology to the US army in the early part of last century. Needless to say, that research all of a sudden stopped...

I believe you are trying to describe something that is called Biefield-Brown effect or Biefield-Brown capacitor, often reffered to as a Lifter. A pair of kids experimented with this few months ago in our university. It has nothing to do with gravity. It's just a primitive version of an ion engine.

FTL is impossible according to The Theory of Relativity, heck even light speed is impossible according to that. And we can't change that but we can get around it. How do we do that? Say you want to get from one end of a piece of paper to the other. The fastest way is a straight line, well if you bend the paper so the two points almost touch that distance is shorter then the length of the paper. And it IS possible, we havn't figured it out yet but it is. Black holes literally bend space like when you put a lead ball on the middle of a piece of paper and you hold the ends the paper bends. Then when you take the ball off it goes back to normal. So space can conform to these bends and go back to normal like memory foam. But how we do all that I have no idea and if you do well then you should be working for nasa and not on these boards. Oh I got all that from a video we watched in science class last year.

What you are trying to describe is something that we call a wormhole. There is one other way to go around the speed of light limit. Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre had done some nice GTR computations and came up with something he called a warp drive. Basically you just compact the space in front of your ship and expand it behind your ship. Both concepts have one drawback however. We would need vast amounts of an exotic matter with negative mass.

[Ollock]

I believe there is also Hyperspace, though I think the actual theories pertain to Hyperspace refer to sort of 'catching a ride' through five-dimentional space or some such thing, rather than an alternate reality (StarWars) or a wormhole-esque 'tunnel' through spacetime (Stargate).

However, there are also two theories pertaining to teleportation over vast distances:

The first is quantum teleportation, whereby all particles down to the simplest in the body to be transported are entangled with a carrier particle, which is then entangled with a particle at the other end so that when the origional is annihilated, an exact copy will appear at the other end, no matter how far away in time or space. the only problem is the immense amount of energy required, as well as actually entangling particles and getting them to another location.

Then there's hole teleportation, which uses 'vaccum hole'. A hole is created around the body to be transported, thereby enclosing it in the hole, whithin which there is so called zero-space where all dimentions (including time) are zero. I'm not sure of the specifics, but at some point the hole is destroyed and the body is already at the other end. However, there must be a recieving station present, as energy fields need to be correlated so that the recieving end has the same energy potential as the sending--otherwise it ends up in a random point in space.

These are both very theoretical, though I believe quantum teleportation has been proved experimentally (on a subatomic level). We are no where near able to utilize either method practically.

[smartquin]

Ok, well the inertial dampener idea was from Robert Foreward's 'Guidlines to Anti-grav' published in the 1960's. I read it a couple of years ago and thought that it was pretty cool. But since then the paper has dissappeared from the net. If anyone could find it again I'd really appreciate it.

The electrogravity idea is found at http://www.electrogravity.com/ i can't remember which paper I read it from, but it had to do with high voltage DC capacitors (not an ion engine, that would require magnetism to accelerate ions... this uses electrogravity, according to this paper). I'm not an expert in electronics, but the only High voltage DC current that I know of is in the back of a CRT. This paper suggested voltages of a few hundred thousand volts would result in a lift of a few meters (i think). I'm going to try and find the paper again, I'll let you know when I have it.

And my FTL idea, its not a wormhole! I'm simply suggesting a way to get around the light speed barrier without having to actually cross it. Imagine that a ship is accelerating to go superluminal. At time = t0, speed=C-X, it has potential energy in the form of acceleration. In time=t0+10^-43s (plank or quantum time) the speed increases all of a sudden! What im suggesting is if you have the potential energy equalling the the mass of the vessel times c^2 PLUS a bit more, at the next quantum time interval, you would be going faster than 'c'. Plot it on a graphics calculutor, and remember that time is quantum. It should make more sense.

And the ZPE device. It does require something to start it, just like an engine needs a starter motor, but once it gets going, the magnets continue the motion ie perpetual motion. Why cant it be used to drive a generator?

I hope this clears things up a bit.

[Ollock]

And my FTL idea, its not a wormhole! I'm simply suggesting a way to get around the light spedd barrier without having to actually cross it. Imagine that a ship is accelerating to go superluminal. At time = t0, speed=C-X, it has potential energy in the form of acceleration. In time=t0+10^-43s (plank or quantum time) the speed increases all of a sudden! What im suggesting is if you have the potential energy equalling the the mass of the vessel times c^2 PLUS a bit more, at the next quantum time interval, you would be going faster than 'c'. Plot it on a graphics calculutor, and remember that time is quantum. It should make more sense.

I'm noot following. As I understand it, Relativity states that light speed cannot be achieved normally because accelerating to light speed takes INFINITE energy.

And the ZPE device. It does require something to start it, just like an engine needs a starter motor, but once it gets going, the magnets continue the motion ie perpetual motion. Why cant it be used to drive a generator?

I hope this clears things up a bit.

First, it's not a ZPE device and does not use ZPE.

Second, It would be impossible for such a machine to perpetuate itself indefinitely. Even if you were not intentionally removing energy, it would eventually lose enough momentum to stop it. Simple physics: energy cannot be created or destroyed, therefore energy cannot be gleaned from nothing.

[smartquin]

I'm noot following. As I understand it, Relativity states that light speed cannot be achieved normally because accelerating to light speed takes INFINITE energy.

First, it's not a ZPE device and does not use ZPE.

Second, It would be impossible for such a machine to perpetuate itself indefinitely. Even if you were not intentionally removing energy, it would eventually lose enough momentum to stop it. Simple physics: energy cannot be created or destroyed, therefore energy cannot be gleaned from nothing.

Yes your right Ollock, light speed does take an infinite amount of energy to attain, but if you attain it in less than the quantum unit of time (10^-43 seconds) you would have passed it. You never actually travel AT 'c' at all, but speeds less than and greater than 'c'. You therefore only require a FINITE amount of energy, figured out by E=mas for potential energy, and the mass-energy relationship E=mc^2.

As for the ZPE device, I only think of it as ZPE because its using magnetic energy from permanent magnets. It would eventually run out yes... I missed the point of saying that the bearings must be magnetic aswell, and it must be in a vacuum chamber, so that there is no physical friction at all. Even then, it will only work so long as there is magnetism in the magnets.

Its hard to explain these properly, I'll try to make some diagrams up.

PS - if you were to attain great speeds (even less than 'c'), there is still the risk of smashing into interstellar gas or dust... not very pleasent when travelling at anthing faster than 10000 kph. The point of this thread is to explore the possibilities of making advanced technology, what equations are applicable, and what engineering problems need to be overcome.

[smartquin]

Ok, I got the artical about Brown's work on electrogravity. I seems it does have something to do with ions when in atmosphere, but it is NOT an Ion Engine. http://montalk.net/science/84/the-biefeld-brown-effect

Links from here will lead you to other sites with research notes etc.

Im in the process of making some pictures of plots and equations that will hopefully allow you to get the idea's that I'm presenting.

[Three PhDs]

The first is quantum teleportation, whereby all particles down to the simplest in the body to be transported are entangled with a carrier particle, which is then entangled with a particle at the other end so that when the origional is annihilated, an exact copy will appear at the other end, no matter how far away in time or space. the only problem is the immense amount of energy required, as well as actually entangling particles and getting them to another location.

I've only ever heard of quantum teleportation over very short distances, for very small particles. Has there been any research to suggest this is a technological rather than physical shortcoming?[/QUOTE]

Ok, well the inertial dampener idea was from Robert Foreward's 'Guidlines to Anti-grav' published in the 1960's. I read it a couple of years ago and thought that it was pretty cool. But since then the paper has dissappeared from the net. If anyone could find it again I'd really appreciate it.

As would I, it appears to be quite deadly in the form you described.

And my FTL idea, its not a wormhole! I'm simply suggesting a way to get around the light speed barrier without having to actually cross it. Imagine that a ship is accelerating to go superluminal. At time = t0, speed=C-X, it has potential energy in the form of acceleration. In time=t0+10^-43s (plank or quantum time) the speed increases all of a sudden! What im suggesting is if you have the potential energy equalling the the mass of the vessel times c^2 PLUS a bit more, at the next quantum time interval, you would be going faster than 'c'. Plot it on a graphics calculutor, and remember that time is quantum. It should make more sense.

There is no "less than 10^-43 seconds". Your calculations and assertions consistently ignore that fundamental truth. Even if I were to entertain for a second that there is some lesser unit of time... it is still time. Show me, if you can, in simple mathematical terms a means of accelerating without time. Time can feature nowhere in your equation.

And the ZPE device. It does require something to start it, just like an engine needs a starter motor, but once it gets going, the magnets continue the motion ie perpetual motion. Why cant it be used to drive a generator?

Because it would be a perpetual motion device and because you can't apply a force to yourself, just as I can't use my arms to lift my legs up into the air and thus fly.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

I thought my original response had.

Yes your right Ollock, light speed does take an infinite amount of energy to attain, but if you attain it in less than the quantum unit of time (10^-43 seconds) you would have passed it.

Which. Isn't. Possible.

As for the ZPE device, I only think of it as ZPE because its using magnetic energy from permanent magnets. It would eventually run out yes... I missed the point of saying that the bearings must be magnetic aswell, and it must be in a vacuum chamber, so that there is no physical friction at all. Even then, it will only work so long as there is magnetism in the magnets.

So it only works if it's in a perfect vacuum, with no friction whatsoever... how do you intend to hook it up to a generator?

[smartquin]

There is no "less than 10^-43 seconds". Your calculations and assertions consistently ignore that fundamental truth. Even if I were to entertain for a second that there is some lesser unit of time... it is still time. Show me, if you can, in simple mathematical terms a means of accelerating without time. Time can feature nowhere in your equation.

Yes I can, and time DOES show up... I'll draw it up when I get some time later on tonight.

So it only works if it's in a perfect vacuum, with no friction whatsoever... how do you intend to hook it up to a generator?

Ever thought that the generator is PART of the device, and therefore uses magnetic bearings and is in a vacuum? I thought that was pretty self explanitory.