A real Starship Enterprise in 20 years?

Wrong.

Evidence for relativity began to accumulate as soon as the theory was proposed. A successful scientific theory must make testable predictions. Relativity did so, and tests began almost immediately, and were so successful that it was soon generally accepted.

String theory, on the other hand, has been around for a couple of decades, and there has not yet been a single successful test of any of its predictions, which is why it is now falling out of favor.

There is no technology available to expand and contract space-time. While there is nothing in theory to forbid it, there is also ZERO evidence that it is actually possible. Without some evidence, this is nothing but groundless speculation. It is fantasy. Make-believe.

Back in the 70's I had friends who were trekkies. They firmly held to the belief that any idea anybody could dream up was as likely to be true as any other, regardless of actual evidence. They embraced science fiction as equally valid with science. Effectively they embraced the logic of religion: If I can imagine it, it will one day happen. They were lapsed Catholics. They no longer believed the religion of their parents, but they accepted uncritically the thinking pattern that places more validity on imagination than on observation.

BTW, it IS possible, if you have enough energy available, to send people to the far side of the galaxy in their own lifetime. As you get to relativistic speeds, both time and space contract. Local clocks slow down and distance in the direction of travel is condensed. A photon that crosses the galaxy travels for zero time and zero distance by its own clock and yardstick. But as you go and return, at relativistic speed and a short time by your own clock, hundreds of thousands of years would have passed here, and the people who sent you on your way would have been dead for so long, the human race would probably no longer exist when you got back.

By the time you'd been traveling for a day by your own clock, at relativistic speed, you'd no longer be able to talk to the people back home because they'd all be long dead.

 

Well in the world of Star Trek, the military is obsolete, wasted money on military spending is used to improve mankind, as it should be.

 

Relativity was first proposed in 1905....experiments like Ives–Stilwell happened in 1938 (which at least historically is considered one of the first special relativity experiments). What immediate tests happened in 1905 to have had it so universally accepted right then and there, as you purport?

Yes, you have stated these conditions with relativity before. Continually restating them only confirms that you only will accept relativity conditions. My link, Chuck's link, and a myriad of actual physicists say that there may be additional conditions found in quantized spacetime. You might believe it's all fiction: and within our lifetimes it will probably stay that way. But until we can prove or disprove different dimensions, your belief in warp not being possible is not any more valid then those who do postulate quantized space.

 

Actually, the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiments was critical evidence. That was performed in 1887 and it took special relativity to explain the reason for the null result without requiring artificial fixes.

 

Was stated by Roddenberry that Star Trek was not military, was seeking new life and new civilizations to join the Federation if they wanted, they were armed with weapons, but that wasn't their primary goal, they didn't keep spending time and knowledge on weaponry that would never be used, thus wasted endeavors.

 

But when was the Michelson-Morley experiment considered within special relativity? Apparently in 1887 it was considered a failure to describe "luminiferous aether". How long would it be until it was linked to relativity? Aparently other scientists were continuing experiments until 1930. My point to Daniel is that science is fluid...that relativity was first a theory that gained more traction as it explained other observations.

 

Within Roddenberry's ST productions, I would say that he was striving for a more exploratory/ non-military focus. Once he was booted off the movies after TMP, Nicholas Meyer said that he did want to draw symbology of the Navy and Moby Dick with ST II. Since I like the Hornblower books, I don't mind comparing Star Fleet to a Navy

 

There was another critical supporting concept - Maxwell's equations. It was quickly recognized that Maxwell's equations were fully consistent with ALL special relativity equations. That was an unexpected surprise. As a consequence, all experiments that demonstrated the correctness of Maxwell's equations also demonstrated the correctness Special Relativity. There simply was nothing that matched Special Relativity for explaining ALL experimental results and ALL theoretical consistencies (as long as acceleration and gravity were not involved).

I also need to recount the history at the time. One of the reasons Special Relativity had to fight an uphill battle was due to a number of senior German professors (e.g. Philipp Lenard, Johannes Stark) making it very clear that "supporters" of relativity were supporting "Jewish Physics". The major opposition to relativity had little to do with physics of relativity. Fortunately, Max Planck was a very strong supporter of Einstein's theory. Among the best physicists, not the most physicists, relativity was seen as the only viable theory. They saw the all the connections in very short order. The remaining years were nothing more than exorcising the demons of anti-semitism, not proving relativity actually worked, that was already known.

As far conducting experiments into 1930, I would content that experiments on relativity have never stopped. Why would they?

 

Well then why did Michelson-Morley just stop in 1930 You're the one with a physics degree, so you obviously have more knowledge in this subject FL. I wasn't refuting that relativity explained some of the experiments of the time: merely that universal acceptance of it didn't happen overnight.

Instead of splitting hairs about when relativity was accepted, I think it would be a better discussion to first hear your own beliefs over quantized spacetime theories. Just from its basic premise, I would think it would take a lot longer to be able to test/validate then relativity.

 

I was a little too snappy in my original reply and I apologize for that. I'll act like an adult this time around.

The macroscopic world is entirely the summation of all the effects of the quantum world. An theoretical and experimental calculations in the macroscopic world can be done with quantum math and principals. The rub is the amount of work vs. the results. The trajectory of a cannon ball can be calculated as the expectation value of every particle in the ball.....or you can just use Newton's math to get the same answer considering ball as one object. Using a hand calculator beats the living daylights out of using every supercomputer on the planet calculating every wave aspect of every quark and electron to get the same answer.

The same is true of quantum teleportation. It took a complicated experiment to transfer one particle's quantum state. We simply do not have the resources to do much more that that. Note that the complexity scales with the "entanglement" between each pair of particles (vs. the number of particles). There is no dividing line where QM does not apply, just a dividing line of what method to use to calculate effects or properties.

I don't really know what led you to this conclusion, so I'll just have to assume it might be one of a couple possibilities.

1) Any quantum particle parameter can be determined to any accuracy, limited by the capabilities of the measuring devices. Whether it be velocity, mass, position, decay time, spin, angular momentum, whatever. The quantum limitation is measuring "incompatible" (non-commuting) parameters at the same time.

2) The basis of quantum mechanical calculations is being able to assign an "exact state" or specific combination of "exact states" to every particle. It's called a "state function". What may be confusing, is that having an exact state function is not the same as knowing the ultimate fate of the particle. Those are two different things.

 

From my viewpoint, the catastrophic shortcoming of Quantum Mechanics is the complete lack of any theory for explaining particle mass values. For example, electron mass is entirely an empirically determined value. (When something like the Higg's particle mass is predicted, that prediction is bracketed by the lack of expected decay particles if the mass were high or lower. No "mass theory" is involved, only the presence or lack of side effects for various postulations of mass.)

With this gigantic hole, all the other failures of QM, including integration with general relativity are "side effects" of a failure to understand mass. Quantized space time theories being one of many attempts to come up with answers assuming a "mass theory" is not possible....and all of these theories encountering shortcomings since the real answer remains undiscovered.

Now in the case that someone does figure out a "theory of lepton/quark mass", then this acceptance will be just as tortured as special relativity's acceptance. All the string theorists will forever object since that more or less ends their claim to fame. All the new physicists will quickly jump on figuring out experiments. And truly new experiments may be long in coming, since the real test, matching theoretical mass predictions with existing mass measurements, would be completed in one day. All that would be left is the arguing till no shortcoming is found.....or a shortcoming is found.

 

Considering how there has been some debate about subparticle speeds recently, and we're more likely to study quantum physics on the ground (with colliders mainly), I'd also think that true experiments are going to be long in coming. My own degree is medical science, but I like reading about astronomy/physics. Those physicists that are being vocal about quantized spacetime are at least being honest about it not being able to be proven or disproven: and the time to develop warp drive can't be postulated now. If warp is possible, it could be several millenia (so we might go extinct before we know). On the otherhand, there could be some enlightening finding that happens to shorten the time to validate quantized spacetime/ develop a warp technology. As airflight proved, anything is possible until you experiment and find out what really works (validating warp technology is a long way off because we don't know the experimental parameters yet).

 

Chuck, how in the world could this topic turn into a flaming controversy?

Ah I figured it out.

 

I don't think there has been much flaming yet. Now if the question was, who would you rather see captain the "real starship" in 20 years: a Kirk or a Piccard?

eep: