Travelling without Moving (G-Drives)
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Now for those of you that thought this was an entry on Jamiroquai's musical stylings I am afraid that you will probably be dissapointed as the article is more to do with travelling beyond this stellar system. It is fairly probable that other planetary systems exist even if the possibility of CHNO life evolving on them is not high, though this in itself may be untrue and there could even be Si, Silicon based lifeforms though I doubt that they resemble the man under a duvet as first proposed by Star Trek. So then with the possibility of planetary systems and indeed life at locations other than Sol it may be slightly interesting to visit them.
Most SF fans will be aware of the current popular ways to travel which are
Warp Drive
or
Hyperspace
Both of these cunningly avoid the problem of infinite energy expenditure by not going at the speed of light. Warp drive postulates using fields to push ones craft through the void, much as magnetic fields can be used to propel more earthly craft (yes its not a perfect analogy but you can get the gist). The real trick (and it'll cost you extra ;-)) comes when the speed of light is approached at this point the problems of an Einsteinian universe simply disappear as the ship simply skips over the speed of light, presumably undergoing some transition. Travel at the speed of light is attained by oscillating the speed above and below 'cee' at plank time which is the smallest measureable unit of time thus giving an average speed of 1 cee or 3x10E8 m/s (pretty quick).
Hyperspace on the other hand simply avoids the speed of light problem by wandering off to an alternate dimension where this inconvenience is not a big problem. In fact hyperspace can be by one of two methods a 'jump' where the travel takes place in one instant (perhaps this methods requires three pints and a couple packets of salted peanuts in a pub to prepare oneself, not a bad way to travel) or by travelling through this alterante dimension as one would fly through normal space but at a considerably faster rate.
However these methods can have problems in that Hyperspace either doesn't exist or we dont know how to get there, take your pick. and warp drive is sadly a little difficult to build, we have anti-matter albeit in extremely small amounts, and we can create plasma, however the critical components are missing such as Dilithium crystals and the engines themselves, which sort of puts a crimp on your travel plans.
Here then is where I postulate on a new method of travel, certainly it has been considered before and it may well have side effects. This is the G-Drive where the g is gravity. Everyone and their dog knows that space time is curved (and depending if you listen to Disaster areas accountant actually bent ;-) )and that space can be curved by gravity such phenomena as gravitational lensing for viewing stars have already been utilised. It would therefore be a natural progression to use this property to decrease the distance between two points thus allowing you to travel without moving (hence the title). The only problem being that the forces required would be extreme, and controllable, creating a huge gravitational potential in the solar system with no direction vector would cause orbital shifts with potentially chatostrophic results such as the end of all life, not a good idea. It would be necessary then to tunnel this force along the direction you wish to go pulling your destination towards you until your destination is your current location at which point the drive can be switched off and space returns to its normal curvature (hopefully). Naturally this is not just theoretical but actually impossible because the technology simply doesn't exist for the huge gravitational potentials required, but then the future is just around the corner and who knows what that may bring.
If you would like to e_mail me my address is [email protected] but please dont get in touch if its just to say there was a diminutive i in the text as I will go through this later and probably finish it off.
Most SF fans will be aware of the current popular ways to travel which are
Warp Drive
or
Hyperspace
Both of these cunningly avoid the problem of infinite energy expenditure by not going at the speed of light. Warp drive postulates using fields to push ones craft through the void, much as magnetic fields can be used to propel more earthly craft (yes its not a perfect analogy but you can get the gist). The real trick (and it'll cost you extra ;-)) comes when the speed of light is approached at this point the problems of an Einsteinian universe simply disappear as the ship simply skips over the speed of light, presumably undergoing some transition. Travel at the speed of light is attained by oscillating the speed above and below 'cee' at plank time which is the smallest measureable unit of time thus giving an average speed of 1 cee or 3x10E8 m/s (pretty quick).
Hyperspace on the other hand simply avoids the speed of light problem by wandering off to an alternate dimension where this inconvenience is not a big problem. In fact hyperspace can be by one of two methods a 'jump' where the travel takes place in one instant (perhaps this methods requires three pints and a couple packets of salted peanuts in a pub to prepare oneself, not a bad way to travel) or by travelling through this alterante dimension as one would fly through normal space but at a considerably faster rate.
However these methods can have problems in that Hyperspace either doesn't exist or we dont know how to get there, take your pick. and warp drive is sadly a little difficult to build, we have anti-matter albeit in extremely small amounts, and we can create plasma, however the critical components are missing such as Dilithium crystals and the engines themselves, which sort of puts a crimp on your travel plans.
Here then is where I postulate on a new method of travel, certainly it has been considered before and it may well have side effects. This is the G-Drive where the g is gravity. Everyone and their dog knows that space time is curved (and depending if you listen to Disaster areas accountant actually bent ;-) )and that space can be curved by gravity such phenomena as gravitational lensing for viewing stars have already been utilised. It would therefore be a natural progression to use this property to decrease the distance between two points thus allowing you to travel without moving (hence the title). The only problem being that the forces required would be extreme, and controllable, creating a huge gravitational potential in the solar system with no direction vector would cause orbital shifts with potentially chatostrophic results such as the end of all life, not a good idea. It would be necessary then to tunnel this force along the direction you wish to go pulling your destination towards you until your destination is your current location at which point the drive can be switched off and space returns to its normal curvature (hopefully). Naturally this is not just theoretical but actually impossible because the technology simply doesn't exist for the huge gravitational potentials required, but then the future is just around the corner and who knows what that may bring.
If you would like to e_mail me my address is [email protected] but please dont get in touch if its just to say there was a diminutive i in the text as I will go through this later and probably finish it off.
