A person is always driven by a craving for the unknown; he even has a special neurotransmitter - dopamine, which is a chemical motivator for obtaining information. The brain constantly needs a stream of new data, and even if this data is not needed for survival, it just so happens that there is a mechanism and it would be a sin not to use it.
In the article below, I would like to outline the sci-fi ways to travel to distant stars and galaxies that are currently available within the framework of scientific theories and hypotheses.
In the face of the cosmos, most human affairs seem insignificant, even trifling. Carl Sagan, 1980
Each person at least once in his life raised his head up, on a warm summer evening and watched the stars. The depth of space attracts and causes awe, someone, again, not for long, but someone for life.
What is there? Is there life there? And what miracles can be on these countless worlds?
Of course, the only way to go there and find out is to travel through space-time to these distant stars, planets, nebulae and even - GALAXIES.
But alas and ah - the time is not right. The only way our travel technologies have reached is not far beyond the solar system, thanks to the automatic probes of the Voyager project, of which was launched in 1977!
But to seriously talk about other worlds, we need a speed at least equal to the speed of light, and ideally superluminal.
What prevents?
Everything is simple here - just the laws of physics, and fundamental ones at that.
Law of Causality
The point is that the effect cannot precede the cause. No one has ever observed that, for example, a duck first fell dead and then the hunter shot. At speeds exceeding C, the sequence of events becomes reversed, the time tape is rewinded back. This is easy to verify from the following simple reasoning.
Let's assume that we are on a certain spaceship moving faster than light. Then we would gradually catch up with the light emitted by the source at earlier and earlier points in time. First, we would catch up with the photons emitted, say, yesterday, then the day before yesterday, then a week, a month, a year ago, and so on. If the light source were a mirror reflecting life, then we would first see the events of yesterday, then the day before yesterday, and so on. We could see, say, an old man who gradually turns into a middle-aged man, then into a young man, into a youth, into a child ... That is, time would turn back, we would move from the present to the past. Cause and effect would then be reversed.
Old Albert's restrictions
In addition to the problem of causality, nature has set even more stringent conditions: movement is unattainable not only at superluminal speed, but also at a speed equal to the speed of light - you can only reach it approach. It follows from the theory of relativity that increase in speed three circumstances arise: weight increases moving object, its size decreases in the direction of movement and time slows down on this object (from the point of view of an external "resting" observer). At ordinary speeds, these changes are negligible, but as we approach the speed of light, they become more and more noticeable, and in the limit - at a speed equal to C - the mass becomes infinitely large, the object completely loses its size in the direction of motion and time On him stops. Therefore, no material body can reach the speed of light. Only light itself has such speed! (And also an “all-penetrating” particle - a neutrino, which, like a photon, cannot move at a speed less than C.
In general, in addition to what is described above, there are many problems, for example, at near-light speed, when an object weighing 1 kg collides with a grain of sand, such an amount of energy is released that allows 10 thousand tons of steel to be turned into steam in 1 second. If we compare this with the real mass of the starship, then the power of the explosion will be equal to or exceed the power of nuclear processes occurring on the Sun.
But the smart one will not go uphill, the smart one will bypass the mountain, because the laws are there to be broken ... I’m kidding, you can’t break the laws, but science fiction (and near-science) offers us ways to move around the principles of SRT.
Ways of superluminal movement in space-time
Einstein-Rosen bridges
, also known as wormholes or wormholes, are perhaps the most well-known means of interstellar travel - and most likely actually exist. Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity predicted the existence of wormholes, although they have yet to be detected.
In simple terms, the Einstein-Rosen bridge is a tunnel in space caused by the warping of space-time. Massive objects like stars or black holes warp time and space like a bowling ball warps a trampoline. A sufficiently massive object can bend space-time so much that it creates a connection between two points that are quite distant in the usual state.
Imagine a piece of paper with two dots on it. You need to get from one point to another, and if you move strictly on the surface of the paper, this "journey" will take some time. However, if we fold the sheet so that the dots coincide, and pierce it in this place with a pencil, then using the pencil as a tunnel (or bridge), we will significantly reduce the distance between the dots.
The entrance to a wormhole was often thought of as the entrance to a tunnel, which makes sense given the name. But this is a misconception. The movie "Interstellar" shows this point correctly - from the point of view of an observer in three-dimensional space, a wormhole should look like a sphere.
Wormholes are a tempting method of interstellar travel because they don't require you to exceed the speed of light. Physics tells us that nothing can travel faster than light. But with wormholes, you can overcome huge interstellar distances without violating this law.
Warp drive
Warp, FTL technology, which currently has be brought to life. Warp can safely be called the most realistic way to travel above the speed of light from all known. Let it still remain only in the form of formulas on paper. This is about .
The principle of operation stems from a way to circumvent the Special Theory of Relativity, which postulates that nothing in space can move faster than the speed of light. The “path” is that this postulate does not apply to space itself, which can shrink and stretch from various influences, for example, a gravitational field, the Warp engine compresses the space in front of the ship and expands it behind the ship, moving the bubble of ordinary space along with the ship forward .
In the Star Trek universe, such engines develop rather modest speeds by science fiction standards - the Enterprise's travels were limited to one sector of the galaxy near the Solar System (~1500 light years), took years and left a lot of blank spots and unexplored areas.
Hyperspace
Not so long ago, detailed experimental from the WMAP spacecraft about inhomogeneities in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is one of the main objects of observation in the study of our universe. When analyzing these data, a large anomaly in the angular distribution of CMB fluctuations at low harmonics was discovered. One of the explanations for this phenomenon was the theory that the topology of our universe differs from a three-dimensional plane or sphere. When considering the topology of our universe in the form of a dodecahedron, theoretical calculations closely agree with experimental data.
“A flat topologically complex three-dimensional Universe can only be built on the basis of cubes, parallelepipeds and hexagonal prisms. In the case of curved space, a wider class of figures has such properties. At the same time, the best angular spectra obtained in the WMAP experiment are consistent with the dodecahedron-shaped model of the Universe.” Mikhail Prokhorov, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, leading researcher at the Department of Relativistic Astrophysics at the Sternberg State Astronomical Institute.
Thus, the possibility of the existence of the hyperspace of the Universe, in which our limited universe is present, is indicated by theories based on practical data on cosmic microwave background radiation. However, even if hyperspace exists, some kind of special engine is needed to move through this space.
Imagine that you have a valley in front of you, and you need to get to a point beyond the valley. Since you can only move on a flat surface (in 2D space), you either have to go around the obstacle or go down into the valley, cross it, and then up. But if you have an airplane at your disposal that can move in 3-dimensional space, then you will get where you need in a straight line.
In fact, hyperspace has a metric that is different from the usual 3-dimensional space, and movement in it is similar to movement in a wormhole, only tunnels can connect not one, but several points at once that go into ordinary 3-dimensional space. Moreover, moving in hyperspace itself will be visually different from moving in a wormhole (contrary to popular illustrations), since the three-dimensional structure of the universe will "envelop" the traveler inside the hyperspace path. I think if this is possible, then the sight is truly bewitching - visible stars, nebulae or entire galactic clusters - slowly spread and stretch, changing the color palette in the course of shifting into the cosmological red zone (?).
The idea of hyperspace travel, in my opinion, was successfully filmed in the 1997 film "Contact". (based on the novel by Carl Sagan, the film was awarded the Hugo Award. 2nd place in the list of the most reliable science fiction films according to NASA). In it, the installation, the drawings of which were received by a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization caught by the heroine of the film, created manipulations with exotic energy and, as a result, “passed” the cabin with a person through the inner space of the sphere. Apparently, the cabin fell into hyperspace, into the already created "tunnel". As it turned out, there are a great many of these tunnels throughout the galaxy, and all of them were created by an older civilization. Well, this is from the words of a representative of the race, the signal of which was caught by the heroine of the film. That's the way it is guys. Personally, I have this movie in the top. But as practice shows, not everyone likes it.
Immaterial teleportation
We know that the most common explanation for teleportation is the instantaneous movement of a material object in space at an arbitrary distance.
In this context, you can also use a wormhole, but we have already talked about it, so let’s talk about a fundamentally different way.
And we are interested in teleportation of information about a substance, up to a quantum snapshot, a state.
The process is something like this: Your body is placed at point A, which scans you down to subatomic particles and their quantum state, and then digitizes a copy of you. After that, the quantum state is transmitted in a single stream via standard communication channels. But there is a problem here - this is a ban on superluminal data transmission, according to SRT, on the other hand, if science proves the existence of hypothetical particles with a negative or imaginary rest mass, such as a tachyon, information about an object can be transmitted at superluminal speed. Or maybe even with the help of gravitational waves (?). After that, at point B, the person is recreated at the quantum level and voila - he is already at the destination. I omit the arguments about the “soul” destroyed in installation A, since I am an atheist and do not take this into account (sorry).
This method is good because for quantum teleportation of a material object it is not necessary to use the curvature of space-time and expend a huge amount of energy. The problem, of course, is the initial delivery of the installation itself, which will reproduce the object at point B. But it can be delivered in longer ways, not limited to one or more human lives.
Zeroing the mass
All spaceships in the Mass Effect universe use Element Zero in one way or another, which generates the designated Mass Effect, either reducing the mass of objects around it or increasing it. Thus, it is possible to twist the Theory of Relativity and exceed the speed of light.
Ordinary travel between planets and nearby stars is carried out using FTL engines, which can only reduce the mass of the ship. For interstellar flights over long distances, Mass Relays are used - huge stations built around dense cores consisting of element zero. The relays are usually tied to one or more other relays and are capable of creating a corridor in which the mass virtually disappears, transporting the ship thousands of light years almost instantly.
Closed timelike curves
The last form of superluminal travel that we will consider seems at first glance to be the least scientific.
For 55 years, the Doctor Who series has chronicled the adventures through time and space of the Doctor and his/her human companions. What means of transportation did they use? A large blue box, known as the TARDIS (English TARDIS - Time and Relative Dimension in Space), which can transport them to any place and any time they want.
Built (or rather, bred) by the ancient race of Time Lords, TARDISes are more magical than Mass Effect technology. As the Doctor himself explained, his vehicle is a “wobbly, wobbly, temporary, temporary thing.” There seems to be some sort of delay when moving in the TARDIS - meaning it's closer to a hyperdrive than a teleporter. But essentially the TARDIS disappears here, flies through the "time vortex" and appears there. That's all you really need to know.
Or not? It turns out that the TARDIS has even more of a theoretical basis than hyperspace.
In 2013, physicists Benjamin K. Tippett and David Tsang published a paper proposing the theoretical basis for building a real time machine, i.e. way to travel to your past. The article was called "Traversable Achnronal Retrograde Domains In Spacetime" (check out the abbreviation).
Tippett and Tsang describe a time traveler in a space-time bubble that enters (essentially the same as the Einstein-Rosen bridge). Within this curve, the traveler can go anywhere on their own timeline, while inside the bubble, time seems to flow normally.
The two physicists even suggested that the timelike curves could be split and connected, opening up the possibility of traveling not only on your own timeline, but anywhere in time and space.
Well, that's about all I can offer you.
Surely I missed something or even went too far in the fantasy area. So I'm waiting for your versions in the comments.
Source: habr.com
