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If FTL were possible, don’t you think there’d already be evidence of the time travel? First thing I’d do with FTL is travel back to the earliest habitable epoc
by bashinator 5y ago
If FTL were possible, don’t you think there’d already be evidence of the time travel? First thing I’d do with FTL is travel back to the earliest habitable epoch in the Universe and start building galaxy-sized Dyson spheres.
- xupybd 5y agoCan you elaborate please. Why does FTL produce time travel? Why go back and build Dyson spheres?
- mannerheim 5y agoIn special relativity, faster-than-light travel or communication is equivalent to time travel.
- xupybd 5y agoYes but that is only if you are traveling through space faster than light. If you simply skip some of the distance with something like an Alcubierre drive there is no time dilation to deal with.
- mannerheim 5y agoNo, it still results in time travel. > To answer your question: any FTL drive can be used to create closed time-like loops. With these you can travel back in time, but you get stuck in a loop. https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/247048 https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/247048
- xupybd 5y agoOkay, I think there is something I don't understand here. That link references a book I might have to read "Time Travel and Warp Drives". Thanks!
- bashinator 5y ago> simply skip some of the distance My understanding as a lay person of the physics that allow for things like this, is that they require starting conditions that wouldn't produce a universe anything like what we actually live in, or require energy levels around the output of galaxy superclusters to be focused into planck lengths or such. "Technically not impossible" is different for physicists than to normal people ;-)
- drran 5y agoBut, it doesn't enable time travel. It just makes calculation easier, like «bending» of space-time array. If you switch from relativity to regular physics with medium instead of pure vacuum (10 years passed since 2012 already, so relativity is busted at this point), then c is the speed of light in medium, so we don't need to bend anything or use negative t to calculate outcomes.
- mannerheim 5y ago> so relativity is busted at this point Excuse me?
- bashinator 5y agoTo answer the second question, so that I can be the bad guys from the end of that Cixin Liu trilogy. Exponential growth is infinite and resources are not, so take any available advantage. Short answer to the first, because the speed of light is the top speed at which information can propagate in the Universe.
- imtringued 5y agoI don't think a gold standard is a viable pyramid scheme for a multiplanetary species. There's too much of it in space. You need something that is rare even after traveling for hundreds of years. A lot of wars were simply fought over resources. It's even better if your society uses the resource as money. The only thing I can imagine is using habitable planets as currency, this would require your galactic empire to have a dozen planets though because a single planet does not make a currency and the debt trap of borrowing 1 planet at 3% interest would fall apart because colonizing the next planet may take too long to pay off the interest. I.e. you need some planets to lose before you take that loan. Edit: Great filter hypothesis to explain Fermis paradox. The pyramid scheme needed to enslave the galaxy is also powerful enough to destroy a planet before it develops space faring technology.
- me_me_me 5y agoJust to point out obvious, you are applying a human logic to an theoretical alien species of theoretically any type of behaviour/value/technological/political angle. Who knows what they are like and what they value.
- xupybd 5y agoThank you another book/trilogy to add to the reading list.
- Elora 5y agoI suggest you also add The Wandering Earth by the same author to your list, which is a collection eleven of his short fiction stories. I'd even go as far as say it's better to read it first before the trilogy.