Practical Positron Rocket Overflow Thread #2

by Paul Gilster | Oct 8, 2007 | Advanced Rocketry | 265 comments

Please use this post for further comments in the above thread, which originally appeared under the title “A Practical Positron Rocket?”

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James M. Essig on November 26, 2007 at 5:18

Hi Again George, Forrest, and other Folks;

Yet another interstellar travel idea occurred to me over the past few days over which time I have come down with flu like symptoms and a fever. So bear with me if this idea seems a little bazaar and far out.

Basically, the idea envolves a space craft attached to one or more extraordinarilly high strain, high modulus elastic bands stretched accross a very large substantially linear space truss which may be as long as several to dozens of light years + but which would probably only be built much smaller in the more near term. In this configuration, the space craft would be shoved or accellerated in accordance with the natural frequency of the elastic band while the craft sprung back and forth on the band as the band vibrated to and fro with increasing vibrational motion amplitude. Once the space craft reached its desired velocity of anywhere between 0.1 C and C – e where e becomes a vanishingly small positive number, it would be released from the string and shot out into interstellar or intergalactic space.

The best material of choice for the elastic band in such a configuration would be one that does not loose much, if any, energy in the form of internal elastic energy based heat or radiation dissipatation. The elastic ban might be made of some bazaarly strong normal density matter, or perhaps of some sort of white dwarf dense matter, exotic form nuetronium, or quarkonium etc.. It may optionally be comprised of some form of Cold Dark Matter or supersymmetric particle matter perhaps in conjunction with normal baryonic matter ranging in density from that of ordinary Earth based materials at STP, through white dwarf density materials all the way to neutron dense materials and quarkonium dense materials, to produce a normal matter/Cold Dark Matter/Supersymmetric Matter composite material that may have even more bazaar properties than either of the composite materials subcomponents: a sort of metamaterial if you will.

Using multiple linear strings composed of quarks wherein the string is one quark wide in cross section might be ideal because of the binding strong nuclear force property of quarks allows the force between quarks being pulled away from each other to increase as they are pulled away from each other initially during which at a certain distance, the elastic gluonic field lines of force exert a constant force even though the seperation of the quarks is increased. If the string is pulled to tightly, the binding energy between some or all of its quarks permits, and according to widely accepted quantumchromodynamics or QCD models, demands that new quarks are produced out of the gluonic lines of force strain energy thus allowing for the potential length of the linear series quarkonium string to increase thus permitting a longer accelleration path. As the string relaxed during rebound stages, some of the strings quarks could be removed somehow and converted to energy in order to drive the space craft to higher velocities by various propulsion mechanisms such as but not limited to: ion or electron rocket, magnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, electrohydrodynamicplasma drives, electromagnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, optical frequency photon rockets, and the like propulsion systems; field effect propulsion craft such as magnetic propulsion, gravity field propulsion, antigravity field propulsion; or spacetime warp propulsion such as warp drive.

Perhaps upon attainment of maximum vibration amplitude, upon rebound at mid cycle, part of the elastic string or the entire string could be clipped or cut so as to travel away along with the exiting space craft in such a manner that the space craft would be able to gradually reil the string in and use it for is mattergy energy content. If multiple strings where used; say for instance, two sets of equal number numbers of matter and antimatter strings, or one or more matter/antimatter composite material strings, perhaps the strings could be utilized for matter/antimatter propulsion to increase the gamma factor of a reactionary propulsion system powered craft or as a energy source for field effect propulsion craft such as magnetic propulsion craft, gravity field propulsion craft, antigravity field propulsion craft, or spacetime warp propulsion craft such as warp drive craft.

In order to set the string vibrating, perhaps the craft would have attached reactionary thrust propulsion, field effect thrust, or space time warp propulsion systems e.g.,; ion or electron rocket, magnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, electrohydrodynamicplasma drives, electromagnetohydrodynamicplasmadrives, optical frequency photon rockets, and the like propulsion systems; magnetic propulsion , gravity field propulsion, or antigravity field propulsion systems; or spacetime warp propulsion craft such as warp drive craft all possibly optionally powered by insitu mattery or real energy fields such as star light, CMBR, beamed energy or beamed massive particles, fusion or matter and/or antimatter runways, interstellar ramjets, and perhaps even the various proposed zero point fields.

The craft might optionally utilize a mechanism to react against and extract energy out of super low frequency electromagnetic fields, magnetic field fluctuations, or gravity waves. Perhaps any gravity waves utilized could be those left over as relics of the Big Bang analogous to the CMBR radiation and which are proposed as mechanisms with with to study the Big Bang from its infancy via gravitational wave detectors.

If any such elastic band type mechanism could ever be realized, probably small scale devices for launching probes or small manned space craft within the solar system for interplanetary transport would be built first. Even smaller scale devices for launching objects from the surface of the moon such as; constuction material pods and/or mined and/or processed material pods, might take the form of huge cross bows wherein the exit velocity would be on the order of a few kilometers per second commensurate with the escape velocity of the Moon with additional velocity to spare. Such a bow might be strung witt a string of carbon nanotube or perhaps even with the very high strength material Zylon which has twice to three times the tensile strength of Kevlar which has about 3 times the tensile strengh of typical high strength steels used in industry.

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
george scaglione on November 26, 2007 at 11:47

jim,again,i have to commend you,you really know how to THINK BIG !!! LOL you seem to have gone from exploring space to taking it over!!?? even with god talking to us!! by the way,i’ve heard that the next space shuttle launch is dec 6th !!! you know…nothing by comparrison with your huge ideas ,but a part of a beginning!!! those million year old societies with the super technology we all like to think about here had to begin somewhere! maybe with their own shuttle programs a loooooooooooong time ago! heck logically following your ideas,maybe we will become a species like that. thank you very much yet again,respectfully your friend george ps have you ever heard the theory that what we think of as god may be in reality a quadzillion year old alien society!!?? no offense to anyone,i know that sometimes talking about god can be threading on thin ice — just my humble opinions folks! g
James M. Essig on November 26, 2007 at 15:24

Hi George;

Thanks for the feedback and comments. I have heard of some theories wherein GOD is some outstandingly old alien society perhaps one from another realm or dimension. Very interesting thoughts to ponder indeed. Very good comments indeed George!

Just so that the general readership does not think I have intentions of leading to a space takeover, I will mention that my attitude torward dealing with any aliens we might discover in the future is one of attempting to foster the utmost cooperative relationships wherein we would ingage in scientific, philosophical, technological, culteral, and economic exchange in the most peaceful manner possible. I think it would be a grave moral crime against rational nature and the natural order if we were to somehow come accross a less technically advanced civilizaton around a nearby or moderately distant star and try to impose our religious faiths and customs on them they way the settlers of North America and South America did so to the indeginous people of these continents several hundred years ago. When we finally do run accross any ETI civilization that might be less advanced then ours (and probably many would be a lot more advanced than ours), we would have an awesome responsibility to treat the civilizations with the utmost respect and curtousy.

By the way, I am really looking foward to the scheduled December 6th shuttle launch. That space station is really getting big as they continue to add modules to it. Sounds really cool.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
forrest noble on November 26, 2007 at 16:34

George, Jim,

George, for your quadzillion year-old alien race— pick any number above 13.7 billion for the age of the universe and I think you’ll be closer to reality than the present age than BB theory asserts. The minimum age of the observable universe, according to my theory/ calculations is about 1.4 trillion yrs. The universe is also maybe countless times bigger than the part of the universe that we can see, so it could be quadrillions (that’s with 15 zeros) of years in age– although say 98% of what we can see from our earth would be roughly only 25 billion years old. The oldest parts/ stars would be evenly spread out so, accordingly there seemingly would be a few stars in our galaxy older than 25 billions yrs.–as well as within many other galaxies. Some spread-out hard- to-detect galaxies should have a higher percentage of older stars than that. As to your quadzillion year old aliens– haven’t seen any of those guys, I think they’re trying to avoid me– or maybe I’ve been stepping on them and didn’t know it. No wonder they’re avoiding me!

Jim, such catapult systems for space craft seems like a good idea for smaller bodies like the moon or anything smaller. Using the catapult material for fuel is another possibility. The first catapult system will seemingly be built on the moon. These space craft would also will need an additional fuel system.

all for now, your friend forrest
ljk on November 26, 2007 at 23:59

An advanced ETI would not have to be very old – or terribly
advanced – to fool many members of the human species into
thinking they were a deity. With people in the 21st Century
believing that tree markings and smudges on walls are signs
from God, who needs to be sophisticated?
Adam on November 27, 2007 at 8:33

Hi All

Have any of you guys investigated the interstellar potential of Clint Seward’s stable electron plasmas?

Adam
James M. Essig on November 27, 2007 at 11:26

Hi Folks;

Forrest;

I am intrigued by any notion that the universe is much older than the standard Big Bang Model suggests. Such a model would no doubt still allow the universe to be much bigger in space than the observable universe, but also much bigger in time than the Standard Big Bang Model suggests, thus allowing for another type of “hugeness”.

ljk;

Good comments given that there seems to be a very large number of bogus claims by individuals claiming to have apparitions and seeing direct signs of GOD in everything.

Adam;

I will have to do a Google search on that topic. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

I had a thought about how super high strain, super high strength neutronium or quarkonium elastic bands might be usable to elastically hurl macroscopic massed lumps of matter into space away from a spacecraft containing them wherein the velocity of the lumps of matter would be highly relativistic relative to the space craft. Such a system would act as a mass driver to gradually accellerate the space craft to hopefully C – e wherein e is a small to very small fraction of C.

Perhaps the elastic mass driver could be retensioned using mechanical energy sources derived from beamed energy from remote sources, collected starlight and/or CMBR, collected magnetic field energy located in interstellar or intergalactic space, insitu use of collected fusionable fuel from the interstellar or intergalactic medium, and perhaps even energy somehow drawn from any of the accesseble forms of zero point energy fields. Alternatively the energy supply might be extracted from higher dimesnional space, parallel dimensional space, and the like.

Note that the above system is simmilar to electromagnetic mass drivers except that the mechanical impulse is provided by an elastic band rather then an electromagnetic gun.

That’s all for now;

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
forrest noble on November 27, 2007 at 15:45

Ljk, I think you’re right about that, but at least in this room/ site (tau zero) I think not very many would fall for the assertions/ contentions of “alien god(s)” in clown outfits maybe.—at least I hope not. For myself, I don’t believe in the supernatural realm anyway, so I’d be kindof a hard sell, I hope, lol. You heard the true story where some women saw the image of the Virgin Mary in a pizza she baked. She sold it on e-bay for $348.00. I haven’t decided which person was “funnier” the women who backed it, or the woman who bought it.

No Adam, I never heard of it but I’ll Google it now and tell you what I think. Wow, seems like a good invention with propulsion-system potential as it suggests. It doesn’t tell how it works without a power source (I’m guessing super-conductor magnetics), but stored electrons could be used to aid many types of propulsion systems and it doesn’t appear to be that heavy. A light-weight positron storage system would be “top ticket” for a propulsion system. From what I know of anti-protons I don’t see such a system accommodating them but who knows. Seems like exiting technology. Thanks for the info Adam.

Jim and George, “Just possibly” I may have seen a few of those “aliens” down the street in a bar. I’ll check it out and let you know how it turns out.

“talk” to you soon, your friend forrest
george scaglione on November 28, 2007 at 10:54

jim,forrest,ljk,adam…thank you one and all comments like those above are truly why i come here to add my two cents!!strange,just this morning i was talking about how few intelligent species there might truly be. but,considering the time scales projected here one way or the other,can i be wrong? yes!! ljk one thing when you say that how many alien species might fool us into thinking that they are god, i immediately recalled arthur c clarkes saying that “any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguihable from magic”!!! and LOL with people who see the virgin mary appearing in a pizza the SKY is the limit. thank you very very much everyone and hope i hear back soon your friend george
ljk on November 28, 2007 at 11:57

George, I did not say that aliens are out there trying to
convince/trick us into thinking they are God or that there
is a god. I merely said that it would not be very difficult
to fool much of humanity into thinking some activity or
device they set up would be the sign of a deity rather
than any natural (non-supernatural) cause.
forrest noble on November 28, 2007 at 16:10

Hey Guys,

ljk, Maybe not so many religious groups or individuals might be fooled as you might think. The Moslems probably wouldn’t be fooled because the Aliens probably wouldn’t speak Arabic so they couldn’t have been sent from Allah. Most Christians wouldn’t be fooled because how intelligent could they be if they don’t even speak English. The Hindus may not be fooled either because the aliens probably would look nothing like Hindu gods, cows, monkeys, etc. The Buddhists would be skeptical also because they wouldn’t fit into the great circle of life. Maybe only a few Jews might be fooled because their redeemer has not come yet, and they might also see the great commercial potential of these “foreigners”.
george scaglione on November 28, 2007 at 17:06

ljk yes sir you bet! apologies if i misunderstood or messed up in any way! sometimes as i have told other people before it is hard to keep up with everything!! and no i don’t think it would be very hard to fool them either! but is there a god? remains to be seen i agree there too. respectfully your friend george
Adam on November 29, 2007 at 6:39

Hi All

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from miracle-working.

I was reading some articles on miracles in the Bible and how many of them have seemingly naturalistic explanations, almost as if all that “God” needed to do was tell his prophets how to exploit those natural occurances to their best advantage.

A few of the signs of Elisha and Jesus weren’t so amenable to “scientific” explanation and while they might be fiction I think it might be worth imagining how they might be fact and still natural. On one occasion Elisha caused a jar of oil to continually flow, on another he fed a 100 people with 12 loaves, and of course Jesus feed 4000 and 5000 people on a few loaves and fishes – how?

Mass transformation is one possibility – converting air into other compounds via some kind of nanotech. If God is an alien then that would be a logical option. Hard to judge that one really.

If God is God of the multiverse another option is the conversion of invisible particles – dark matter or neutrinos – into baryons. Frank Tipler believes this is how Jesus was resurrected – his body was converted into neutrinos, then converted back into baryons during his appearances. If God could do that for Jesus body then there’s no reason why food and oil couldn’t be similarly generated from the ambient neutrino field.

But there’s another option. Jesus is said to have “resurrected himself” not merely being raised by God. This seems kind of odd if Jesus died as a normal physical human – what if he had the intrinsic power to act as a converter of dark matter into baryons? And what if that capability is latent in all of us, merely waiting to be activated? While that seems extremely unlikely – after all who has resurrected like Jesus? – it may not be so strange. There’s a long tradition in Tibetan Buddhism of particularly holy people being transformed into a “rainbow body” at death. The parallels with JC are pretty obvious and such people are described as undergoing a particularly rigorous discipline of compassion for six or seven years before their conversion into a rainbow body.

We do know that cells in the body switch genes on and off in response to external factors and behaviour. Also evidence is growing that gene switching occurs in neurones in the brain in response to behaviour and thought. So what if there is a combination of gene activations that allow matter-energy conversion?

What would matter-energy conversion require? There’s evidence that some protein configurations actually involve quantum effects that cause the protein to be in a superposition of states – what if a super-superposition could occur allowing the protein to gather energy from the multiverse to cause super-accelerated baryon decay? And weak-force conversion of dark matter particles?

Speculation BUT the implications for interstellar travel are obvious.
george scaglione on November 29, 2007 at 11:30

adam,thank you what you have written above is very good and i tend to agree! now: don’t call the booby hatch or anything cause i’m going to tell you about a miracle i performed!!! LOL there was a bird in my back yard by the base of a tree,it looked dead. for some crazy reason i thought that i would touch it!? very very slowly i extended my hand toward it, when i was about half an inch away the bird JUMPS UP AND flys away!!! now…adam,what would the simpler folks of biblical times have seen? a dead bird,me “touching” it…and the bird restored to life!!! ergo george must be a god!!! you betcha! lol even i find that story funny in retro spect.have a nice day and it was good to hear from you! your friend george
forrest noble on November 29, 2007 at 20:58

Well George, Jim, Adam, I had something similar happen to me, but the bird was dead. lol.

Adam, there are many interesting miracles in the Bible, many of which as you pointed out are difficult to explain. The easiest explanation would be that the Bible isn’t true as far as these miracles are concerned. If true “recollections”, as George pointed out, it could have been just a perception of some of the followers at that time that had a different explanation in reality.

But if you accept that the Bible is true concerning its many purported miracles, then possibilities abound including both spiritual and natural/ technical explanations, as you have suggested.

your friend forrest
James M. Essig on November 30, 2007 at 0:35

Hi George, Forrest, Adam, and ljk;

Great discussion on aliens.

I had a few reflections on created being which I thought might be useful to consider.

1) The first concept involves the notion that mass, energy, electric charge, momentum, space, time, gravitation, etc. might not be the fundamental substratum in which the structural cosmos subsists. I have often wondered if there is not a finer level of physical reality in which the physical quantities that we refer to as fundamental, irreducible, non creatable or destroyable are not simply accidents which subsist in a yet finer more primitive level of reality. Perhaps this finer more primitive level is yet an accidental level of physical reality that subsists in yet a more primitive level or physical reality and perhaps so on ad infinitum. This would allow for energy to be created out of no energy but yet as an accident which subsists in a more irreducible level of physical reality.

Just as we have speculated that their could be fractal verses or multi-verse lineages that are causally completely decoupled from our universe, perhaps there could exist completely existentially and ontologically decoupled sets of elements of physical reality in the form of the above conjectured more primitive more sublime levels of reality relative to other such levels of reality. Moreover, there might be a huge variety if not infinite variety of such elements at the most fundamental level held into existence by an Almighty all powerful GOD in such a manner that one such entity would not be effected at all or even know if another or all of the other such entities suddenly ceased to exist.

If we as a civilization could tap into the least primitive and thus most accidental of such levels given trillions of years of scientific and technological evolution, perhaps even the most advanced alien technology within the observable universe at present would seem like Tinker Toys in comparison. Imagine the possibilities for space and time travel with such technology.

2) The second concept I wish to bring up involves the notion that human beings and perhaps all and any ETIs may have spiritual and immortal souls which are created directly by GOD at the moment of conception of the embryo. Such souls might be incorruptible per addends and per se and might live forever after the death of the body and subsequent separation from the body at natural death. Perhaps these souls are simple and un-extended first created principles and thus are immune from deterioration or decay because they have no parts into which they can decay. The myriad of thoughts, memories, acts of will, emotions etc. that we experience here on Earth or that ETIs experience on other planets might simply be accidental properties of the human soul as it interacts with the human and/or ETI brain. If such is the case, imagine the wonderful eternity that awaits us after we die and enter Heaven where we have all eternity to explore the wonders of tall of creation including our own ontological makeup as well as explore the utterly sublime and incomprehensible vastness and Glory of God. Perhaps we will meet pure spiritual beings called angels which have never has a body nor have never relied on a body for the operations of their faculties of memory, intellect, and will.

3) The third concept is an alternative concept to the one described under item 2) above but which not necessarily contradicts it. It involves the notion that matter and energy, space and/or time has some form of consciousness to it wherein in the human central nervous system or ETIs central nervous system, the spatial-temperal-mattergy consciousness gets amplified and organized into a thinking feeling acting personality which we refer to as the psyche, mind, or human or ETI personality. Perhaps the brain’s circuits amplify this matter consciousness and imprints this matter consciousness as some form of physical life force more deeply into the brain where it can be further amplified and grow as the human or ETI person’s personality and mind brain matures throughout life in the physical cosmos. Perhaps we can develop technologies that harness any such existent spatial-temperol-mattergy consciousness or life-force to power space craft and other elements of infrastructure in physical technological civilization. At the very leasr, we must ask ourselves where does our consciousness come from, if not from some aspect of matter which previously exists outside of the human person or ETI person, then what is or where does consciousness come from. Our own consciousness is more immediately present to what we call our personality or sense of identity than what we call angular momentum, mass, energy, space time, gravitation etc. . Do we ever speak of the mass of feeling, the angular momentum of a thought, or the quantum mechanical spherical harmonics wave functions that describe the conscious configuration of our act of will to eat a pizza.

4) The fourth concept involves the notion of ontological or metaphysical transcendentals. The notions I bring to the readers attention involve the concept that there might be other actual classes of reality such as being, existence, reality, essence, nature, etc. which are not being, existence, reality, essence, or nature, etc but which are every bit as significant. Some such entities I have often labeled as hyper-being, super-being, trans-being, hyper-existence, super-existence, trans-existence, hyper-reality, super-reality, trans-reality, hyper-essence, super-essence, trans-essence, hyper-nature, super-nature, trans-nature, and the like wherein the Almighty GOD would have absolutely perfect being and existence but would have all of these other ontological categories incorporated into GOD to the most full and uniquely maximal extent possible. Also possible are metaphysical transcendentals such as hyper personhood, super personhood, trans-personhood, hyper-identity, super-identity, trans-identity which might also be incorporated into what we know in our limited language as GOD. Heck, even some great Catholic Theologians suggest in there writings that the so-called supreme mystery of Three Divine Persons in one God Head as the Holy Trinity may only be an infinitely limited subset of the mysteries of GOD. In other words, we may have seen or heard of nothing yet compared to the entirety of the Mysteries of GOD.

5) The fifth concept involves the concept of one or more underlying epistemological levels to mathematics and logic. What if so-called basic irreducible mathematical truths are the result of a finer level of abstract reality or abstract ontology that we cannot understand because we have no way of comprehending such or understanding or imagining such. What if so-called basic irreducible logical truths are the result of a finer level of abstract reality or abstract ontology that we cannot understand because we have no way of comprehending such or understanding or imagining such. What if such levels exist and even any ETIs or perhaps even pure spirits called angels cannot even comprehend such. What if there are an infinite number of levels or hierarchies of such truths. Perhaps these levels could be referred to as hyper-mathematics, super-mathematics, trans-mathematics, hyper-logic, super-logic, trans-logic etc.

6) The sixth concept I will mention involves the notion of greater and lesser infinities referred to by some mathematicians as cardinalities with the ultimate cardinality being sometimes referred to as Omega. Such concepts are said not to be necessarily inconsistent with mathematics and are even defined in certain aspects of set theory. Perhaps there are differing levels of Omegas and so on ad-infinitum.

The point is that there is so much more to reality than I believe we can ever explore even given an eternity such that there will always be mystery and intrigue as we walk along the path and stepping stones into eternity including the first baby steps in our very limited Earthly life. Thus I implore that all of humanity put more effort into exploring this vast but insignificant universe in the eternal scheme of things. I implore any extraterrestrial races that might some how have access to this posting by ways undetected by humanity to do the same. I implore all humans and bodily ETIs to foster a further respect for the sanctity of all human and ETI life and work toward mutual peace and understanding as we evolve our civilizations capabilities. We are all citizens of this cosmos which may simply be one cosmos among and unspeakable number of such.

I firmly believe as a Catholic that even if all of the above notions happen to be true and we were to somehow with the Mind of God’s help comprehend them all, cpmpared to all of the knowledge and realms that GOD is and has access to, “We would still have seen nutten yet!”

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
forrest noble on November 30, 2007 at 12:32

Hey Guys,

Thought this was interesting. Just saw it on-line and have the copy of Scientific American, Dec. 07, that the online article is referring to. The idea is that if life is not a rarity given the right conditions/ environment, then it may have arisen more than once here on Earth. The idea is that if they could find evidence for an “alien”/ another life-form/ life chemistry here on Earth, it could imply that life may be more likely out there and that some Earth-like planets, Mars, moons of Jupiter etc. would be more likely to have life– it would be great if they ever found such evidence.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-aliens-among-us

your friend forrest
george scaglione on November 30, 2007 at 15:40

hi guys,as always ,thanks for all the great comments above! have something i’d like to add and i hope every body will have comments and ideas! think i said a while back that i am re reading black holes and baby universes by stephen hawking but this place is never too far from my thoughts i guess because when i hit page 109 i had some ideas on spacecraft propulsion,gosh,imagine that! anyway hawking mentions the class of black holes called primordial – roughly the size of a proton but with the temperature of 120 billion degrees kelvin! he goes on to say that this corresponds to energy of some ten million electron volts.now to quote dr hawking directly “a primordial black hole would release energy at the rate of 6,000 megawatts,equivalent to the output of 6 large nuclear power plants.” wow i said! imagine just imagine if – and i know that there would be immense technical problems as of this date most certainly,but – what if such a black hole could be carried on a spacecraft as its power source!!!! you’d have the power to do virtually anything you needed to do…and talk about the thrust you would be able to get!!! the speed.now at the size of a proton the said “fuel” would certainly not be too big to carry! but one of the obvious problems would be how do you keep the black hole on board from sucking in your ship! as i said alot of technical problems.i got really excited over all of this and HOPE that all of you will take a crack at an answer of how you think this might be done or why you think it can’t!? but there is more in virtually that same paragraph hawking mentions that at such a temperature said black hole would be able to create electron-positron pairs and particles of zero mass such as photons neutrinos and gravitons – the presumed carriers of gravitational energy.well then now let me be really bold.doesn’t that sound like the concept i have been talking about for a long time too? using the zpf for propulsion of a spacecraft? (!) and one more thing couldn’t gravitons then be harnessed for yet a third type of propulsion…gravity drive!? so there you have it 3 ideas on propulsion stemming from about one para graph in dr hawkings book ! i’d really like to know what everybody might have to say.very exciting stuff! at least to me.your friend george
forrest noble on December 1, 2007 at 1:20

Wow, you guys are “really laying it down”.

Jim, as far as a finer sub-structure than what we now have evidence for, I think it is very likely that there is such a thing and so do many physicists today. If there are particles rather than just energy in the zpf, then it is a sub-structure of reality that is universally accepted (i.e. the zpf), but to garner something from this material/ field is entirely another question, maybe not in this century but eventually? When you talk about trillions of years (if humanity would ever survive that long), then I think that genetic engineering would eventually take us into an unforeseeable realm where your kinds of thoughts now, Jim, or some future beyond the realm of our imaginations now, might be common place because there seemingly would be a “different reality”.

An immortal soul is a wonderful concept that I hope is true for many peoples sake. As for me, I promise I’m a good person—but—————since I don’t believe in god most likely I’ll go to hell. Oh well!!!!!! I really hope I’m right in the idea that there is no hell, and if there is a heaven, that it will be populated by worthy humans as well as deserving aliens, from our planet or another, Lol.

As far as space and time having consciousness, I believe that there possibly could be “beings” that do not have a corporate body but are spread out in space, but who’s “organs” could be spread out and communicate with each other electrically, by EM radiation or otherwise. With a universe as large as we can now perceive there are many seemingly interesting possibilities.

As far as alternate realities, it is impossible to ever know of the possibilities of such things unless somehow, or sometime, they would/ could interact with us, otherwise they would be forever lost to us. If there is a god, he might decide if such an interaction would be beneficial to either reality. I hope that we will someday discover all sorts of possibilities that will enable us to someday find a “short-cut” to the stars. As for now it seems we must just plod along and do our best. Logic has its basis in observations; mathematics has no limits of any kind.

George, I have read Hawkings ideas on small black holes. Jim presented some ideas on this subject a couple of weeks ago. I don’t adhere to many of Hawkings theories—however his ideas concerning Hawkings Radiation, I believe are important even though I disagree with the quantities of radiation that he claims for premordial black holes. As far as primordial black holes, I have maybe a somewhat similar theory to there existence, but according to my related theory, the very smallest primordial black holes might be (have been) closer to the size of maybe 25 km. in diameter with a mass something like our Earth. Their radiation/ heat would be ,according to my theory, close to zero, practically no heat at all except at the event horizon which would generate as much heat as maybe the Earth generates at night but no more. Of course if Hawkings is right and primordial black holes had all that heat and energy, I can’t imagine how we could ever use it even if it were the size of a proton, because its mass would be maybe as much as the Earth and with that kind of heat one seemingly couldn’t get any closer than maybe 10 million miles (about half the distance from Mercury to the Sun).

As far as theoretical gravitons, according to my theory again, they (gravitons) are the entire “matter” of the zpf, having thousands of different sizes/ lengths. As far as quantum theory is concerned, gravitons have just one size, and if they are real and could be “corralled”, who knows what potential they might have.

your friend forrest
James M. Essig on December 1, 2007 at 11:53

Hi George;

You made an excellent series of comments in the above posting. Thank You very much.

It occurred to me that such a blackhole could be fed mass in the form of a matter stream, particle beams, or other mattergy input at the same rate as the blackhole is emmitting energy in the form of Hawking radiation. Massive bundles could simply be dropped into the blackhole for nearly perfect conversion of mass into Hawking Radiation mattergy. If one wanted to increase the rate of Hawking radiation release one could simply use a less massive blackhole which would radiate with more power output.

The interstellar media has plenty of materials with with to feed into the blackhole. Imagine an interstellar ramjet wherein the jet propulsion system as been replaced by a blackhole radiating in excess of 6,000 megawatts against a radiation sail or rocket chamber.

Since the blackhole would theoretically emit gravitons, these gravitons might be useful for gravatic propulsion, antigravatic propulsion, space-time distortion or warp drive, and other simmilar propulsion mechanisms.

Now, there is some mathematical and theoretical evidence that after the entire blackhole has evaporated, perhaps a naked simgularity would be left in its place wherein this naked singularity would have some very bazaar properties which may be dangerous for the whole universe if not treated appropriately. However, if such singularities exist and can be processed, we might find a whole new bazaar form of mass or mattergy such as imaginary mass or perhaps something much more bazaar than that. Any such extremely bazaar mattergy might be useful for interstellar travel perhaps even allowing fundamental laws of physics to be altered in a local region of space time. If such is possible, great care would need to be taken so that the change in physical laws does not result in a runaway phase change that could destroy the structure, space-time, laws of physics, and constants of nature within our universe thus leading to complete disintigration and chaos.

It occurred to me that if we can eventually learn how to accellerate particles to the Grand Unification Energy or perhaps even to much greater energies, we might in principle be able to enduce a temporary phase change or change within the local minima of the vaccumm energy state inwhich our universe is held stable with regards to its laws of physics, mattergy content, space-time dimensionality etc. If such a phase change can be produced and would be designed to die out after a while, then the energy obtainable might approach infinity for all practical purposes even within a small volume of space-time. Such a huge energy release could be used for the following types of propulsion systems: reactionary thrust propulsion, field effect thrust, or space time warp propulsion systems e.g.,; ion or electron rocket, magnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, electrohydrodynamicplasma drives, electromagnetohydrodynamicplasmadrives, photon rockets, and the like propulsion systems; magnetic propulsion , gravity field propulsion, or antigravity field propulsion systems; or spacetime warp propulsion craft, sustems for electromagnetic, electrogravatic, gravatic, or antigravatic teleportation in space and/or time, inter-universe propulsion systems, higher dimensional space and/or time travel systems, temporary or permanent wormhole production based transport systems etc..

If such phase changes can be designed to produce arbitrary mattergy particle species creation spectrums or designed to produce pre-determined physical law changes, physical constant changes, and/or space time dimension ordinality and/or curvature changes, then some really bazaar and impressive technologies could be developed. However, great care would need to be taken such that the phase change does not spread unchecked and ends up destroying our universe and possibly other universes.

Note that for one type of particle experiment that was carried out at an accellerator within the U.S., a study was conducted to make sure that the particle collisions within this particular experiment would not result in a run away phase change in which potentially all of the Earth and in a worst case scenario, all of the matter within the universe would not be destructively converted into strange matter wherein the word strange is used in the sense of the property of strangeness exibited by the strange quarks.

If such artificially produced phase changes could be designed to propagate in one direction, they might be useful in beam type effects interstellar or intergalactic propulsion systems and be able to accellerate a craft to virtually C almost instantly.

It might also be possible to induce phase changes as such in other universes with apparatus that exist in our universes or phase changes in higher dimensional space and/or time, or phase changes in parallel histories or universes such as those that are suggested to exists by the so called Many Worlds Interpretatation of quantum theory.

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
george scaglione on December 1, 2007 at 15:04

jim and forrest thank you both very much i find the above ideas and concepts facinating! but as i did mention before and even above to realize many of my ideas would most certainly involve some pretty HEAVY DUTY engineering problems to be solved first!! i know that. so,with that let me invite comments from everybody else who has been adding their voice recently…agreement? disagreement? insults? lol,respectfully to all, your friend,george
george scaglione on December 2, 2007 at 10:57

jim, funny thing i just took another look at what you last posted!so, i admit that my ideas would cause some major engineering problems to be solved first…but…so would yours so would yours! thanks alot and hope i hear again soon. your friend george
James M. Essig on December 3, 2007 at 1:05

Hi George;

Thanks for the above comments.

I have often wondered that if string theory is shown valid, just what would the strings be composed of. One might well ask if they have a finer structure than would otherwise be allowable taken the Planck Length of 10 EXP -35 meters in consideration. Would this structure be definable in units of length smaller, perhaps much smaller than the Planck Length. If such a structure exists, would these structural components have yet smaller spatially extended features and so on perhaps on ad infinitum. Granted that certain verions of string theory hold that at the ultra-microscopic level on the scale of the Planck Length, a distance R is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a distance 1/R, however, perhaps there is a finer spatial structure well below the Planck Length wherein the length R is not equivalent to 1/R but rather is equivalent to R just as we observe on the macroscopic scales of everday life. Perhaps any such finer structure has that a distance R is equivalent to a function f(R) wherein f(R) is not equal to 1/R, but instead is equavalent to a more complex function, c(1/R), (1/R)f(R), or c(1/R)f(R) where f(R) is a more complex function (not necessarilly in the complex number sense) and c is a constant.

If such finer structures exist, what would we find in them? Perhaps ever finer levels of structure or perhaps some sort of bazaar worlds, universes, cosmoses, fractal verses etc. would exist at these finer levels.

Another possibility is that such strings substructure would be composite but not spatiallly or temporally so. There might be other accidental, substantial, or existential dimensions wherein the finer grained composition is manifested. The smaller or substructures might be defined in some extended way but not spatially or temporally so. For all we know there might be innumerable such dimensions that are extended but not so spatialy or temporally. Any such finer grained composition might be further subdivided into yet finer sub-structures and so on perhaps ad infinitum.

Yet another possibility is that these would be substructures would have a composition that is in no way extended, but wherein nonetheless, there would exist existential, ontological, accidental, or otherwise composivity. Note that theories on the simpliciity of the human soul generally hold that it is unextended and simple, that is, it has no parts or extention into space and time. I tend to hold this view that the essense or ontological core of the soul is simple as such just as was suggested by Plato and later Saint Thomas Aquinas during the Middle Ages. However, as has been suggested in modern times in spiritual anthropology but with a slight modification, I tend to hold the view that the falculties of the human soul of heart, intellect, memory, and will are sort of in the nebulous realm of not being identical with the souls essense but yet not as accidental as its individual specific thoughts, feelings, memories etc of the soul. Thus, there might also exist so called power parts of the soul which are not identical with the metaphysical substance or essense of the human soul. Might there be analogous subcompositions to strings? Perhaps any such subcomposition occurs in hierarchial levels maybe just maybe onward ad infinitum.

Perhaps simmilar concepts of sub composition can be applied to membranes as in P-brane or D-brane theory. In some aspects of string theory there also exist branes (or membranes) to which certain forms of strings have their ends attached if they are open strings thus limiting their range of travel within higher dimensional space because they are held fast to some degree. Gravity may be an exception as the graviton might be a closed loop that is not attached to any brane in certain string theory versions. Note that a point would be a zero dimensional brane, a line a one dimensional brane, a membrane a two dimensional brane, a texture a 3 dimensional brane and so on upto 26 dimensions as in bosonic string theory and 10 or 11 dimensions in the newer versions of string theory. If these branes exist, just what is their composition? Perhaps they might have a spatial temporal composition smaller, maybe much more so, than the scale of the Planck Length. Perhaps they have a subcomposition in an existentially, ontologically, accidentally, but not spatial-temporally manner. Perhaps they have a sub-composition that is not extended in any way, but is rather simmilar to the concept of power parts of the human soul as described above. Note that some new theories suggest that our universe or the Big Bang was the result of the collision of two large branes which resulted in a hugely tremendous “explosive’ energy release.

Another possibility is that strings and branes have inherently incorporated within them other dimensions wherein there is no finer structure. Take the analogous example of an electron. It has the physical dimensions of electric charge, mass, and spin although one would not say that the electron is composed of these dimensions as seperable seperate entities. Another example is that of the strange quark. The strange quark has spin, mass, electric charge, and the quantumchromodynamics property of strangness and yet these dimensions are not necessarilly subcomponents in a spatially subcomponent-wise spatially dividable or seperable way.

Perhaps even pure space and time has sub-divisions not only in the sense of volumetic ot time period divisions, or point composition in terms of basic geometic mathematics, but also in terms of global properties analogous to the electron possessing electric charge, mass, spin, etc.

If some or all of the conjectures above turn out to have some truth to them, and we learn how to apply this knowledge technologically, then we would in practice be like minor gods, not equal to the One Almighty GOD, but nonetheless like technological magicians or wizards. Such technology would most certainly help us get to the stars and much much further, perhaps into frontiers even more sublime and/or far out than the socalled final frontier of space. However, regarding manned space travel, our solar system is a good and the only place for us to start our progression out to the stars and eventually beyond into the eternal depths of the cosmos.

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
James M. Essig on December 3, 2007 at 1:52

Hi George, Forrest, Adam, ljk and other Folks.

I address each of you by name out of respect but hopefully am not overdoing it.

If you get a chance, check out ATK’s home page. They have a multiselection menu overview of the projects they are working on for NASA and the military. They describe this huge booster they are developing that will lift 300,000 pounds into low Earth Orbit or 140,000 pounds to lunar orbit as a cargo vessel to support a manned excusrion to the Moon in the 2020 time frame, a permenant manned base on the moon, a manned mission to Mars, and manned missions out into the Solar System. They are developing several different chemical rcokets for various space missions and defense applications including the rocket that will lift parts of the CEV into Earth Orbit. This is a real cool website.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
forrest noble on December 3, 2007 at 20:11

Hey Jim,

I looked at that ATK site and must shamefully admit that I don’t remember ever hearing of them before. Maybe they used to be called something else, possibly Thiokol. Yeah, that’s it. I just looked it up. I agree with you, they are doing some cool stuff as seen on their site.

I just sent you the Pan Theory, and as you can see, there are some similarities to the “fine structures” of reality that you have discussed above. Although you told me you don’t necessary agree with facets of the theory, I still hope you find it interesting.

George, Jim, (and others I hope) don’t worry about proposing ideas that may/ could not work, or would require out-of-sight Engineering. We are all just discussing possibilities or presenting conjecture. Nobody needs to be shy about such proposals– George, as you have suggested, about Jim, an idea planted today might turn into the fruitful, productive system/ technology of tomorrow– maybe because of such proposals/ conjecture right now. Even though one may not get any response or comments, or if said comments seem to be negative or not what you wanted to hear, it doesn’t mean that the idea is not a good one. Others including those who are not regular readers/ commentators may take the idea and run–i.e. writing science fiction books or formulating/ developing ideas concerning new technologies, or that the regular repliers, namely “us”, don’t know what to do with the idea –because we have no additional ideas or comments concerning it, or we don’t have the time to analyze it in depth to think of/ conceive future possibilities, or that our paradigms may differ too much.

Like my uncle stated after reading my entire book (he was a High School teacher of History), his only positive comment was “I guess it could be true”. The book probably wasn’t his cup of tea anyway because he originally thought that the Earth’s gravity was caused by its magnetic field. Also he probably was not really interested in astronomy, cosmology, physics, or possibly not even science in general.

your friend forrest
James M. Essig on December 3, 2007 at 22:34

Hi Forrest and George;

It occurred to me that if one could obtain a piece of quarkonium with a volume of about one cubic meter (thus having a mass as much as Earth’s moon) and then were to instill about 10 EXP 20 Columbs or perhaps even 10 EXP 40 columbs of electric charge within it provided the quarkonium was of sufficient strength not to be torn apart, then the total force acting within the quarkonium would be roughly [1/(4 Pi Epsilon nuaght)][(0.5 x 10 EXP 40) EXP 2] newtons or about 10 EXP 92 newtons. It would take a special form of quarkonium not to be torn apart by these titanic forces.

The idea is to instill a tremendous electrical charge on the quarkonium and then shake the quarkonium back and forth at various frequences and see if there would not be some new physics at play here. There might be some new physics regarding the incredibly large amplitude of the electromagnetic waves produced even for ultra low or super low frequency EMF. Rapid shaking at visible light frequencies thru gamma ray frequencies might produce super high amplitude EMFs with microscopic wavelenghts thus possibly uncovering some new physics based on possible bounding conditions at which the known classical or quantumelectrodynamics principles would cease to hold.

Perhaps the amplitude of the electromagnetic waves would be so high and the energy density of the electromgnetic waves so great near the quark nugget such that the electromgnetic waves would have such a high gravity force associated with them that electrogravatic coupling effects would become manifest . Thus electrogravatic unification theories might be tested or improved upon.

Perhaps the electromgnetic fields or electrogravatic fields would be so intense that a door in space time could be opened up such as a wormhole, a multiply connectedness among space time regions, or other means for teleportation could be achieved to facilitate space and/or time travel into the past or future, higher dimensional space and/or time, paralled dimensional space and/or time, and travel into other universes.

Alternatively if the quarkonium were sufficiently solid and rigid, charging it up with electrical charge until the point of mechanical failure might be one way of storing tremendous electro-explosive energy which could be used to propell huge space craft to velocities approaching C – e wherein e becomes vanishingly small. A less volumetric energy dense material for such electrical charging might include only neutron dense material or neutronium, or perhaps only white dwarf dense material.

In the extremal case, one might use an Earth massed blackhole with tremendous amounts of electric charge instilled within to produce a stronger electrogravatic coupling between radiated electromagnetic radiation and the EM waves gravitational emmissions.

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
george scaglione on December 4, 2007 at 15:49

jim,got to be honest and tell you i don’t get every bit of the above but i get your drift.always some new concept to explore or discovery to be made.puts me in mind of the sort of thing that will be happening at cern next year.boy oh boy will that situation be full of possibility!!!!…..forrest…with all respect your uncle was probably not the best guy to read and comment on the book!? but then i know what you mean sometimes one tries to push forward by any avenue available,actually there probably are alot better people to read the book than me too! respectfully all,your friend george
forrest noble on December 4, 2007 at 23:56

Hey Jim, George,

Yeah, I agree that if we could ever do any of the above acheivements there certainly would be some “new physics at play”. The stars would be at our feet and I think we’d be able to travel beyond our galaxy. It’s those nagging details of design that keep messing things up. Seriously, we all would hope that such technologies are not just available to alien Aliens– maybe to us someday.
James M. Essig on December 7, 2007 at 20:01

Hi George and Forrest;

Thanks for the above comments.

To all of the Tau Zero readership, when you get a chance, check out the latest issue of Popular Science. They have an excellent article on the possibility of Mach 15 SCRAM jets. If we can get to Mach 15, then perhaps we can revamp the National Aerospace Plane Concept or NASP concept to provide a single stage to orbit quick turnaround time space craft that could be launched repeatedly like an Airliner such as a 747. The article states that great progress is finally being made in the field of SCRAMjets after several decades of more or less failed attempts. Part of the sucess is our development of improved refractory alloys and other materials with high mechanical strength at high temperatures.

This latest issue also mentions a European Southern Observatory effort to start building a 138 meter diameter 1,000 mirror tiled segmented optical telescope that will have a resolution 10 to 15 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope. Construction should start by around 2011 and be complete by 2017 or so I think I have read. The artist rendition looks like a radio-telescope dish and the technology for the telescope involves a method to periodically clean the mirrors without scratching them, wearing them down etc.. It is stated that the telescope will be instrumental in finding numerous other planets around other stars by improved observing methods.

Another little article, more of a caption, talks about what might be discovered at the ungraded CERN facility after it goes back on line. The article gives a 9/10 chance of finally definatively discovering the Higg’s Bosons as the generator of all mass of things that have mass in our universe. The author states a 3/5 chance at discovering Cold Dark Matter and a slightly less chance of discovering supersymmetric particles predicted under some of the supersymmetry related theories.

Lastly, there is a neat little article that spans the upper half of two pages about a proposed moon base configuration including waste treatment and enclosed farming facilities. The artistic rendition depicted is really cool.

I am going to sit down and read in detail these articles this weekend.

Forrest;

I have not yet had the opportuinity to read the additional 25 pages you sent me although I plan on setting some time aside this weekend to do such. I am still somewhat sapped of energy from the severe cold or whatever I had although during the past two or three days I am definately on the improving trend.

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
forrest noble on December 8, 2007 at 3:06

Jim, sorry to hear about the lingering cold.

I’ll be sure to pick up that copy of Popular Science.

Jim, George–Wow, “at altitude” Mach 15 is about 10K mph. pretty fast I’d say. I’m guessing it might climb to maybe 120,000 feet? It would need to carry oxygen though to go into “space”. Also that telescope sounds super cool too, over 400 foot diameter mirror, wow!

Those odds for CERN I believe are way off. They’ll certainly find something new alright, make all kinds of discovery claims probably, but I don’t think the final results (after everything washes out after a few years of analyses) will be quite as rosy as those probability predictions– but we can always hope for something really valuable. That Moon base article seems very interesting also. First thing tomorrow I’ll go down and get a copy. Exciting!!!
Thanks Jim for the info and take care of yourself, that comes first.

your friend forrest
george scaglione on December 8, 2007 at 11:37

jim,forrest thank you both very much for the interesting comments above! and forrest i think very soon i will be able to sit down and answer those 25 pages above mentioned as i am almost ready,depending on how my schedule of “everything else” goes!!! and jim…yes!! jets that could fly that fast would certainly be a major breakthrough!! useful for who knows how much. also everybody,i look forward very very much to the new findings we all expect to get from cern !!! bet the theories here will abound. thank everyone very much and i hope we soon here from more of you! your friend george
James M. Essig on December 8, 2007 at 18:47

Hi Forrest and George;

Thanks for the responses.

The actual diameter of the new SEO telescope mirror will only be 138 feet instead of 138 meters. I made an error in previous my posting, all other things being the same.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
george scaglione on December 9, 2007 at 13:26

jim ,no problem we all can make mistakes and sometimes feet/meters can do us all in! don’t give it a second thought. tour friend george
James M. Essig on December 10, 2007 at 6:10

Hi George, Forrest, and other Folks;

Thanks for the comments and continued interest and readership of the site.

A few ideas occurred to me for interstellar travel ithat basically dawned on me after You, George, mentioned that the process by which the universe inflated early on might be useable to power interstellar space craft and so I give you the credit for the ideas I mention as follows.

1) Imagine if the process of cosmic inflation which occurred starting at about 10 EXP -35 seconds after the birth of the universe in the Big Bang could be duplicated on a more limited and much more spatial-temporally confined scale wherein the huge energies released would be captured and used to propell an interstellar/intergalactic manned space craft. The types of craft that could conceivably be powered by such an energy release include but are not limited to the following types of propulsion systems: reactionary thrust propulsion, field effect thrust, or space time warp propulsion systems e.g.,; ion or electron rocket, magnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, electrohydrodynamicplasma drives, electromagnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, photon rockets, and the like propulsion systems; magnetic propulsion , gravity field propulsion, or antigravity field propulsion systems; or spacetime warp propulsion craft, systems for electromagnetic, electrogravatic, gravatic, or antigravatic teleportation in space and/or time, inter-universe propulsion systems, higher dimensional space and/or time travel systems, temporary or permanent wormhole production based transport systems etc..

The extent, intensity, and duration of the artificial inflationary effect might be arbitrarilly varied as suited depending on the energy requirements and size of the space craft undergoing propulsion. One could well imagine that even a reactionary thrust powered space craft could achieve a velocity of so close to C according the special relativity (i.e., C – e wherein e is vanishingly small) such that any violation(s) of the the special theory of relativity would become manifest pehaps allowing the craft to actually reach C or travel faster than C thus possibly permitting spatial-temporal travel into the past and reaching cosmically distant locations in the past wherein the craft would arrive at its destination long before it left on its mission effectively allowing for quicker than instantaneous space travel with respect to the point of origin’s reference frame.

Since the particle thought to be responsible for inflation is called the inflaton and the energy scale of inflation is thought to be about 10 EXP 15 GeV to 10 EXP 16 GeV which corresponds to the Grand Unification Energy in many of the versions of Grand Unification Field Theory, perhaps using a huge particle accellerator to accellerate protons, antiprotons, muons, antimuons, tau particles, antitau particles, electrons and/or positrons to GUE might somehow allow for the duplication of the GUT related effects that lead to inflation. Great care would need to be taken such that the process would not get out of hand thus leading to a runaway phase change which could and probably would trash our entire universe and all life forms within it. In general, whenever tampering with vacuum energy states to produce unnatural or uncommon vacuum energy state phase changes on macroscopic or mesoscopic scales, great care and foresight must be taken such that runaway phase changes do not occur or that such phase changes can be confined before they become to extensive to contain.

2) Another concept that occurred to me regarding inflation is simply to cause the space between a space craft and its point of origin to expand while the space between a space craft and its point of destination is made to contract. In the limit that the space between a craft and its point of origin is magnified to an infinite extent, and the space between the space craft and its point of destination is contracted an infinite extent or atleast to the scale of the Planck Length (~10 EXP -35 meters), the craft could conceivably travel an infinite number of Light Years in an instant while moving an infinitesimal or Planck Length differential distance through space. In otherwords, the craft essentially, might not have to travel through space at all to reach the cosmically remote destination but might simply be made to “just be” located at the cosmically distant location. Analogous travel might occur to locations in time, past, present, or future, or in higher dimensional space time within our universe or other universes, paralell dimensional space time within our universe or other universes, etc..

One option with using the proposed technology described under section 2) above is that a space craft or person might be made to be present at multiple locations at once, perhaps even numerous locations at once by contracting the distance of spacetime between the space craft or person and numerous cosmically distant locations that are optionally well distributed spherically or hyper spherically (wherein the word hyper refers to any higher dimensional sphere or sphere of arbitrary number of dimensions) on a manifold that encloses an aritrarilly large volume or hyper volume of space or spacetime. Thus, the multiple presences that are some times said to occur by Divine Miracles of Earth could be more than out done in both distance and number of locations by human and/or extraterrestrial technologies. Multiple presences might be set up in locations in time, past, present, or future, or in higher dimensional spacetime within our universe or other universes, or paralell dimensional spacetime within our universe or other universes, etc..

3) The third concept I will mention involves the notion of being able to produce a Big Bang or universe of arbitray nature including dimensionality, spacetime curvature, laws of physics, number of forces, constants of nature, rate of expansion or inflation etc. It has been suggested that such universes are constantly forming by natural processes at all apatial points within our universe by natural processes related to zero point vacuum energy field processes within our universe, and presumably within any other universe and within any of the child universes to which our universe gives birth to as such. The idea here is that such naturally occuring universes would not ordinarilly be at all a threat to our universe as they spatial-temporally explode becuase on the time scale of the Planck Time Unit of 10 EXP 43 seconds or even less according to some versions of chaotic inflation, they become spatial-temporally completely casually decoupled from our unverse or their parent universes.

Now if such baby universes can be produced at will by technological means, then perhaps a limited spatial-temporal decoupling can be induced which would allow some of the newly created spacetime and/or mattergy to leak into our universe or be transported into our universe in a controlled manner by a conduit such as a temporary wormhole or gaited permanent wormhole or perhaps by a multiply connectedness of otherwise decoupled space time regions.

I have mentioned this concept before, but for the sake of review, it has been suggested that producing or finding about 50 kilograms of some exotic material called a false vacuum to the diameter of a proton and letting it evolve through spontaneous decay might lead to the production of a universe simmilar in scale to our own. If we could produce such universes at will and tap into them for their inexuastable energy content, then we would have all of the energy we could possibly use including energy to produce any desired quantities of negative or imaginary mass, antimatter, additional supplies of false vacuum, etc.

Another possibility, as I have mentioned before, is to produce or find material which chemical or nuclear force bonds that are so stressed that the zero point vacuum states within the vacinity of these bonding regions produce unusually large numbers of baby universes per unit of time on average. If any such existant enhanced time averaged universe production occurs, perhaps such an effect can be duplicated at will or enhanced to an even greater extent, artificially, for the purpose of creating more living space for the various species within our universe including but not limited to the human race, but also for providing raw spacetime and mattergy materials for cosmic engineering projects within our universe.

Note that the theory of parent-child universes as such is some times referred to as Chaotic Inflation in the since that the naturally occuring fractal verse thus composed continues to grow into physical eternity always giving birth to ever new, ever more abundant child, grand child, great grandchild, etc., universes in an ever growing number of universe family trees. Moreover, from a philosophical perspective, it has been suggested that there could be countless if not unlimited numbers of distinct fractalverses orginating within the same point of origin vacuum energy state which would have no lower energy level boundary because there would be no lowest relative energy level to which the vacuum state can reach upon repeated vacuum energy state decays, the process by which supposedly the baby universes in a given fractal verse are given birth to. What is even more amazing is that there is no reason to assume that there might not be innumerable primal vacuum energy states or fields, wherein each state or field gives rise to an infinite number but ever growing infinite number of fractalverses. Perhaps there is even an infinte number of meta vaccum energy states or fields wherein each metafield underwrites or existentially contains an infinite number of vacuum states or fields wherein each such vacuum state or field contains an infinite number of fractalverses, wherein each such fractal verse contains an infinite but ever growing number of universes wherein each univese gives rise to an infinite number of and physically eternal lineage of baby universe off spring. Perhaps the meta vaccumm energy states subsist in meta-meta-states and infinite numbers of these meta-meta- states subsist in meta-meta-meta states and so on ad infinitum.

Thus with the upcomming launch of the space shuttle, mankind begins again or I should say contimues with its first baby steps, to reach out into the frontier of the eternal blackness of just our baby universe or Big Bang, what we will find beyond in the depths of physical eternity in the blackness of space and time within our universe is any ones guess, however, I think we will be awed and amazed when we finally do such. In the mean time, in the spirit of Tau Zero, I say “To The Stars”. Remember to support government, private commercial, and non-pofit ventures for manned space exploration. Everyone can play a role from noted well established physicists and cosmologists, to clergyman and monks, to chief project engineers and aerospace assemby workers, to Post Doctoral Candidates all the way down to entry level grade school students, from working and single mom’s to young single woman and men aspiring to be astronaunts, from 4 star generals to new recruits, and, yes, even convicted felons and those incarcerated can promote and study manned space travel and popularize it. Everyone on Earth is here for a purpose at GOD’s discretion. We are all special with our unique role to play. I believe that mankinds march into spacefaring and modern scientific technology and culture is so ubiquitous it has to be the will of GOD that it continues. There has never been any movement within human race that has been so visibly all pervasive and advancing as our global process of scientific and technological progress. We as a human race have been given our intellects for a purpose for which much good is meant to come of it. Let’s not squander it in armed conflict which, to paraphrase the late great Pope John Paul II, has the possibility of ending mankind and perhaps life on Earth in a burnt out grave yard of radioactive fallout.

That’s all for now;

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
george scaglione on December 10, 2007 at 11:54

jim thank you very much for the kind words and interesting ideas! if we all keep at it i’ll bet we will get someplace.maybe even in the near future! i hope! thank you all…george
forrest noble on December 10, 2007 at 21:58

OK Jim, your feeling better– look at the length of that text!!

Jim, George, as I discussed with George, as you know Inflation is not part of my theory, but if it happened it would be, I think, because prior to the BB there was field material in place and therefore no zpf. When this material “blew away” from the BB there would be no field speed limit, nothing to stop it. It would seem that its only speed restriction would be controlled by the initial/ force/ energy of the BB itself. According to the Inflation Theory that speed was millions of times the speed of light– maybe dark energy (another theory I don’t adhere to) played a role in this expansion.

In today’s universe things are different; there is an existing field in place. Unless you can figure out how to get the zpf in front of you out of the way, or carry a large amount of it with you like a stellar gravitational field, according to Einstein you cannot exceed the speed of light– as you know.

Jim if the all of humanity had the same enthusiasm for science and space projects that we have, we’d already have a ship on the way to the stars. Down with war, Up with/ toward/ space. MySpace is OK but outer space is better.

your friend forrest
James M. Essig on December 12, 2007 at 2:24

Hi George and Forrest;

Thanks for the comments.

Some additional interstellar travel concepts occurred to me today.

One such concept involves converting an low atomic element species planet into a huge fusion device to propell a space craft of simmilar mass to 0.1C to 0.15C in one fell swoop. The idea would be to set up a large shaped charged nuclear device on the surface of the planet wherein the mattery jet of explosion would be directed downward in such a way that the pressure and temperature induced in the adjacent portion of the planet’s crust would reach a critical value for which a self propagating fusion reaction wave would travel through the entire planet thus converting as much as 1 percent of its mass into energy. The blast would be used to propel a planetary massed space craft to 0.1C or greater using a neutronium or quarkonium pusher plate and a magnetic and/or electric field plasma mirror mechanism to direct the blast away from the huge craft.

It has been suggested that a shaped charge nuclear device could produce a maximum blast energy flux and radiation flux density 6 orders of magnitude greater than that of a spherically symmetric typical contact nuclear burst. Such technology could obviously be destabilizing since it might concievably be used to set a planets oceans on nuclear fusion fire. Such a reaction within Earth’s ocean at 10 EXP 18 metric tons of water would result in roughly 10 EXP 16 metric tons of matter being converted into energy for a yield of 2 x 10 EXP 26 metric tons of TNT. This is the equivalent of 5 x 10 EXP 4 Earth masses of TNT or the equivalent of an entire red dwarf star being made of TNT. This is roughly 50,000 times the energy required to completely vaporize Earth so great care would need to be taken that effective shaped charged nuclear weapons of requisite yield are very strickly controlled.

In order to propell a stellar massed space craft to 0.1C to 0.15C, using shaped charged nuclear devices detonated on the surface of a white dwarf star might enable the artificially premature detonation of such a white dwarf star to propell the space craft by the blast. However, great care would need to be taken such that there are no extraterrestrial races living at nearby stars which would likely be extinguished by the radiation blast produced by the supernova.

On a much smaller scale, one might produce such a blast using an icy comet to propell a cometary massed space craft to 0.1C to 0.15C.

Now if the icy planet or white dwarf could be detonated in such a way that it produced a shaped charge nuclear fusion explosive itself resulting in a 6 order of magnitude or greater blast/energy flux concentration over a spherically symmetric case, then perhaps if the concentrated flux jet incorporated one percent of the total explosive yield, then perhaps a space craft with 10 EXP-8 of the mass of the body could be explosively propelled to a gamma factor of roughly 10,000. For a stellar white dwarf, this would be the equivalent of accelerating a space craft with the mass of several times that of the Earth’s Moon to a gamma factor 10,000.

The next concept involves concentrating a planetary massed shaped charge fusion device or a stellar massed shaped charge fusion device into a device with such a large bulked explosion with extreme flux concentration such that the explosion produces a local phase change within the stellar neigboorhood’s vacuum state. If the explosive jet can be made to have core peak particle energies of 10 EXP 15 to 10 EXP 16 GeV, then conditions at the time of Big Bang inflation might be duplicated on a large enough scale such that a self propagating phase change would propagate out from the explosion site. Great care would need to be taken such that the phase change could be appropriately contained and/or made to die out so that the entire cosmos would not be destroyed.

The essentially unlimited energy derived from such a phase change could be used to power the following types of propulsion systems: reactionary thrust propulsion, field effect thrust, or space time warp propulsion systems e.g.,; ion or electron rocket, magnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, electrohydrodynamicplasma drives, electromagnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, photon rockets, and the like propulsion systems; magnetic propulsion , gravity field propulsion, or antigravity field propulsion systems; or spacetime warp propulsion craft, systems for electromagnetic, electrogravatic, gravatic, or antigravatic teleportation in space and/or time, inter-universe propulsion systems, higher dimensional space and/or time travel systems, temporary or permanent wormhole production based transport systems etc.. Thus travel into higher dimensional space time, parallel dimensional spacetime, other universes etc., might be facilitated by this technology.

In addition the huge energy creation might provide a means for the production of unlimited quantities of antimatter, negative mass, imaginary mass, false vacuum material etc., some of these of which could prove useful in lining the mouths and throats of permanent wormholes against collapse.

The implications of this conjectured phase change technology would be tremendous if it were possible. Mass and energy could be created to fill the interstellar and intergalactic void as the universe expands and cools over the next trillions of years. A large enough supply of mass could be routinely produced to produce huge blackholes with masses perhaps a great as that of the observable universe for purposes of rotating black hole wormhole based teleportation schemes and also as huge mattergy cosmically long term storage depositories. Perhaps the expansion of the over all universe could be slowed (or even reversed with unfortunate disasterous consequences) for the purposes of extending the useful practical life supporting and space faring civilizations supporting life time of the universe as it continues to expand and cool.

Note that the maximum flux concentration of planetary and stellar massed fusion devices might produce useful temporary phase changes for equivalent particle energies of only 10 EXP 13 to 10 EXP 14 eV or within the 10 TeV range projected for the newly revamped CERN facility if the Higgs Boson has an energy within this range. Production a large bulk quantities of Higg’s Bosons might be used to produce a dieout phase change which would still be useful for producing extra mass perhaps from the enhanced concentration of the Higg’s Fields within the mattergy jet produced by the shaped charge explosive. Such energies correspong to the 6 order of magnitude mattergy flux concentration of a simple shaped charge configuration. Heck, perhaps using shaped charged nuclear devices with the yields that we have produced for our cold war arsenals could be useful for producing such limited phase changes based on the energy levels of the Higg’s Boson. Here, as well, great care would be required to prevent the phase change from spreading to far or perhaps from even running permanently totally out of control.

That’s all for now.

Your Friend Jim
george scaglione on December 12, 2007 at 17:24

sharp ideas jim ! no one will ever accuse you of thinking small ! that is for sure. wish more people would sign on though.but in fairness i just finished a long e maill to somebody else about 15 minutes ago saying : although we have not come as far as we thought we would none the less…not so bad.we keep 7 people in space for up to two weeks,have a mission on its way to pluto and the kuiper belt and the iss for what that may be worth. maybe its partially my fault for expecting the star ship enterprise by now! lol be glad to hear from you and or forrest soon.not even to mention everybody else too! your friend george
James M. Essig on December 13, 2007 at 5:53

Hi George;

Thanks for the above comments.

A few rather far out ideas occurred to me as topics for consideration.

1a) A few weeks ago, I brought up the notions of trancendential ontological categories such as hyper being, hyper existence, hyper reality and so on. I would like to augment that discussion with the concept of other ontological categories that are completely unrelated to being, essense, existence, reality, nature etc.

One such category would be ontologically at the same level as being but which would not be being nor would it be nothing or negation. Another such category would be ontologically at the same level as existence but would not be existence nor would it be non-existence in the negation or nothinghood sense. Yet another such category would be non reality but not in the sense of un-reality in the nothing or negation sense. Simmilar constructs can be constructed for essense, nature in the ontological sense, personhood.

1b) Yet another construct would be non-identity as distinct from having no identity or negation of identity or no identicality integrity. Another one would be non-individuality as distinct from not having individuality in the dissintegrity of not being individual sense. A simmilar construct may be intelligably discussed such as non-unity but not in the dismembered or decompositional decay sense.

1c) Now I do not mean to get overly theological here since the readership of Tau Zero includes those of a variety of religious beliefs and philosophical orientations, but I once read a Catholic book on the Holy Trinity (the one GOD in three Divine Persons concept) whereby the author used set theory in deep metaphysical ontology based reason to suggest that GOD not only has Three Persons or IS Three Divine Persons, but that HE (although I believe GOD is genderless) also has Four Relations, Five Notions, and possibly so on.
I Believe when we pass on to the next life, we will behold things such as these allegded realities of GOD and have an eternity to learn infinity more aspects of GOD, innumerably such aspects of which will be even more sublime and farout than the ones described above. Moreover, I believe wel will have all eternity to delight in ever new understanding, exploration, and discovery among GODs creation, the entire cosmos, as a secondary but significant and vital aspect of our heavenly bliss. Given all eternity, we will not be able to be one bit bored but rather ever filled with delight and wonderment.

Now if such can be said for our exhaulted heavenly state, there will surely always be things to learn, technologies to develope including ever better interstellar and intergalactic manned space travel techniques and for future generations of humans in the world, more than enough delight in discovery of, interacting with, and learning from and sharing with our extraterrestrial brethen on planets around other stars. In short, even while on this worldly side of bodily death, we as human beings are galactic citizens who share the Milky Way with what I intuitiviely feel are hundreds of millions of other intellegent races around hundreds of millions if not billions of habitable planets. We as Galactic citizens, I get the feeling, are also citizens of our own little universe which I believe is only one among innumerable such universes.

2) The second concept I would like to mention is one that I have briefly mentioned before and involves the notion that although many of the Faith based belief systems on Earth hold to the ontological dualist view of reality that there are only two catagories of existent substances (in the ontological sense), matter and spirit. However, I have often wondered if there are not other categories that are neither matter nor spirit but which we have not had the prevalegde of Divine Revelation nor the philosphical language or lexocography to intellegably discuss and rationally study. Heck, maybe there are an infinite number of such categories. some of which are even superior to and more sublime than pure created spiritual realities. Some might be at the same level as the physical but completely different from the physical. Some might be at intermediate levels between the purely physical and the spiritual levels of created reality such as human souls or angels. I just don’t know for sure, however, it is fun to speculate.

3) The third concept is also one I briefly touched on before on site and involves the notion of matter, mattergy, or mattergy-spacetime having some sort of consciousness associated with it that gets amplified within the brains of animals and humans and extraterestrials also wherein this amplified consciousness is what the animal, human, or ETI world based personality or psychic activity is composed of or is made manefest in. If such an extra physical dimension exists, could it be enhanced technologically or harnessed in non-living machines as some sort of energy source or other thermodynamic or quantum mechanical state source for power production, space craft propulsion, space craft propulsion into higher dimensional space and/or time, travel into other universes etc.?

Note that some visionary theoretical physicists conjecture about the existence of such a universal conscousness as a dimension of physical reality which is possessed to greater and lesser degrees and of varying qaulitative forms by different particles, fundamental particles, and various forms of bulk matter including otherwise inanimate matter such as stone, steel beams, planets, etc.

4a) The fourth and last concept I will discuss tonight involves the notion that if human bodies and ETI bodies are animated by a created immortal rational soul, then perhaps our entire universe is somehow “animated” or united to an immortal rational soul of some much more advanced type than the human and ETI souls would be. Perhaps if there is more than one universe or Big Bang, these additional universes each have their own created immortal, rational souls united to them.

4b) If fractal verses or metaverses exist, perhaps these fractal verses or metaverses have even more advanced created immortal, rational souls infused or united to them.

4c) Just as the human and ETI bodies might each have a created immortal and rational soul united to them, perhaps the collection of large sets of souls be they human or ETI souls, and perhaps collections of large sets of any existent souls united to universes, fractal verses, or metaverses might serve as a body or bodies for one or more higher souls united to these sets just as the individual atoms that make up our body serve as components of a body to which a created immortal and rational soul is presumably united. The closest analogue I can think of is the Christian, most especially, the Roman Catholic Doctrine that all humans on Earth and in Heaven or Purgatory are members of the mystical body of Christ to which the personhood of Christ is united much as a human soul is united to its body or as a ETI soul is united to its body which is composed of trillions of member living cells.

Now that I have perhaps gone way out onto a limb here, needless to say, many more scientific discoveries await us especially within the fields of experimental, applied, and theoretical mathematical physics which no doubt be of useful to us for eventually reaching out to the stars and to more fully be inducted into the Galactic Civiliztation from an economic, political, scientific, cultural, and technological perspective. I am sure that with all of us bright human minds on Earth including but in no way linited to those of us who post on sight at Tau Zero, the ETI aliens can and will learn from us humans as well.

One a more down to Earth note, the space shuttle, as I am sure the readership knows, is scheduled to launch in the next few days. Wow! As old and used as the shuttles are, NASA can still sucessfully launch and use them as space trucks. I can hardly wait until the CEV starts flying! Many great things lie ahead of us and that is our destiny-To boldly go where no man has gone before. So I say once again. To The Stars!

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
george scaglione on December 13, 2007 at 15:39

jim,wow i won’t say that i am absolutely conversant with all the ideas you have just deliniated but lol no offense in any way – it seems you came real near a topic like …how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!!?? but in really advanced physics lol things tend to get that way “for real” no pun intended! proves that no idea is too far out for this area and i do like it that way,yes sir! all the very best,your friend george
forrest noble on December 15, 2007 at 1:22

Jim, George, I was down in Tijuana Mex. last night. We went up a hill to see the Perseid meteor shower. It was a little overcast so we could see maybe 1 every 5 minutes– its still excites me to see these tiny meteorites.

Again above, you’re talking out of my area of “expertise” so that I have no related thoughts; But the CEV systems are going to be a reality in a half dozen years as you discussed– I’m sure we all have very high hopes for it.

All for now, your friend forrest
george scaglione on December 15, 2007 at 14:45

forrest,jim,everybody, wow as i said not too long ago, today i sure wish that the cev was going to be alot sooner! we will not have a “manned” space craft for a little bit after the shuttle! wonder if hitching rides with the russians will do us any good in the long run? suspect it could not help but do so.speaking for myself,i ‘ve never had much luck with meteors except in a minimal sort of way. :( lol thanks george
James M. Essig on December 15, 2007 at 23:04

Hi George and Forrest;

Thanks for the comments.

The ARES V rocket booster will actually be of the same class as the Saturn V and Russian Energia rockets althought I think the ARES V will have slightly higher cargo capability than the latter two systems. It is indeed being designed to support manned missions to the Moon and eventually to Mars. The Ares will be able to carry 130 metric tons (287,000 lb) into LEO and 65 metric tons (143,300 lb) to Lunar Orbit. For a good mainstream summary, check out Wikipedia for the ARES V booster. This is a pretty mainstream sight and gives a lot of interesting technical detail about this booster in developement. The NASA website also has cool descriptions of the ARES V rocket booster which are consistent with the subject matter on wikipedia.com. Note that the first stage of the ARES V booster will produce an approximate whopping 8.9 million pounds of thrust.

The ARES 1 vehicle will be able to carry 48,000 pounds including 6 crew members and supplies to the ISS. It will be able to carry 52,000 pounds including 4 crew members to the ARES V departure stage which will be waiting in orbit for a rendevues with the ARES 1 vehicle. The following URL can be accessed to read more about the ARES 1 vehicle.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/aresI.html

Somehow I was under the impression that a multitude of new boosters were being developed for the return to the moon and then on to Mars but appearently I overstated the number being developed in my emails to both of you George and Forrest. Still the fact that NASA is actively planning and developing hardware with the intention of taking us to Mars is really cool.

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim.

PS: Anyone else, please feel free to join in the discussion also. NASA is starting to do some really cool things again.
george scaglione on December 16, 2007 at 12:30

jim,nice to see new space hardware being developed!! hope we get to take it to the moon and mars,maybe even a near earth asteroid,soon!! but,how soon? that is the question. lol,don’t worry i know that the launch vehicle itslf will not go to those places but i am sure you catch my drift!! perfect schedule as per me?! moon 2020,mars 2030,asteroid 2035. think its “doable” everybody? what have you to say? thanks your friend george
James M. Essig on December 16, 2007 at 19:57

Hi George, Forrest, and other Folks;

NASA has named in planned lunar lander “Altair”. The story can be accessed on ABC News Online under the SciTech menu option. The patch and logo associated with this name looks good. Have a look while the story is still up on the ABC News website.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
James M. Essig on December 17, 2007 at 2:51

Hi George and Forrest;

It occured to me to mention the possibility that mankind could develope absolutely huge space arks that could have fusion fuel for powering the space arks dailly living requirements wherein the space arks would have infrastructure that could provide for trillions if not quadrillions of years of civil living with respect to the ships reference frame.

The idea is that huge spherical structural trusses with the mass of thousands if not millions of solar masses could be built that have diameters much larger than the solar system so that they could be built of suitably strong materials without the risk of gravitational collapse induced by their own self gravitation. The trusses could each have many Earth sized geopods that could each support trillions or quadrillions of human beings in sustainable civilization.

The geopods could be extremely well insulated from energy loss using radiative energy insulation techniques such a multwalled nearly perfectly reflective superconducting outer hulls.

The trusses could be gradually accelerated by huge arrangements of nuclear fission or nuclear fusion rockets and then rely on the collection of interstellar gas for nuclear fusion powered propulsion techniques, system for collecting the cosmic microwave background radiation, or systems for collecting starlight for ever so slight gradual accelleration and also to provide the space arks’ resources for dailly living.

The space arks might start with an accelleration at non-relavistic velocities of 10 EXP – 6 meters/(sec^2). After one year, the truss will have gained 30 meters/sec. After 1 million years, the truss will have gained 30 million meters/sec or 0.1 C. The truss could accellerate for cosmically long periods of time perhaps even practically forever until it would optionally become its own blackhole in the direction of its travel due to relativistic mass increase with respect to the surrounding intergalactic medium followed by entry perhaps into some type of exotic space time warp or wormhole like space time distortion to further facilitate travel within our universe, other universes, higher dimensional space time within our universe or other universes, or paralell dimensional space time in ordinary 4-D Ensteinian space time or higher dimesnional spacetime.

Imagine some grand spiritual quest for mankind and any ETI races willing to work together to propagate the human and all participating ETI species throughout our physical universe and perhaps beyond an a process of infinite duration simply because we could and because we desired to lovingly provide means for our mutual survival and a means for others of our species and the ETI species to procreate forever, ever increasing the population of the perhaps forever expanding cosmos, and providing for the creation of ever more human and ETI races souls out of shear love and for the glory of the Almighty GOD, all the while growing in mutual respect among our selves as human, in mutual respect between human and participating ETI races, and in mutual respect among the participating ETI races among themselves, all in one huge brotherhhood and cosmic civilization of love.

As huge trusses were launched, more could be constructed. No doubt, science and technology, philosophy and religious faith, culture and medicine would evolve as we collectively progress into the ultimately mysterious eternal blackness of space time.

When could such trusses be built? Perhaps not for millions or billions of years into the future. But since I firmly believe that given billions of years of technological development, we should be able to do galactic scale engineering projects, perhaps simmilar to the ones described above.

One a much smaller scale, huge space arks with say the mass of the Earth might instead be built much sooner. On a much smaller scale yet. perhaps huge space arks with the mass of large comets, e.g., 10 trillion metric tons could be built for thousands if not millions of years of ship board habitation so that humanity could ply the depths of the Milky Way Galaxy and meet and work with many of our ETI brethen.

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
James M. Essig on December 17, 2007 at 6:01

Hi Folks;

While I am still awake, another interstellar spacetravel idea occurred to me which is not nearly as far out and perhaps not as wacko sounding as the space truss idea I posted previously.

The idea is drawn from an article from the controversial and not so reputable source of a tabloid magazine I used to frequent.

The article described this alledged long train like star ship that was due to pass be Earth “shortly” that was of ETI origin and carried interstellar passengers at velocities close to C. I glanced at the article and thought, “Oh really!”, while also part of me was thinking, this would be real cool if it were true or possible.

An so the idea of an interstellar space train has entered my imagination from time to time as a potentially practical way to travel near C for a star ship that would have a small crossection to minimize the risk of impact with interstellar debris but also as a way to minimize drag experienced by highly relativistic reactionary propulsion system powered star ships because of its extremely low coeffecient of drag relative to both the ships total volume and its mass.

The ship might utilize some sort of electrodynamic interstellar plasma funnel such as a magscoup, or perhaps an electrical field based scoup to collect interstellar hydrogen and helium for fusion and as a reaction mass. The very long nature of the space train as such might allow for a very long attached or integrated fusion powered linear accellerator for accelleration reaction mass over a longer distance thus delivering more momentum and kinetic energy to the space craft per unit of charged particles used as a reaction mass based rocket propellent.

The spacecraft might additionally incorporate photovoltaic panels along its exterior surface for the purposes of collecting star light in order to power very slow accelleration capable propulsion systems such as ion, electron, or photon thrusters. As the craft reached relativistic velocities and perhaps even gamma factors of 10,000 the CMBR incident on the outer surfaces of the craft would be blue shifted to visible light range frequencies whereby photovoltaic conversion mechanisms could be used to convert some of the incident light into electrical energy to power electrodynamic rocket propulsion systems or to generate photons for photon rocket propulsion systems. In extreme cases, light could be beamed onto the surface of the craft by artificial coherent light sources such as laser beams from remote sources for photovoltaic conversion into electrical power.

The interstellar space train might have electrodynamic means for repelling large dust particles or small pebbles that could otherwise strike the front of the ship or slide against the side of the ship which could cause major damage if not destruction of the space craft altogether. For larger debris, laser or charged particle beam blasters could be used to destroy the incomming debris and perhaps some of the resulting plasma could be used as a reaction mass by electrodymanic propulsion mechanisms to further accellerate the craft. For really large debris, collision avoidance manuvoirs could be used to avoid impacts or nuclear devices could be used to destroy the incoming objects, once again wherein the resulting plasma, if suitably close to craft, would optionally be used by electrodymanic propulsion mechanisms to further accellerate the train.

Another option to facilitate accelleration of the space train involves deploying a length wise series of solar or stellar light sails that would preferentially process light incident on one of their sides so as to produce a net thrust for accellerating the space train. The light sails could be onsided reflective or they could be composed of a material on their forward surface that has a negative index of refraction to allow the sails and thus the space train to be pulled forward by the forward impinging star light or CMBR. As the train approached C more closely, the dopplar blue shifted impinging photons would interact more energetically with the sail thus permitting greater energy input per unit of time or greater sailing power output.

Another option is to coat one or both sides of the sails with photovoltaic materials wherein the sails would convert at least a portion of the incident starlight or blue shifted CMBR to electrical power to energize ion, electron, photon, or other electrodynamic propulsion systems.

Note that the sailing sails can optionally be made of a porous or grid like membrane to greatly reduce the mass of the sail per unit of reflectance and also to greatly reduce the drag imposed on the sails by interaction with the interstellar gas whether or not the gas particles are electrically neutral or electrically charged.

Another set of ideas which occurred to me which are not directly related to interstellar travel but which might allow the discovery of new relivant physics involves the notion of accellerating muons and/or antimuons to energies in the tens of TeV range or greater before they have a chance to decay.

Now, the non-relativistic muon half life is on the rough order of a microsecond and so the relativistic energy gain and thus the relativistic time dilation experienced by the muon would have to be considerably more rapid than that associated with protons or electrons of simmilar terminal kinetic energies because, otherwise, the muon would decay into other particles before it reached the tens of TeV plus energy range. The collision of such ultra relativistic muons in a controlled manner might offer a new venue with which to approach the studied structure, behavior, and characteristics of fundamental particles and perhaps lead to new experimental findings beyond the standard model and perhaps even beyond current theoretical conjectural constraints.

The same could be said of accelleration of the Tau particle which has a rest mass considerably above the muon rest mass of approximately 105 MeV. The Tau particle’s rest mass is approximately 1.8 Gev. Note that the half life of the Tau particle is considerably less than that of the muon and so to achieve a gamma factor of 10,000, much more rapid kinetic energy gain with respect to the Tau particles mass would be required inorder to allow the tau particle to achieve the same extreme gamma factors of the muon. Note also that both the muon and the Tau have the same electric charge equal in magnitude to that of the electron at 1.60217646 × 10 EXP -19 Coulombs and so a much more intense electrodynamic energy field or reaction mechanism interaction with the Tau particle would be required to enable the Tau particle to achieve the same very high gamma factors as in the case of the muon. Also, as stated above, because of the much shorter nonrelativistic half life of the Tau relative to the muon, the rate of accellerative kinetic energy disposition within the Tau would have to be greater yet in order to reach the same gamma factor as the muon. However, also note that the rest mass of the Tau is about 18 times greater than that of the muon and so the terminal gamma factor of the Tau for 10 TeV collisions would be 18 times less than that required of the muon for the same collision energies and so there is somewhat of a tradeoff here depending on what programs of research are desired or what types of experiments or hypothesis are desired to be tested.

Now, how would one accellerate such particles to so high an energy so quickly? Basically, one could use a traditional particle accellerator on steroids or one might be better off some how using a proposed accelerator called a plasma beat wave accellerator which was proposed decades ago as a possible way to accellerate charged particles extraordinarilly quickly to ultra relativistic velocities or perhaps the use of super intense laser beams could be used to accellerate the muons or Taus to such high energies. Perhaps blasting the mouns and/or Taus with gamma rays in very photon wise concentrated beams would be of help in accellerating these heavy leptons to the requisite energies. Alternatively, perhaps some other means for requisite accelleration can be provided that was thought of by others or which has not yet been dreamed up.

For the record, note that the muon and the Tau are both leptons of the same class as that of the electron. The muon and the Tau are both assummed to be non-composite particles according to the Standard Model of particles and fields. I wonder, however, if super high gamma factor collisions among these particles would result in the discovery of finer structure and/or the creation of other would be fundamental particles such as, for instance, the Higg’s Bosons, Anti-Higg’s Bosons, any of the proposed particles under the various supersymmetry theories, and/or proposed Cold Dark Matter particles candidates such as socalled Weakly Interacting Massive Particles or WIMPs for short.

There is much work to be done in physics, and eventually, in interstellar manned space travel. So I emplore the readership of this site to support electorial candidates who are big on fundamental physics research and also in manned space exploration where appropriate. My feeling is that there is too much to learn, too much to explore, too much to accomplish to be fighting in wars wherein the U.S. would effectively take on the role as the Global Police Force, and recently, perhaps ultimately over limited fossil fuel resources which will soon be depleted because we are using them many orders of magnitude more rapidly than nature produces them. However, I feel that the naming of the lunar lander for humanities return to the Moon of “Altair” after the star by the same name sets an appropriate precendent. Let us only hope this continues.

Well, I finally tired my brain out. Have a good night or should I say good morning depending on your time zone.

That’s all for now.

Thanks;

Your Friend Jim
george scaglione on December 17, 2007 at 13:18

jim,forrest thanks for all the good comments above.and yes sir jim…physics sure will be big in every endeavor we look forward too – for sure! just wish i knew about a candidate who felt the way we feel! but are there any such? :( kinda doubt it! looking forward to the next shuttle launch which unless something has changed is hopefully still set for jan 6th. at least it will be another step forward even if not as much or as soon as we would have liked or where originally lead to believe. still ok though. your friend george
forrest noble on December 19, 2007 at 1:18

It seems like the future to me. First Moon colonies, then Mars colonies both above and underground, then space colonies. I don’t know about a quadrillion people though. What ever happened to birth control? Lol.

A million-person city in space would still be serious start of colonization—and yes they could tool around the solar system or move out to another star. There would be many generations to take care of future needs. It still would be a pretty costly undertaking to have an addendum “home” build in such a colony.

As far as co-operating with alien species “to lovingly provide means for our mutual survival” it would be nice. Like you Jim, I usually look at the glass half full rather than half empty. On Star Trek there were always the good aliens too.

The space train sounds like a good idea. If one part were damaged be space debris you send it off somewhere and keep on going. If you have just one craft and it gets seriously damaged you’re out of luck.

As far as the muons and tau particles are concerned, we won’t be able to do anything with them for awhile it would seem. A muon’s average life expectancy is two millionths of a second and a tau is a trillionth of a second. We would need to figure out how to stabilize them—not an easy task. Maybe some particle we’ve never heard of in our time could be manufactured to accomplish some of the things you’re talking about if not a muon or tau.

As for the name Altair, I like it too. Wish they could do something sooner though. I too hope our next president will support NASA. All Presidents since its existence have supported it verbally. It’s a no brainer as far as getting votes, but to urge congress to spend the money like Kennedy did is another story, but then it seemed like a good cold war strategy at the time. Now we need to compete with the world or we’ll have to look up to another leader in the space race.

All for now, your friend forrest
george scaglione on December 19, 2007 at 11:00

forrest, i too see space colonization as a comming thing,bases on the moon will probably be first,hopefully by 2040/50 or so,followed by mars and well ,use your own imagination! maybe even huge orbiting cities eventually! saw recently the esa has begun discussions on the subject of artificial gravity! wrote them an e mail respectfully asking for any info they might be able to forward.will advise when and if i hear back. thank you george ps know what i frequently think now when i see the moon? i think : these are among the last days when a person will be able to look at the moon and there will not be somebody there to look back! cool! hope we can get as much as possible done with the iss before the shuttle retires in 2010! thanks again, g

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