interfacing to hyperspace?? how?

[Keatah]

How would you "interface" hardware to hyperspace? a car uses explosions and gas pressure inside cylinders and gearboxes to spin wheels that 'react' against the ground. A jet or rocket forego the gearbox and pistons, and the explosion just pushed the whole mess forward.

So, we have metal and gas forcing each other apart here. Now, how do we connect to other dimensions or hyperspace or sub-space, or whatever?? What type of material? what type of energy? What does warp-drive, or a folding-space drive connect to? Does it even need to interface? Seems even the best phizzisists can't answer that one! heh.. I hope I made sense!

 

[Hielor]

Since hyperspace is a fictional idea, the method of interfacing to it, by necessity, must also be fictional.

Just make up whatever sounds good for whatever story you happen to be writing.

 

[ijuin]

To take the idea seriously, we would have to discover some manner of exerting a force against space directly (as opposed to exerting against matter or energy that moves through space).

 

[Epsilon]

If I'm gettin' the question correctly, it sounds like the question is something like this (in part):
"If we have a high-ISP, high-thrust drive that operates on sci-fi principles, what would it use as its reaction mass?"

Overall, this is a question that's near and dear to my heart, being a sci-fi geek - I'll share a couple of thoughts with the collective y'all.

So, what do we have that can act on spacetime in a meaningful manner, without an obvious reaction mass? Modified gravity, perhaps - I'm not getting into the technobabble that allows us to manipulate gravity, but if we put a point source in front of our ship, far enough out that it doesn't crush us, but close enough that we're pulled at a constant accelleration, we can move. Problem with this is that if we can move a gravitational point source, we can just move ourselves probably, and cut out the middle man.

We could perhaps hack something up using the background radiation of the universe as a "reaction mass". Of course, there's a very -very- little amount of mass to work with here (infinitesimal, even), but assuming sufficient technology, it could be used as a sort of a jet engine. Sort of like a Bussard Ramjet, but with the semi-evenly distributed background radiation instead of stray hydrogen.

So what if we skip the real physics altogether, and just go straight to technobabble? Well, we can pull spacetime into our engines and spit it out the back. Maybe toss "vacuum energy" into the mix for enough confusion that the only people who question it too much are the people who can be bothered to look into ZPE. ^_^

That would make it a sort of a jet engine that uses spacetime itself, eh?
How about a warp drive? That would require us to be able to surround ourselves with a bubble of another universe (essentially) where the speed of light is much higher, certain laws of physics don't apply, etc. AFICT, this is how Star Trek warp drive works.

Hyperdrive, you say? Pop yourself into another universe entirely, once again, where the speed of light doesn't apply, certain laws of physics are higher, etc. Closer to Star Wars, of course.

One I came up with all by my lonesome, what if we figure the universe to be coded in some sort of divine programming language, as per Artlav's signature line? I have a bug report! >_>
In any case, we could "set" a certain object's velocity vector to a certain value, with some sort of access to the source code and some sort of expenditure of energy to effect the change. So, say we set the value v to .6c. And then we do something to the effect of v + c. Do we break the universe, or does it go on its merry way, since we skipped (way the hell) past the defined relativistic effects, and nothing bad is defined other than the effects of Cerenkov(sp?) radiation?

Infinite Improbability Drive? Go have a cup of tea.

(warning: This is a view into how randomly I think. Sorry about that, kids.)

 

[Hielor]

If I'm gettin' the question correctly, it sounds like the question is something like this (in part):
"If we have a high-ISP, high-thrust drive that operates on sci-fi principles, what would it use as its reaction mass?"

Didn't need to read any farther than this. If you're operating on sci-fi principles, you can use anything you want as your reaction mass, or even nothing at all, according to the wishes of the author.

 

[Epsilon]

:threadjacked:

That being said - you're correct. But if you really want to have fun, you try to make it halfway believable. I could say the ship ran on football players or bloody rainbows, but who would believe that?

>_>
<_<

Sorry, inside joke for the rest of y'all.

 

[Kozak]

Didn't need to read any farther than this. If you're operating on sci-fi principles, you can use anything you want as your reaction mass, or even nothing at all, according to the wishes of the author.

No, if it is science fiction. It's called that for a reason

On-topic: you may make use of this.
<freak to_extent=crazy>

Since energy has mass, you can use [I]very[/I] high power electromagnetic
emission interference to create and support local distortions in spacetime 
(similar to quantum blackholes). By arranging interferencу maximums in right 
pattern, you can manupulate the spacetime configuration to create any 
desired effect - from tearing yourself apart to creating and supporting an Alcubierre bubble.

</freak>
Something like that.

 

[ijuin]

To be partially realistic, physicists are currently searching for the Higgs particle, which is theorized to be the root cause of inertia (this is a primary goal of the Large Hadron Collider). If we can learn to manipulate them, then perhaps we will be able to modify inertia and momentum (analogous to how discovering how to manipulate gravitons might let us manipulate gravity independent of actual rest mass). Of course, that's all on the edge of current physical theory, and actually achieving such things would be an advance on par with the discovery and manipulation of nuclear reactions in the first half of the 20th century.

 

[RisingFury]

To take the idea seriously, we would have to discover some manner of exerting a force against space directly (as opposed to exerting against matter or energy that moves through space).

Ouch...

---------- Post added at 10:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:25 AM ----------

To be partially realistic, physicists are currently searching for the Higgs particle, which is theorized to be the root cause of inertia (this is a primary goal of the Large Hadron Collider). If we can learn to manipulate them, then perhaps we will be able to modify inertia and momentum (analogous to how discovering how to manipulate gravitons might let us manipulate gravity independent of actual rest mass). Of course, that's all on the edge of current physical theory, and actually achieving such things would be an advance on par with the discovery and manipulation of nuclear reactions in the first half of the 20th century.

Ouch times two...

 

[jedidia]

Well, such a thing as "Hyperspace", as a meta-space, is highly unlikely to exist. It falls into the same cathegories as parallel universes.

thinking of Hyperspace as a different dimension doesn't make any sence either and merely reveals that the one proposing it doesn't really know what a dimension is. Dimensions are a tricky thing, some of us allready get trouble thinking in 3, it get's really tough to think in 4 and I'd dare say allmost impossible to think in more than 4. Anything beyond 4 dimensions can usually only be talked about in mathematical terms. Therefore, you can do a lot of technobabble when it comes to dimensions without anyone noticing that it's all just a big pile of rosy coloured rubbish.

Anyways, there *MIGHT* be a possibility for a warp drive, that ironically isn't too much different from the warp drive depicted in Star Trek. It's the Alcubierre drive.

The alcubierre drive founds on current theoretical physics. So it is *theoretically* possible. That means it indeed doesn't *seem* contradict any *currently known* physics. We're a far way from the stage where we could consider it a solution, and much further away from having any idea on how it could be constructed, and still further away from being able to construct it. Still, it is the only way of FTL travel that isn't shot down in advance by our physical theories, apart from wormholes.

It would do what it does by bending spacetime, contracting it in front of the ship and expanding it in its wake, thus moving the ship forward without having to aply any physical speed to it, evading relativity. However, the only thing we know of that can bend space time is gravity, or, in a wider sense, negative energy. from blackhole and wornhole theories, and from the alcubierre blueprint, it seems likely that any form of FTL-travel would include messing with spacetime, and therewith negative energy.

So, to put an answer to the question asked:

How would you "interface" hardware to hyperspace?

The answer would be: I'd use negative energy. Lots of it. Don't ask me how to produce it, other than carrying supermassive black holes around, which clearly isn't an option.

I read a theoretical recepie for an artificial wormhole once, it started with something like "make a ring of neutronium with a diameter of several lightyears, and give it a rotating velocity close to the speed of light..."

So much for practicallity :lol:

 

[ijuin]

The whole bending spacetime thing is why I think that we will need to learn to manipulate gravitons separately from mass before we will be able to achieve non-wormhole FTL travel.

 

[docabn]

The problem with warping space is that except for mathematicly we cannot even percieve a fifth dimension. (a lot of that math is suspect and largely impractical) We can only percieve the 4th dimension in a forward linear dirrection. The idea of creating a warp while believable may not truely be feasible without some radical sort of discovery.
Where developing warp fields is concerned imagine we are 2 dimensional creatures on a piece of paper. tring to figgure out how to turn ourselves so that we can travel in a third dimension. Assuming such a manuver was surviveable, short of learning to percieve the universe in a radically different way, I'm not certain we will be able to manage that sort of thing.
If we do figgure it out it could solve a large number of problems as well as create as yet unimagined complications.