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News Briefs 22-06-2009

Yes, today, I actually searched Google News for “time machine” — after daydreaming about going back to see the Parthenon in its heyday. 😉

  • Physicist Ronald Mallett thinks he’s come up with a way to build a time machine.
  • Star Trek’s warp drive is not impossible: Researchers have already found possible signatures of moving space-time.
  • Summer solstice celebration at Stonehenge draws record crowd. The Daily Mail’s fabulous photos.
  • Archaeologists discover spectacular underground quarry in the Jordan Valley north of Jericho, which they say may mark a site sacred to ancient Christians.
  • Dig at the ‘Pompeii of the New World’ in El Salvador reveals manioc was the mainstay of Maya agriculture.
  • The origins of the ‘gloriously right’ Parthenon, and the continuing outrage that half its façade is still in London.
  • The buried truths in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue tunnel, rumored to hold everything from the lost pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary to bodies dumped by mobsters.
  • Large math error means dinosaurs were actually much lighter and sleeker than previously thought. New lighter, faster T Rex could probably turn on a dime – just like your ancestral memories always warned you.
  • For hundreds of years, stories and sightings of supposedly surviving dinosaurs have come out of the jungles of central Africa. Loren Coleman asks, What if they’re mammals?
  • Cryptomundo also details recent sightings of merbeings, and scientists’ reevaluation of the fossil of what they’re now calling a ‘mystery ape’, which doesn’t fit any category of hominid or any ape category.
  • Researchers devise a more accurate method of dating ancient human migration – even when no corroborating archaeological evidence exists.
  • In New Mexico, work begins on the world’s first commercial space port.
  • Tweet me to the moon; let me play among the nerds.
  • The weirdest object in the solar system?
  • Volcanic blasts kicked off modern ice ages.
  • Earthquake trigger found in ancient rock.
  • Mind-enhancing drugs: Are they a no-brainer? Johann Hari’s personal experience.
  • Common fish species has ‘human ability’ to learn. Poor thing.
  • Greener diet – literally – reduces climate-changing burps of methane from cows. Awww – what a sweet photo.
  • Scientists have reconstructed sea level fluctuations over the past 520,000 years. Comparison with global climate data and CO2 levels in Antarctic ice cores suggests that, even at today’s CO2 levels, seas will rise much more than previous long-term projections.
  • Major polluters meet in Mexico on climate challenge. The talks come as international support is growing for a Mexican proposal to raise billions of dollars to fight climate change through a so-called ‘Green Fund.’
  • Prince Charles vindicated: Study shows talking to plants helps them grow. And, no joke, the plant that grew the most had been listening to Sarah Darwin, great-great-granddaughter of Charles, reading On the Origin of Species.
  • The plant that pretends to be ill. I wonder who thought white correction fluid might come in handy in the jungle?
  • Plants talk to each other to warn of dangerous predators.
  • Time bomb: More than 80% of the world’s wheat crop could be wiped out as UG99 fungus spreads from Africa, scientists say.
  • Bacteria found to exhibit anticipatory behavior.
  • Extreme life thrives where the livin’ ain’t easy.
  • Britain’s oldest ghost caught on camera in a prehistoric cave at Kent’s Cavern, the country’s most ancient inhabited site.

Quote of the Day:

…did you know, for example, that the Parthenon forms, if viewed from the sky, a perfect equilateral triangle with the Temple of Aphaea, on the island of Aegina, and the Temple of Poseidon, at Cape Sounion?

Christopher Hitchens, in today’s article about the ‘gloriously right’ Parthenon.

  1. Recombinant News Items
    A warp drive, particularly of the type that moves spacetime around the vehicle instead of vice versa, is in fact a time machine. It can warp around the same place instead of going far away, and the result is the same — arriving before leaving.

    Likewise, a time machine is a (probably) stationary warp drive. It remains to be seen whether detaching from spacetime results in the device taking a trajectory other than the ground it was resting on.

    Should such a device become practical, it becomes necessary to devise a measurement of its efficacy. Using c as a basis works only for flat and perfectly vacuum spacetime. Most isn’t flat and does contain enough matter to change c to a slightly different value. Far better to determine what the speed of light across a specific trajectory is. Then when a vehicle traverses that trajectory, compare its arrival time with how far light would have travelled along that trajectory in the same amount of time. This makes even more sense when it’s applied to a vehicle that stretches spacetime.

    Let’s take an example. Lets say the distance across a specific trajectory is 18 parallax seconds (parsecs; appx. 3.6 light years), such as the Kessel Run http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run . Light would require approximately 58.7 years to traverse it, more or less according to spacetime bending and matter encountered. Now, lets say there’s a warp drive vehicle that can bend spacetime so that it leaves the Si’Klaata Cluster and arrives at the Kessel region as though it were light traversing only 2/3 of that distance at the speed of light local to the trajectory.

    Such a vehicle would make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, and no mere blogging astronomer’s lack of understanding of the equivalency of the components of spacetime would make the use of a distance measurement instead of a velocity measurement less accurate and correct. Note also that if worm hole technology were part of the bargain, a distance measure such as parsecs would be by far the more appropriate measure. Run that by a physicist comfortable with thinking about ‘impossible’ technologies and see if I’m not right.

    The link above provides details regarding validation of Han Solo’s claim. His shipp apparently didn’t alter spacetime itself, but rather skirted a black hole. The same effect of spacetime bending would be possible there, and the measurement provided no less correct. Of course that’s fictional. My math is real, as much as the theoretical devices discussed are possible.

    It might occur to the curious and even just minimally math competent that making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs would take around 39 years. But if spacetime is being manipulated to traverse the distance, there’s no reason why the same device can’t alter vehicle spacetime so that the apparent time spent making the run is any arbitrary figure, including nearly instantaneous. In essence, the same device is all at once a warp drive, a time machine, and a time dilation controller. It’s all the one same effect and described by the same math.

    The recent spate of articles about possible warp drives that alter spacetime don’t mention the fact that the device need not be aboard the object transported. For testing, it can be built around a region in space, then alter the region so that it’s much smaller inside than outside. Something sent through there would arrive sooner than otherwise. Something sent at c, such as photons, would arrive before they’re sent, appearing locally to violate relativity, but not doing that with respect to the altered spacetime it actually traversed.

    What I haven’t yet considered is the amount of energy necessary to alter local spacetime to act as a warp drive. The math I know so far requires an energy density so great as to require a small star’s output for that duration. It may be that black hole slingshot trajectories, or the technological equivalent (close, counter rotating cylinders) would be the only way until a technology to control stellar output is devised.

    No, I am not the brain specialist…..
    YES. Yes I AM the brain specialist.

    1. more details
      I have heard of this concept for the last few years, I don’t know how long. 5 or 10 maybe? I think more like 10, I read about it in Asimov’s or Analog.

      [quote=DynaSoar]
      What I haven’t yet considered is the amount of energy necessary to alter local spacetime to act as a warp drive. The math I know so far requires an energy density so great as to require a small star’s output for that duration. It may be that black hole slingshot trajectories, or the technological equivalent (close, counter rotating cylinders) would be the only way until a technology to control stellar output is devised.
      [/quote]

      Ok the energy and mass involved is a significant problem. And if we assume black hole slingshots and worm holes, it gets worse: you can’t just take off from a planet and 10 minutes later slingshot or enter the worm hole. Especially with the black hole, you would take the entire planet with you.

      Another problem is that of control, especially if we use this for time travel. Presumably, with a time machine, we want to get to a certain place at a certain time.

      So we have to know where the place is going to be when (literally, when) we get there. And we can’t mess up the place in the process, by distorting space-time upon arrival.

      Have you looked into that? How much damage to the surrounding space-time does this travelling do? I mean, if you do these sorts of things in your basement, it will affect the house. No, seriously.

      —-
      It is not how fast you go
      it is when you get there.

      1. yet more details
        With the sort of technology that alters spacetime itself, I think we can assume any local “damage” would be in the form of bent spacetime. Matter, including living matter, exist in bent spacetime, and encounter changes in it without negative effects. The technology described localizes the altered space to a region only immediately surrounding the vehicle. Nothing would be affected unless it were close enough to collide. As for increased mass effects of relativistic speed, that’s avoided by this form of warp.

        Control is certainly a far more stringent problem than simple velocity equivalency. But the motor comes first, the steering and brakes only if the motor can go. In fact figuring them out will require knowing how the motor works in the practical sense. OTOH, with control over spacetime, you can make as many jumps of decreasing distance as you like, zeroing in on your target, with time dilation control making the extra “time” required to be a non-issue.

        A problem I just thought of with respect to the energy: bending spacetime requires focusing an enormous amount of energy. Unbending — putting on the brakes — requires dumping an enormous amount of energy. Where? Hopefully open space, not very near your destination. How? In open space there’s no conduction or convection and radiation from black body equivalent material requires a lot of material with a whole lot of mass. How about reaction mass? As with conventional rockets, that increases your launch energy requirement more than the braking effect it can produce. Form spacetime bubbles with the warp drive and dump the energy into it? Cool, you can run a planet on the brakes of the visitors and traders arriving. Until you get too much, and have to dump the bubbles. You end up with warped spacetime bubbles with enormous internal energies as pollution. Icky.

        No, I am not the brain specialist…..
        YES. Yes I AM the brain specialist.

        1. details, details
          [quote=DynaSoar]The technology described localizes the altered space to a region only immediately surrounding the vehicle. Nothing would be affected unless it were close enough to collide.
          [/quote]

          yes but something leaves the frame of reference, or translates to another frame. How can you limit the spaces?

          Huge barriers of energy differences, like black bubbles?
          Where the inside of the bubble is separated from the outside?

          The borders would have to be incredibly thin, and mathematically asymptotic, but not completely.

          If it was infinetely asymptotic, you would be dealing with infinete amounts of engery, or gravity, or mass, or something. And if it is infinite, then we can’t do it. Very large, yes, at least theoretically.

          If on the other hand, it just looks asymptotic until a (perhaps very large value), then the normal close form solutions won’t work. It there a tipping point that we missed?

          Or is there a discreet limit to such things as smallest space, shortest time, smallest energy, etc ?

          If you can point me at the mathematics, I will try to understand.

          —-
          It is not how fast you go
          it is when you get there.

  2. Quote:
    Scientists have

    [quote]Scientists have reconstructed sea level fluctuations over the past 520,000 years. Comparison with global climate data and CO2 levels in Antarctic ice cores suggests that, even at today’s CO2 levels, seas will rise much more than previous long-term projections.[/quote]

    So I guess scientists also reject Noah’s flood? Hard to beat for sea level rise… 😉

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