Going the long way

Alex · Post by **Alex** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 1:06 pm

at least we have found a way of getting that sod called Gok off the telly

Err, What or who is Gok??
Been in Oz for past 20 years and never heard of it.

Post by **Kaks** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 1:54 pm

You don't really want to know! But apparently a 'personality' as well as a 'talented designer'...

zevans · Post by **zevans** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 3:13 pm

phonebook wrote:
this is where someone from the original developement team would come in handy

Maybe we should get Poincare onto the team, if we want to understand hyperspace.

zevans · Post by **zevans** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 3:26 pm

There is no gravity "in" space... gravity is a PROPERTY of the space, and your local spacetime is warped by mass, energy, and acceleration. So if you start going to thousands of gees locally, you're actually bending spacetime in a number of ways, because of the energy you're pumping in AND the acceleration you're inducing. If you do it enough you get an Alucbierre drive which is where you've pinched off a whole bubble of spacetime which can travel relative to Earth-rest spacetime.

The Star Trek drive is almost an Alcubierre drive, and current thinking is that those would work... the problem being there is no way to switch it off. So how do you get the passengers into and out of the bubble of "different" spacetime in the first place without turning them into spaghetti?

You can switch also switch gravity off in certain directions using Cavorite... is there anything the Victorians didn't think of?

phonebook · Post by **phonebook** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 4:17 pm

ah but zevans, in mine and zbonds quest to make the Gok redundant, we only want to travel a tenth the speed of light- that should be do able without too many blowing bubbles shouldnt it?

zevans · Post by **zevans** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:50 pm

phonebook wrote:
we only want to travel a tenth the speed of light- that should be do able without too many blowing bubbles shouldnt it?

You'll be wanting a Bussard ramjet then - but it'll need to be a long trip, since you're looking at <1% slowdown at 10% of light speed. Couldn't we just have him shot? I'll be passing a Space Bar later...

Post by **Disembodied** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:57 pm

Glaswegian joke:

"Gok Wan? Whit happened tae Gok Two and Gok Three?"

phonebook · Post by **phonebook** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:18 am

hopefully they will get shot after the revolution too! LOL

zevans · Post by **zevans** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:19 am

phonebook wrote:
hopefully they will get shot after the revolution too! LOL

No, he's on TV... and the revolution will not be televised!

phonebook · Post by **phonebook** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:21 am

the great gil scot heron no less!

now there's a reason to transport narcotics

Zbond-Zbond · Post by **Zbond-Zbond** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 12:34 am

time dilation is not linear cf the amount of energy required to further accelerate a body already in motion (relative to the observer)

any traveller ages less rapidly than they would otherwise age

such a traveller arrives home younger than they would otherwise have been, not younger than when they left

recent work involving symmetrical groups and "dark" matter suggests the concept of negative velocity & hyper-symmetrical anti-particles, however

observations demonstrate that dark matter/energy nevertheless conforms to Newtonian requirements when interacting gravitationally

zevans · Post by **zevans** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 2:19 am

observations demonstrate that dark matter/energy nevertheless conforms to Newtonian requirements when interacting gravitationally

I thought they demonstrated that they DIDN'T, which is how we got to all the MOND theories...

If there is such a beast as negative energy/matter then that's just what's needed to prop open your little bubble of warp drive long enough to get into it, by the way...

Diziet Sma · Post by **Diziet Sma** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 2:52 am

Zbond-Zbond wrote:
observations demonstrate that dark matter/energy nevertheless conforms to Newtonian requirements when interacting gravitationally

Given that they can't detect either of these (possibly entirely fictional) things, but simply infer that they must be there to make the maths work out, I'm curious as to how they can make observations about what it does or does not conform to.. there is a strong flavour of circular logic about that..

pmw57 · Post by **pmw57** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:49 pm

Diziet Sma wrote:
Zbond-Zbond wrote:
observations demonstrate that dark matter/energy nevertheless conforms to Newtonian requirements when interacting gravitationally
Given that they can't detect either of these (possibly entirely fictional) things, but simply infer that they must be there to make the maths work out, I'm curious as to how they can make observations about what it does or does not conform to.. there is a strong flavour of circular logic about that..

That's the bit that's puzzled me.

The mathematical equations for things like gravity came about by observing the movement of objects and deriving formulas based on those observations.

Now that we are able to take a closer look at things, the same methedology is not being applied. Instead, many people are sticking to what they know, just as many stuck to the geocentric model of the galaxy.

All it takes is for us to improve on our imperfect understanding of gravity. See for example tensor vector scalar gravity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor-vec ... ar_gravity

Zbond-Zbond · Post by **Zbond-Zbond** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 7:11 pm

The observations are current, and preliminary results announced last year. Dark matter can be detected indirectly and its gravitational interaction - in a general sense - suggested its presence: its properties were inferred from the behaviour of normal matter in the universe.

The Newtonian element in observations took the form of a bow-wave, on an intergalactic scale, where otherwise unobservable material was interacting with observable material producing scattered light at different wavelengths, the changes in velocity producing a shock wave.

The scale of the event gives a near perfect wave front.

I'll find out where this work is available and post ref.

The standard model of physics cannot explain all observations, which motivates further enquiries and improves our understanding.

The particles we know and love were once unknown and despised. But their properties came to be understood gradually, from ancient ideas about atoms - groovy as far as they went - to modern hopes for large hadron colliders.

Since large scale observations cannot be explained using the standard model, it needs to be expanded. Or junked. Or both. One suggestion, this year, is for supersymmetrical complementary particles.

These weakly interacting massive particles would need to have properties that fitted our observations.

Electrons and positrons would have counterparts - super symmetric positrons and super symmetric electrons - in an expanded standard model.

some information will be here
http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/~amurphy/