🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:46:08 GMT, ykhan@achilles.net (Yousuf Khan)
wrote:

>>Larry Niven had these "displacement booths" which he desribed as
>>changing matter into some kind of "super neutrino" for transmission.
>>That's the kind of thing I had in mind.
>
>Sounds exactly like the transporters.
>

Except that there wasn't a recievorless system, which makes it a _lot_
easier.

>>>>But normal gravity can distort space in only one sense. It can only
>>>>_increase_ the curvature. You want to be able to decrease it too.
>>>
>>>You can pile a few separate waves of stretches against each other to form
>>>pockets of compression.
>
>>What I've read about the current "warp drive" and wormhole theories
>>suggest you can't work the trick without generating negative mass.
>
>Why not?  Just use the fact that gravitons can only travel out at the speed
>of light, and curve the space ahead of you towards you at the speed of
>light. Then send more waves of gravity through the first set of curvatures,
>and curve space even further ahead of you. You just keep crumpling the
>space like inching through a carpet.
>

I don't pretend to understand these theories in detail: Tensors always
gave me trouble. I think it's something to do with stretching space
behind you as you compress it ahead. Saves having to alter the whole
universe to radically or something.

---------------------------------+----------------------------------
I was born weird:  This terrible | Like Pavlov's dogs we are trained
compulsion to behave normally is | to salivate at the sound of the
the result of childhood trauma.  | liberty bell.
---------------------------------+----------------------------------
Malcolm