One thing that doesn't seem clear to me is what happens when the bubble collapses - I would think nature has a trick up its sleeves for us, such as when the bubble collapses, everything inside it is annihilated. Or perhaps the bubble cannot collapse and its occupants remain trapped forever, unable to ever influence normal space-time again.
Hmm...[/quote]

That sort of happened in one episode of Star Trek TNG...

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Remember_Me_(episode)

Well if the warp drive fails, we can always use cryogenic sleep pods with the sub light engine

There's one statement that is very fishy about the thing. It's that the space around the spaceship is still, so there are no acceleration etc. If you look at the 2D graph of the bended space-time around the ship (I know it's just a 2D analogy, but they are pretty good about the topography probabilities of 3d, that's why we use them), it's clearly visible that in order to move the whole distortion is space (ie to actually travel), the space does move everywhere near the spaceship (the gridlines of the 2D do move). With the same speed as the ST-distortion.

I don't see no ripping of space time from the diagram (if the scientist just made up some art, then the liability of the whole thing gets to zero). Does it even possible to rip then to fold space back again?

If we shrink the space-time (ST) before us and expand behind us (with the size of the desired travel, so possibly the whole Universe), then we fold the ST to it's normal state again, I don't see how the spaceship would move at all. The spaceship would have to move in the distorted space anyway, and it would take the same time as it would in normal ST (the same amount of gridlines have to be passed no matter how dense or sparse they are). (Think about a blackhole. To our understanding, things will never fall into a theoretical blackhole from outside observers' viewpoint since the ST gets infinitely "dense" around it.


This whole shrink-expand thing has the fundamental thought that the ST is bended, then somehow the spacecraft detaches off the ST (hovers still above the 2D grid in the 2D analogy), then ST is bended back to normal space, then the spacecraft somehow attaches on ST again.

There's one statement that is very fishy about the thing. It's that the space around the spaceship is still, so there are no acceleration etc. If you look at the 2D graph of the bended space-time around the ship (I know it's just a 2D analogy, but they are pretty good about the topography probabilities of 3d, that's why we use them), it's clearly visible that in order to move the whole distortion is space (ie to actually travel), the space does move everywhere near the spaceship (the gridlines of the 2D do move). With the same speed as the ST-distortion.

I don't see no ripping of space time from the diagram (if the scientist just made up some art, then the liability of the whole thing gets to zero). Does it even possible to rip then to fold space back again?

If we shrink the space-time (ST) before us and expand behind us (with the size of the desired travel, so possibly the whole Universe), then we fold the ST to it's normal state again, I don't see how the spaceship would move at all. The spaceship would have to move in the distorted space anyway, and it would take the same time as it would in normal ST (the same amount of gridlines have to be passed no matter how dense or sparse they are). (Think about a blackhole. To our understanding, things will never fall into a theoretical blackhole from outside observers' viewpoint since the ST gets infinitely "dense" around it.


This whole shrink-expand thing has the fundamental thought that the ST is bended, then somehow the spacecraft detaches off the ST (hovers still above the 2D grid in the 2D analogy), then ST is bended back to normal space, then the spacecraft somehow attaches on ST again.

from my understanding of the concept of shrinking/expanding space, is that the ship still needs to move, it's just for each unit it moves, it's multiplied by the amount of shrinking/expanding of the space directly in front of it(which can be quite extensive in the emptiness of space.

I still stand by what the hell happens to particles in that distorted area(do they shrink as well?)

Well if the warp drive fails, we can always use cryogenic sleep pods with the sub light engine

Technically if you could just use ion engines with a constant acceleration of 1g. Say you're going to Alpha Centauri, for no particular reason (since it has no planets that we know of), then it would be 4.39 light years away. That would mean 10 years using conventional technology for accelerating and deaccelerating. If we used say a burst of 4g or more acceleration via an Orion engine then it might be less. Just gotta get used that much constant force. With 1g you could stand like you were on earth.

That said if you know how special relativity works everyone you knew on earth would be long gone. Time dilation would be intense.

i'm assuming that it needs to be at a constant output to maintain the warped space(although the article talks about oscillating could reduce the power needed), so that means the device powering it has to be capable of powering pretty much the entire world today...constantly.

I'm not sure what you mean by constant output - the amount given was a measurement of energy, not power, so using that amount of energy "constantly" makes no sense. Presumably it's a figure that is meant to entail a total amount of energy required, for whatever length of time they imagined would be required.

If it meant to be units of power, then the article messed up, and we have no idea what is actually meant (is that one voyager per second? One voyager per hour?)

Articles on this kind of ship pop up every year -- AFAIK, the concept stems from 1994.

[edit] I should've read the article properly -- it references 1994 in the 2nd paragraph...

I always love how when scientists have a hole in a theory, they fill it with a made up term. In this case, exotic matter. Yes, I did Google it. It is essentially a non-existent and unobtainable construct. The Wikipedia article I read even mentioned using some exotic chemistry to create new "exotic" elements. Why can't they just say that while the theory is sound, they do not know how to make it?

[quote name='slicer4ever' timestamp='1347989976' post='4981306']
i'm assuming that it needs to be at a constant output to maintain the warped space(although the article talks about oscillating could reduce the power needed), so that means the device powering it has to be capable of powering pretty much the entire world today...constantly.

I'm not sure what you mean by constant output - the amount given was a measurement of energy, not power, so using that amount of energy "constantly" makes no sense. Presumably it's a figure that is meant to entail a total amount of energy required, for whatever length of time they imagined would be required.

If it meant to be units of power, then the article messed up, and we have no idea what is actually meant (is that one voyager per second? One voyager per hour?)
[/quote]
I took the article to mean that you would need a consistant output of voyager's per second, but they never clearly state the duration that the energy must be maintained in comparison to the length of a trip. considering the device would be constantly warping space, then i'd imagine the energy output would need to be maintained over a long duration, or "constantly".

So, you don't need a creepy spice-addicted mutant pilot swimming around in a chamber to bend space?