OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?

[Makinus]

Renegade 13 said:
One possibility for FTL travel is other dimensions. Many theories of quantum physics predict several other dimensions, besides the 4 we know and interact with every day. If it would be possible to use those other dimensions for travel, it could be possible that distances are closer in those dimensions than in our familiar three, which doesn't actually break the light speed barrier in that dimension, but has the effect of seemingly breaking the light speed barrier in our own dimensions.

Your talk about dimensions made me remember a low-tech FTL method described in an old Sci-FI novel... I can�t remember the name of the novel or the author, but the method was very ingenuous (even if scientifically ridiculous): Mirrors!

You noticed that images in mirrors are always in opossite alignment with the real images being reflected? Something right-handed is left-handed in the mirror and vice-versa... while this have a very simple explanation in optics, in this sci-fi novel it was stated that this happened because mirrors, beyond our three physical dimensions, also reflected one additional dimension, not perceptible by any other means, and in this novel, by combining several hundred mirrors with minute adjustments among them, you can generate a "composite reflection" (in the book it was decribed as an "apparently solid block of light, floating in midair in the center of the mirrors arrangement") that would allow a physical object to transverse this "additional dimension" and appear instantly in a place light years apart... the only needed basics would be the correct alignment of the mirrors and that at least a single beam of light reach the mirrors from the place you wish to travel for... in the book they used the light of distant stars to travel to the vicinity of these stars... also, the mirrors needed to have all the same size and format and the "composite reflection" would be the exact size of the mirror, only in 3d instead of 2d.

If i remember the title of the book or even the author i�ll post here, but it was a long time ago (like 12 or 13 years ago) that i read it, and the story was a little crappy, but the FTL travel idea was what i found most interesting about the book.

Edit: some spelling errors and additional memories that i had from the book.

[Baron Munchausen]

Ed Kolis said:
If even wormholes are "handwavium-heavy" I don't know what you'd consider acceptable...

Since 'the speed of light' is a fundamental constant, and limitation, of the universe it does make one wonder just what he wants. How and why would you even expect an 'easy' way to evade or exceed the basic laws of the universe?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Suicide Junkie said:
Of course not. It takes an infinite amount of energy to make a massy object go arbitrarily close to the speed of light.

If you can manipulate gravity with arbitrary energy levels, though, wormholes and space warps are quite possible.

Er...Excessive energy levels?

I don't expect anything. Science isn't always about expecting anything, sometimes it's just about asking.

[Phoenix-D]

Baron Munchausen said:
Since 'the speed of light' is a fundamental constant, and limitation, of the universe it does make one wonder just what he wants. How and why would you even expect an 'easy' way to evade or exceed the basic laws of the universe?

Some ways of evading the laws of the universe are easier than others. That and the "laws" are our best approximations of reality.

But any form of FTL is going to be handwavium high. Best to figure out what you're using, its limitations, and the implications thereof.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Ok, then, handwavium-lower.

Picky, picky.

[Glyn]

Narf, what you need is some cheesy science!

Like the Cheese Engine it runs on cheese. It instantly displaces the ship further along it vector of travel based on the amount of cheese infused into its core. A rat�s next of complex components. It was invented by pinky the brain.

[jeffel]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned (or not directly) is the Alcubierre drive

It is the closest thing to non-hand-wavey that I know of.

It still requires the ability to manipulate "strange" matter, so there is a decent amount of hand waving. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to violate General Relativity, so there is a bonus there.

[Puke]

Baron Munchausen said:
Since 'the speed of light' is a fundamental constant, and limitation, of the universe it does make one wonder just what he wants. How and why would you even expect an 'easy' way to evade or exceed the basic laws of the universe?

the speed of light in vaccuum - when not acted on by external forces - is thought to be constant, in so far as we have the ability to measure.

we can accelerate light or decelerate it by passing it through other mediums. and every few years, vaccuum turns out to be less empty than we thought it was.

as in "oh, quantum particles seem to spontaniously generate out of nothingness" or as in "odd, there seems to be energy where there is no mass"

the easy (and rather possible with modern science) trick to FTL travel, is to slow light down to a crawl and then just go faster than it.

[Puke]

this might be more helpful towards the original question, though:

most sci-fi FTL travel relies on somehow bending / folding space. this happens in one of a few ways:

a wormhole, or warp-point, or whatever: is a stationary point in space, existing by whacky natural phenominon or created artificially or held in place by some device. it bends space between its self, and its destination point.

a jump drive (may be other names) is a portable, non-sustained version of this. its is carried on a ship and bends space from the ships location to the ships destination. it usually takes a great deal of energy, and either the range or number of uses is limited before refueling / recharging.

a warp drive (again, more names exist), is a portable constant effect space-bending device. it either lets the ship travel a short distance instantly and then repeats, or it lets the ship cross space much much faster than normal. it doesnt bend space for instant travel between very distant points, but it bends local space for quick movement, and keeps doing it constantly.

There are other methods of FTL travel that involve riding gravity waves or other whackyness, but they seem to hold even less credability than those I just described. But the VAST majority of all sci-fi FTL travel are variants of the three ideas above.

[Parasite]

Gravity waves are expected to travel at the speed of light. We have not yet successfully detected them, but the detectors we have build are not sensitive enough to detect the largest gravity waves we think exist.

While this includes a lot of handwavium, it is still a possibility that they could travel at faster than light and we could end up using them to power a ship.

We could just use Brin's Epacharch and "believe" reality away. "Beleive we could go faster than light and it will happen. Those people that claim to come from out there, I mean how do we know... They might be right.