Real Millennium Falcon?

[Manroon]

Cool! I'll have to look at the paper. I hadn't read much on it myself, just that apparently some scientist in Mexico thought a circular ring engine would work, but it was examined and determined that it wouldn't work, for the energy reason you mentioned. Then somebody in the states I think it was re-examined the theory, and discovered that if you round the ring off sort of like a donut, it would drastically decrease the energy required. IF I'm remembering correctly. I could be wrong.

Anyways, thanks for linking that! Gonna be an interesting read!

[RogueLeader]

That's why I think it could be a spaceship; it wouldn't be that hard for an alien civilization to build a warp drive.

*goes and rereads Mass Effect: Revelation in honor of the discovery*

[Wolfknight]

I don't know...I've known a few witches in my time.

No ship! I think my Ex was a dathomir witch. LOL

[Luna]

Is that it?!

No. That was a picture from Alien.

[reiperx]

Well, it could end up being another Roswell event. Where they actually find something and then cover it up. Currently, they're just saying it is possibly a glacial rock deposit.
Seems like anything to do with aliens is extremely censored, or labeled conspiracy. Or that only crazy people believe it.

Ironically, I feel most of the world's population would acknowledge the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists, many would be quick to disregard any evidence. Even if it was a 13-mile wide ship hovering above their community.

I'm not quick to dismiss evidence, but I am skeptical of automatically jumping to a conclusion.

The issue I have with the Roswell incident is there are so few actual facts and a ton of hearsay and people adding in details. And that already happened with the Falcon incident.

I've seen a few people claiming the artist renditions are the actual pictures of it, and I've seen someone say that once they get within 200meters above it all electronics turn off (which if you actually line it against the facts its easy to disprove that part).

[Darth Nonymous]

Pile of rocks. I see nothing that indicates anything but.

[reiperx]

As cool as it would be, it's just EXTREMELY unlikely that this object is of extraterrestial origin.

Now it's getting a bit scientific. To me science is fun, for others it isn't. So feel free to ignore this post if you don't enjoy scientific considerations.

Let's start with the question, whether extraterrestial life exists. We know that life can develop under appropriate conditions; otherwise we wouldn't exist. The Milky Way alone contains a couple hundred billion stars, with a large fraction of them having planets (recent research suggests that the number of planets in the Milky Way is at least as large as the number of stars). A certain fraction of these planets will be habitable. And a fraction of these habitable planets will actually develop life. How large these fractions are is still very uncertain. But even if these fractions are tiny, with a few hundred billion stars in the Milky Way it is very probable that life has developed on a fair number of planets. When we consider the whole universe instead of just the Milky Way this probability is even higher. Given some time, we can assume that also intelligent life will develop.

So from a scientific point of view it is quite reasonable to assume the existence of extraterrestial life.

But does that mean that aliens will come to visit us?

Short answer: not likely.

Just for the fun of it, I've done some calculations. There is no sign of any intelligent extraterrestial life in our solar system. So we need to consider other solar systems. The closest planetary system is Alpha Centauri, which is 4.37 light years away; i.e. if you are travelling at the speed of light, you need 4.37 years to get there. How fast can we actually travel? I take Voyager 1 as example as it is the probe we have sent furthest away from earth. In 35 years Voyager 1 travelled 1.83×10¹⁰ km. That speed is about 18000 times slower that the speed of light. At that speed someone from Alpha Centauri would need to travel for almost 80000 years to reach us.

But let's assume the aliens have more advanced technology and can travel at one thousandth the speed of light. Then they would still need 4370 years for a one way trip to earth. We need to be realistic about the possible speed here. But even at the incredible speed of one hundredth the speed of light, it would take 437 years. And this is just the best case scenario with life existing in the closest planetary system. It's just not realistic that aliens will come to earth. It would be much more realistic for them to try to communicate with us instead of sending space ships.

So coming back to the object/rock that has been found: pretty much every explanation is much more likely than that thing being a space ship.

Theoretically we can travel at a perceived faster than the speed of light we just don't have the technology or resources to do it (pretty much works similar to how Star Trek warp works, using a bubble to warp spacetime). And I think they said theoretically, we could do 10x the speed of light which would cut the trip from Alpha Centauri down pretty much. But at least how I see it, the most likely civilizations (assuming they exist) would be closer to the center of the MilkyWay since I would assume those stars/planets are older. This isn't saying that the younger ones couldn't have more advanced civilizations (fewer extinction level events to reduce the starting from having to restart over and over, different sets of materials to work with allowing faster technological advancement, etc).

But like I said earlier, I stay skeptical of proof until further analyzed.

[reiperx]

No, I didn't take that into account. The last time I read something about warp drives, the theoretical calculations implied that the amount of energy needed for a warp engine would be higher than the total amount in the observable universe. Obviously this would make a warp engine impossible.

I didn't know about the article you mentioned. Now I have read some news articles about it. The problem with these kind of  articles is that they are usually very vague and sometimes even wrong. So I downloaded the scientific paper http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20110015936. I will read it and let you know what I think about it.

The latest one I read about says that the power requirement was much much lower (and very plausible) than original thought, the issue with now is exotic material.

[kewlkev360]

[Rina Ascura]

The most up-to-date FTL drive research was done by the NASA scientist Harold "Sonny" White. His calculations show that the energy requirement for an FTL trip to one of the closest stars would be "merely" the enegry equivalent of 100 kg of mass. This is an immense number, yet it's reasonable for future technology to produce, unlike the previous ballparks for less advanced designs, namely the mass of Jupiter or the observable universe.

It'll produce a bubble of warped space, yet this bubble will be causally disconnected from the rest of the Universe by an event horizon, forming a separate subspace. This will make the look and feel of the drive more similar to Star Wars, where you jump to hyperspace and become unobservable from the outside universe (and the outside universe becomes unobservable to you). This also means you cannot pop the bubble from inside and have to rely on an alternate method of exiting it (perhaps, exiting when it decays by itself due to instability or destabilizes due to entering a gravity gradient). There's also an issue with a flash of radiation on exit; it's caused by interstellar gas collecting on the bubble like roadkills along the way and transforming into radiation on dissolution. However, White's calculations show this radiation flash can be made manageable.

[ThreadJack]

[reiperx]

I admit, I watch that show On-Demand quite a bit. Its a terrible show, and I love how they actually call it a theory (it would be a Hypothesis at best) but its fun to watch. I liked Alien Hunters or something like that even more which is an alien version of in search of Bigfoot. Especially since they have someone on their team that disproves a majority of the things they do 'find'.

[Luna]

Why did this get moved to SW? It isn't about SW....

[Big Boss]

Why did this get moved to SW? It isn't about SW....

It mentions the millennium falcon so I felt the need to move it since it is somewhat star wars related. Plus everyone keeps mentioning starwars stuff and space travel. 

[Noriko]

Theoretically we can travel at a perceived faster than the speed of light we just don't have the technology or resources to do it (pretty much works similar to how Star Trek warp works, using a bubble to warp spacetime).

I would disagree with that. It's not just a matter of not having the technology. There are still huge theoretical issues (even if you manage to reduce the required energy) that would make a warp drive impossible. I've read the paper by Harold White and he doesn't address these issues. So it might seem to some readers that a warp drive is indeed feasible.

Let me elaborate:
The curvature of space-time can be described by the metric g_ab. But this curvature of space-time doesn't exist on its own; it is connected to the mass (or equivalently the energy) and the momentum of matter and radiation, described by the energy-momentum-tensor T_ab. So in order to curve space-time in a specific way, you need mass at the appropriate location.

Alcubierre has found a metric that could be the basis for a warp drive, but the required energy would be way to large. White has managed to reduce this energy significantly by modifying the metric.

The problem is that he only considered the total amount of energy necessary. But:

1) The mass that is needed for a warp drive needs to be negative! This would be the exotic matter that has already been mentioned in this thread. Matter with a negative mass would be radically different from everything we know. It would move in the opposite direction of the applied force. It cannot be mathematically ruled out that such exotic matter exists. But so far there is no evidence for its existence.

2) The bigger problem is that the matter needs to be at the appropriate location to create the metric. To achieve that the matter must move faster than light. So the problem of the space ship moving faster than light has been shifted to the exotic matter moving faster than light. Hypothetical particles that move faster than light are called tachyons. However, tachyons would violate causality if Lorentz invariance is assumed (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone). And Lorentz invariance has been extremely well tested. That means that the existence of tachyons is pretty much ruled out. No tachyons, no warp drive.

So even theoretically, the possibility of a warp drive is just incredibly unlikely.