Moving through space and time

    A person is always driven by a craving for the unknown, he even has a special neurotransmitter - dopamine, which is a chemical motivator for obtaining information. The brain constantly needs a stream of new data, and even if this data is not needed for survival, it just so happens that there is a mechanism and it’s a sin not to use it.

    In the article below, I would like to outline the sci-fi ways of moving to distant stars and galaxies, currently available in the framework of scientific theories and hypotheses.

    image

    In the face of the cosmos, most human affairs look insignificant, even trifling. Karl Sagan, 1980
    Each person at least once in his life raised his head up on a warm summer evening and watched the stars. The depth of space attracts and causes awe, someone, again, for a short while, and someone for life.

    What is there? Is there life there? And what miracles can be on these countless worlds?


    Of course, the only way to go there and find out is to travel through space-time to these distant stars, planets, nebulae and even - GALAXIES.

    But alas and ah - the time is not right. The only thing that our movement technologies got to is not far outside the solar system, thanks to the automatic probes of the Voyager project, of which Voyager 1 was launched in 1977!

    image

    But in order to seriously talk about other worlds, we need a speed at least equal to the speed of light, and ideally - superlight.

    What is in the way?

    Everything is simple here - the laws of physics are fundamental, moreover, fundamental.

    Law of causality


    The bottom line is that the investigation cannot be ahead of the cause. Nobody ever watched, for example, a duck first fall dead, and then a hunter fired. At speeds exceeding C, the sequence of events becomes reverse, the time tape is rewound. This can be easily verified from the following simple argument.

    Suppose that we are on a certain spaceship moving faster than the light. Then we would gradually catch up with the light emitted by the source at more and earlier times. First, we would catch up with photons emitted, say, yesterday, then emitted the day before yesterday, then - a week, a month, a year ago, and so on. If the source of the light was a mirror reflecting life, then we would first see the events of yesterday, then the day before yesterday, and so on. We could see, say, an old man who gradually turns into a middle-aged man, then into a young man, into a young man, into a child ... That is, time would turn back, we would move from the present into the past. Causes and effects would change places.

    Limitations of Antiquity Alberta


    (Special Theory of Relativity)

    In addition to the problem of causality, nature set even more stringent conditions: movement is impossible not only with superluminal speed, but also with a speed equal to the speed of light - you can only approach it . From the theory of relativity, it follows that with an increase in the speed of motion, three circumstances arise: the mass of the moving object increases , its size decreases in the direction of motion, and the flow of time on this object slows down (from the point of view of the external "resting" observer). At ordinary speeds, these changes are negligible, but as they approach the speed of light, they become more noticeable, and in the limit - at a speed equal to C, the mass becomesinfinitely large , the object completely loses size in the direction of movement and time stops on it . Therefore, no material body can reach the speed of light. Only light itself has such a speed! (At the near-light speed, the "all-penetrating" particle, the neutrino, is still moving).

    In general, besides the problems described above, there are many problems, for example, at near-light speed, when an object weighing 1 kg collides with a grain of sand, such an amount of energy is released that allows 10 thousand tons of steel to be converted into steam in 1 second. If we compare this with the real mass of the starship, then the power of the explosion will be equal to or greater than the power of nuclear processes taking place on the Sun.

    But the smart one won’t go up, the smart one will go round, because there are laws to break them ... I’m joking, you can’t break the laws, but science fiction (and near-scientific) offers us ways to move around the principles of SRT.

    image

    Methods of superlight movements in space-time


    Einstein-Rosen Bridges


    Einstein-Rosen bridges , also known as wormholes or wormholes, are perhaps the best-known means of interstellar travel — and most likely actually exist. Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity predicted the existence of wormholes, although they have not yet been discovered.

    In simple terms, the Einstein-Rosen bridge is a tunnel in space caused by the deformation of space-time. Massive objects, such as stars or black holes, bend time and space, just like a bowling ball bends a trampoline. A sufficiently massive object can bend space-time so much that it creates a connection between two points that are quite remote in the normal state.

    Imagine a sheet of paper and two dots on it. You need to get from one point to another, and if you move strictly on the surface of the paper, this "journey" will take some time. However, if we fold the sheet so that the points coincide and pierce it in this place with a pencil, then using a pencil as a tunnel (or bridge), we will significantly reduce the distance between the points.

    image

    The entrance to the wormhole was often represented as an entrance to the tunnel, which makes sense given the name. But this is a misconception. In the film "Interstellar" this moment is shown correctly - from the point of view of the observer in three-dimensional space, the wormhole should look like a sphere.

    Wormholes are a tempting method for interstellar movements because they do not require you to exceed the speed of light. Physics tells us that nothing can move faster than light. But with wormholes, huge interstellar distances can be overcome without breaking this law.

    image

    Warp engine


    Warp, FTL technology, which at the moment has a real chance of being implemented. Warp can be safely called the most realistic way of moving above the speed of light of all known. Let it for now remain only in the form of formulas on paper. It's about the Alcubierre engine .

    image

    The principle of action follows from a way to bypass the Special Theory of Relativity, which postulates that nothing in space can move faster than the speed of light. The "path" is that this postulate does not apply to the space itself, which can contract and stretch from various influences, for example, the gravitational field, the warp engine compresses the space in front of the ship and expands it behind the ship, moving the usual space bubble along with the ship forward .

    In the Star Trek universe, such engines develop rather modest speeds by the standards of science fiction - Enterprise travels were limited to one sector of the galaxy near the Solar System (~ 1,500 light years), took years and left a bunch of white spots and unexplored areas.

    image

    Hyperspace


    Not so long ago, detailed experimental data appeared from the WMAP spacecraft on the inhomogeneities of the temperature of the CMB, which is one of the main objects of observation in the study of our universe. An analysis of these data revealed a large anomaly in the angular distribution of fluctuations of the CMB at low harmonics. One of the explanations for this phenomenon was the theory that the topology of our universe is different from a three-dimensional plane or ball. When considering the topology of our universe in the form of a dodecahedron, theoretical calculations closely converge with experimental data.
    “A flat topologically complex three-dimensional Universe can only be built on the basis of cubes, parallelepipeds and hexagonal prisms. In the case of curved space, such properties are possessed by a wider class of figures. Moreover, the angular spectra best obtained in the WMAP experiment are consistent with the dodecahedron model of the Universe. ”Mikhail Prokhorov, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, Leading Researcher, Department of Relativistic Astrophysics, Sternberg State Astronomical Institute.
    Thus, the possibility of the existence of hyperspace of the Universe, in which our limited universe is present, is indicated by theories based on practical data on CMB. However, even if hyperspace exists, in order to move in this space some kind of special engine is needed.

    Imagine that you have a valley before you, and you need to get to a point beyond the valley. Since you can only move on a flat surface (in 2-dimensional space), then you have to either go around the obstacle or go down into the valley, cross it, and then climb. But if you have at your disposal a plane that can move in 3-dimensional space, then you will get where you need in a straight line.

    In essence, hyperspace has a metric that is different from ordinary 3-dimensional space and movement in it is similar to movement in a wormhole, only tunnels can connect not one, but several points at once that go out into ordinary 3-dimensional space. Moreover, the movement in hyperspace itself will visually differ from the movement in the wormhole (contrary to popular illustrations), since the three-dimensional structure of the universe will “envelop” the traveler within the hyperspace. I think if this is possible, then the spectacle is truly mesmerizing - visible stars, nebulae or entire galactic clusters - slowly spread and stretch, changing the color palette during the shift to the cosmological red zone (?).

    The idea of ​​hyperspace movement, in my opinion, was successfully filmed in the film "Contact" in 1997. (based on the novel by Carl Sagan, the film won the Hugo Prize. 2nd place in the list of the most reliable science fiction films according to NASA). In it, the installation, the drawings of which were received by a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization caught by the heroine of the film, created manipulations with exotic energy and as a result “passed” the cabin with a person through the inner space of the sphere. Apparently, the cabin fell into hyperspace, into the already created “tunnel”. As it turned out, there are a great many of these tunnels throughout the galaxy, and they are all created by an older civilization. Well, this is from the words of the representative of the race, whose signal was caught by the heroine of the film. That's it guys. Personally, I have this movie in the top. But as practice shows, not everyone likes it.

    image

    Immaterial teleportation


    We know that the most common explanation for teleportation is the instantaneous movement of a material object in space at an arbitrary distance.
    In this context, you can use the wormhole, but we already talked about it, so let's talk about a fundamentally different way.

    And we are interested in the teleportation of information about a substance, up to a quantum photograph, of a state.

    The process is approximately the following: Your body places the installation at point A, which scans you up to subatomic particles and their quantum state, and then digitizes your copy. After that, the quantum state is transmitted in a single stream through standard communication channels. But there is a problem - this is a ban on superlight transmission of data, according to SRT, on the other hand, if science proves the existence of hypothetical particles with a negative or imaginary rest mass, such as tachyon, information about the object can be transmitted at superluminal speed. Or maybe even with the help of gravitational waves (?). After that, in point B, the person is recreated at the quantum level and voila - he is already at the destination. Discussions about the “soul” destroyed in the installation. And I omit, because I am an atheist and do not take this into account (litter).

    This method is good in that for quantum teleportation of a material object, you do not need to use the curvature of space-time and spend a huge amount of energy. The problem, of course, is in the initial delivery of the installation itself, which will reproduce the object at point B. But it can also be delivered in longer ways, not limited to one or more human lives.

    image

    Zeroing mass


    All spaceships of the Mass Effect universe in one way or another use the Zero Element, which generates the designated Mass Effect, either reducing the mass of objects around it, or increasing it. Thus, it is possible to turn the Theory of Relativity and exceed the speed of light.

    Ordinary trips between planets and nearby stars are made using FTL engines, which can only reduce the mass of the ship. For interstellar flights over long distances, Mass Relay is used - huge stations built around dense nuclei consisting of a zero element. Relays are usually tied to one or more other relays and are able to create a corridor in which the mass practically disappears, almost instantly transferring the ship to thousands of light years

    image

    Closed time-like curves


    The last form of superluminal movement, which we consider, at first glance seems the least scientific.

    For 55 years, the Doctor Who series has been telling about adventures in time and space of the Doctor and his / her human companions. What vehicles did they use? A large blue box known as the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), which can transfer them to any place and any time they want.

    Built (or rather grown) by the ancient race of the Time Lords, the TARDIS are more magical than the Mass Effect technology. As the Doctor himself explained, his vehicle is a "shaky-wadded temporary-svremennoe figovina." There seems to be some kind of delay when moving in the TARDIS - that is, it is closer to the hyperdrive than to the teleportator. But, in fact, the TARDIS disappears here, flies through the "temporary whirlwind" and appears there. That’s all you really need to know.

    image

    Or not? It turns out that the TARDIS has even more theoretical basis than hyperspace.

    In 2013, physicists Benjamin C. Tippett and David Tsang published a paper proposing the theoretical foundations of creating a real time machine, i.e. a way to travel to your past. The article was called"Traversable Achnronal Retrograde Domains In Spacetime" (check out the abbreviation).

    Tippett and Tsang describe a time traveler in a space-time bubble that enters a closed time-like curve (essentially the same as the Einstein-Rosen bridge). Within this curve, the traveler can go anywhere on his own timeline, while inside the bubble time seems to flow as usual.

    Two physicists have even suggested that time-like curves can be separated and connected, making it possible to travel not only on your own timeline, but anywhere in time and space.

    Well, like everything that I could offer you.

    Surely I missed something or even went too far into the fantasy realm. So I'm waiting for your version in the comments.

    Also popular now: