CryptoWitch
Live From New Vegas
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User ID: 301
CryptoWitch
Live From New Vegas
26d ago
Of course; anything that works (beyond VSIMR or solar sails, as another commenter helpfully pointed out) requires some law-of-physics updates. But I will point out that this is exactly what is claimed.
A veteran of such storied programs as NASA’s Space Shuttle, the International Space Station (ISS), The Hubble Telescope, and the current NASA Dust Program, Buhler and his colleagues believe their discovery of a fundamental new force represents a historic breakthrough that will impact space travel for the next millennium.
“This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass.”
“There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before,…”
“Essentially, what we’ve discovered is that systems that contain an asymmetry in either electrostatic pressure or some kind of electrostatic divergent field can give a system of a center of mass a non-zero force component,” Buhler explained. “So, what that basically means is that there’s some underlying physics that can essentially place force on an object should those two constraints be met.”
I’m not strongly arguing for this being The Real Deal; as another commenter pointed out, put it on a satellite and prove it. Rather, my interest in this is as a thought exercise: consistent force production from electricity allows us to do all kinds of wacky stuff, up to and including interstellar travel on reasonable timeframes, pursuant to your definition of reasonable. 1G acceleration, as is claimed in this particular instance, would get us to Alpha Centauri in a little over six years; 12 years if we are slowing down at the halfway point. This is well shy of “generation ship” type speculation, and would turn intersolar travel into something feasible in a lifetime.
Now, hefty grain of salt and all that. I’m skeptical myself, and recognize this is extremely speculative. Not only are there large engineering challenges in building such a spacecraft (or proving that one of these propellantless engines can produce thrust), there are also a whole slew of known unknowns (interstellar hydrogen or small molecule impacts at an appreciable percentage of C?) and unknown unknowns.
At the same time, it also solves some problems. Consistent acceleration, likely even under 1g, removes a lot of the problems of extended stays in microgravity, and if we’re hypothesizing advanced extrasolar civilizations anyways… Then it stands to reason that we would not be the only ones who would discover such things. It would “raise the ceiling” on intrastellar travel, so to speak.
I’m happy to be able to discuss it. While my own priors are low for any individual ‘game changing technology’ coming to fruition, we do know there are yet-unexplained physics; we live in exciting days, in both the positive and negative sense, to be able to more seriously start investigating these fringes.
CryptoWitch
Live From New Vegas
27d ago
In the spirit of bringing life into the thread, I thought I’d share something a little different.
Dozens of stars show signs of hosting advanced alien civilizations
Two surveys of millions of stars in our galaxy have revealed mysterious spikes in infrared heat coming from dozens of them.
A summary won’t do it justice, and I encourage anyone interested to read the linked article; it’s not long. In short, though, researchers checked out approximately 5 million stars (in our galaxy—close enough to look well at and potentially one day visit) for anomalous ratios of infrared heat to light. The idea here is that if a star is giving off a lot of light that is being captured, it will heat whatever is doing the capturing up significantly. This is suggested to be possibly due to either unusual debris fields around these stars, which would be unexpected due to their age (most planetary collisions happening early on in a solar system’s lifetime, and these stars being older)… Or due to large amounts of sun-orbiting satellites soaking up solar power, a Dyson swarm. Our exoplanet imaging is still very much in its infancy, and we have already discovered planets that seem to bear biosignatures. The latter explanation is plausible, at least.
This is pretty far from standard culture-war fare, but I suspect that there are enough rationalists and futurists here to find it interesting. There are also a few potential links:
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- What does the future of our society look in a universe where life is entropically favorable? That is to say, what if life is not rare, and instead happens consistently whenever the right conditions are present for long enough?
This implies that there is either a way through the theorized AI apocalypse, or perhaps that silicon-based life continues growing after taking over from carbon-based life (the “biological boot loader” thesis). While I’m rather attached to my carbon-based existence, it’s at least heartening that in this scenario something is still happening after AI takes over; the spark of life hasn’t left the universe. Unless all that power is going to making paperclips, I suppose.
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- What sort of societal organization is optimal for a galaxy in which we can expect to interact with numerous alien civilizations? We have (thankfully) yet to encounter grabby aliens, but the game theory seems logical; in an environment where there are limited resources and an ever-expanding population, conflict is inevitable (by historical earth standards).
Does it make sense to enforce population control on a cosmic scale, discouraging humans from expanding to other stars to avoid conflict? Could the “dark forest” hypothesis make sense, where offense is favored over defense and civilizations hide as much as possible?
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- If we were to travel to other stars in the distant future, would the expected travel times result in human speciation, or such a long remove that cultural exchange and even biological exchange is kept to a minimum? Or is there an “optimal human”, which genetic engineering and biotech could potentially bring us towards as a local maximum?
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- Is this all bullshit, and are we alone in the universe, forevermore?
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- Does anyone have any thoughts on the spate of propellantless propulsion efforts currently being made? Somewhat like perpetual motion machines, or room temperature superconductors, or fusion… This is a topic that has very high expected returns, and thus a high expected gain in fame or financing from lying about experimental results. But I do note that fusion seems to be moving forward; while LK-99 didn’t pan out, there are still groups working on things inspired by it, and it seems like lessons learned are leading to next generation superconductors. My point here is that if the laws of physics allow it, we seem likely to eventually create it… And we are yet to discover a Theory of Everything, so who’s to say whether something like propellantless propulsion is possible?
Mods, I apologize in advance if this is insufficiently culture-war adjacent to deserve posting here. I didn’t think it worthy of its own thread, and feel like it’s perhaps healthy for the Motte to have some fresh topics as well. I’m a devoted lurker and thought I should do my part.
Edit- My list got butchered. Trying to fix it, but it seems the method I chose of writing multiple paragraphs after a question is disfavored.
Thank you, that’s helpful!
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