Physicist wants to test Hyperdrive Propulsion in Large Hadron Collider
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted October 11th 2009 12:14AM
posted October 11th 2009 12:14AM
How come news can never come out of the Large Hadron Collider that doesn't remind us of our planet's impending SciFi Techno-Apocalypse(tm)? When not busy being called a doomsday machine, being bedeviled by hackers and Chuck Norris (yuck!), or just plain failing, the facility could be used to test "hyperdrive" spacecraft propulsion. Seriously! And you know what that means -- someone is planning on escaping the planet, and fast. A physicist named Franklin Felber has been musing over a little known German paper from the 1920s ("The Foundations of Physics" by David Hilbert) which states, in part, that under certain conditions a stationary mass should repel a relativistic particle. If this is true, Felber, concludes, then shouldn't a relativistic particle repel a stationary mass? According to MIT's Technology Review, the LHC would be the perfect place to test this idea: Felber could "set up a test mass next to the beam line and measure the forces on it as the particles whiz past." The experiment could be run in tandem with the collider's other work -- and who knows? Mankind may soon be on its way to the stars at near-light speeds. Let's just hope we figure this out before the robots take over.
[Via Technology Review]
[Via Technology Review]
Or we could go with solar sails and constant acceleration using giant lasers.
Nah, solar sails are too slow to accelerate and slow down. Better to use a method that doesn't require such long intervals of initial acceleration and stopping once you get somewhere. Although, solar sails are a great method for interplanetary travel and it's a shame no one's using it yet (other than a couple failed prototypes).
Doesn't this thing sound like its going to accidentally create superheroes/villains? Think about - big high-tech scientific thing, somebody jumps the gun on testing or accidentally falls within the reactor... bam! Sandman is created. Or the Hulk. Whatever the future robot overlords prefer.
I think it's just likely to give you a bad case of cancer :(
This was all wonderfully illustrated in the "Family Guy" episode, "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1", season 3, episode 21, air date February 14th 2002.
To boldly follow in Picard's footsteps.
YYYYYYAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!!!!
You're doing it wrong. The Doctor told me.
I'm going to be studying physics soon, so hopefully it's successful and I get to learn the principals on how it functions.
Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQNpucos9wc
This has nothing whatsoever to do with "hyperdrives" or faster than light propulsion. Quit making stupid people think that may be possible.
FTA: "test the suitability of relativistic gravity for propulsion of spacecraft to relativistic speeds"
Stop being a poop.
And FYI, you shouldn't refer to your fellow commenters as 'stupid people'. Comes across as a tad shitty.
Who the hell said anything about faster than light?
Who said a hyperdrive had to be faster than light? Really any sort of huge speed boost would be nice right now seeing as how we can't really go anywhere, ever, right now.
Land Speed Record: 763 MPH
Aircraft Speed Record: about 6,800 MPH
If this thing even goes 1,000,000 MPH, it's freaking HyperDrive as far as I'm concerned.
the 'Felber drive' does have a good ring about it though...
To Infinity and Beyond!
Hahaha, I thought it said Large HardOn collider!!! Must've been the wine.
"little known paper'? 91,00 hits on Google for '"Foundations of Physics" by David Hilbert'
I don't know if the article said anything about sub-space in the physics dialect that I can't seem to understand, but I thought that was the basis behind the hyperdrive, right?
Does this mean it might be possible to make an anti-gravity propulsion method that made earth's gravity actually push spacecraft into space? If something like that could be done, it would change everything :)
GOOD NEWWS, EVERYONNE!
Yes, go to voguemalls for only the finest chinese knockoffs!
that said, some of those places aren't bad, ownta.com is good for electronics, wouldn't trust anyone spamming here as far as I could throw my house though -.o
i've said it many times before, once more won't hurt: David Hilbert was a unique phenomenon. He independently devised the theory of relativity a few years before Einstein but Einstein published it first. Unfair? Yes
ouch
There once was a Miss Fanny Bright,
Whose speed exceeded that of light,
She set out one day in a relative way,
And arrived the previous night.
Nuck, nuck, nuck.
Across the void we come a-warping.
Across the field of stars we soar!
We pledge to land and... something, something... dum diddle dum dum dee dum dee dum SPACESHIP!
And when at last our mission's finished.
In duty homeward shall we fly.
Our glory cannot be diminished.
Back to the heavens in our mighty SPACESHIP!
If this effect were real it still wouldn't work for propelling spacecraft. Unless you had a particle accelerator at a Lagrange point aiming at the spacecraft and even then you could probable achieve the same acceleration using a large laser aimed at a solar sail. This guy is a crock though. On a side note when is the lhc going to be turned on for real? I want to know when to throw my end of the world party. They say that when you're being sucked into a black hole you are effectively trapped at the event horizon circling forever from your point of view - I'd like to be drunk for that.
Basically when the LHC is busted and things get slow at CERN people get crazy ideas, hyper drive, joining al queda, that kind of stuff you know.
So I propose they consider removing the porn filters at CERN HQ for a while maybe.
Does this mean we get to go through slipspace? YAY!
Actually for the people back home it will take 50 years to know you arrived safely, the signal sent back home saying "we arrived okay" will take another 25 years to reach Earth.
Anyway you can see the problem with relativistic motion for interstellar travel.
With the relatively short distances within our solar system it shouldn't matter, not much more then the fact astronauts are nanoseconds into the future form their perspective.
Just to satisfy my own curiosity and perhaps Mike's:
I'll take the average distance to mars from earth, 225 million km.
Travel time for that would be *calculator* 50 minutes at 0,25c from observers perspective.
Lorentz factor for 0,25c is *calculator* 0,968245837
Which means travel time for you on board will be a good 48 minutes.
I am SOOOOO excited for the Large Hardon Collider!
[pedant]
That album by Bonnie Tyler, depicted in the diagram, is "Faster Than The Speed Of NIGHT". That's "Night" not "Light". Written and produced by Meatloaf's buddy, Jim Steinman. Cracking album too.
[/pedant]
Does an FTN drive run on dark matter :)
[/comedy career]
Hilbert is probably one of the top five mathematicians of the 20th century.
Little-known? I honestly hope that was sarcasm...
And yes, while axiomatic physics never caught on, it still was an important revelation (i.e. much of functional analysis is due to some of the results from axiomatic physics)
@G
Bosonic String Theory should be thrown on the scrap heap; the tachyon is too wild an assumption.
However, detection of the Higgs Boson with the LHC would be very exciting.
Why does Engadget make low and lowest-ranked comments unreadable?
first, why the LHC? Every facility out there produces particles travelling at 99.99xxx% of c. Second, how is positioning "next to the beam line" going to work? The beam pipe is relatively large and then there is the issue that it is solid matter infront of your 'test' particle. I just don't see how this works as a practical matter
Luggages only problem with time-dilation for relativistic travel is having mentioned the distance of 25LY. That won't get us very far, not unless we're sending out ships to create relays for much faster travel between our solar system and solar system beta.
If the trip for the crew is 25 years and they need to sleep through it (silly considering they can work through that time, but only if their ship is equipped to keep they alive and functional during the trip), meaning a sleeper ship is meant to minimized the power needed to keep the crew alive almost regardless of the length of the trip, but again, if for the crew 25 years have passed, for the rest of the universe many more years would have passed, hundreds, thousands of years. During that time the rest of civilization would have presumably improved on drive tech and colonized most of the distance the sleeper ship was meant to travel.
As far as I remember we're should be looking into colonizing the best worlds within a 500LY region of space. So practically speaking once we get going in the 98+ percent of light speed, it won't take that long to start propagating out. Consider it something similar to the industrial revolution or exploration of the new world. Once we start travelling, it'll be a snowball effect towards colonizing all those planets in our local region of the galaxy. You can read some colony fiction like the Commonwealth series for some idea of what would happen to society once those first ships are sent out.
Anyone have any good links for further reading on this topic? I love to learn about things like this, but can honestly say my background in physics (especially theoretical) is limited at best due to my dislike of calculus. I would definitely be interested in reading on sub light travel, time dilation ect.
I know how absurd it sounds, but after watching Stargate SG1/Atlantis, they mention a few of the terms discussed here and the way they presented it graphically seemed interesting, but I wondered what the real science behind these terms looks like, even if only in the minds eye.