Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Are we living in a Funiverse?

Since the time I played with Lifters, made one and learned about ion drives I have this question running:
Can our universe allow all the Science fiction stories where space travel is fast and inexpensive?
As far as Science and Science fiction goes, our Universe may be one of:
  1. The boring one (as far as space travel goes :) where there is no other way to move around than trowing matter out of the spaceship. Only Newton law of Action/Reaction can push us around. If this is the only way to travel, reaching other stars will be a one way trip at slow speed. I can imagine mankind doing it only out of despair (may be planet earth burning).
  2. The Fun Universe where we found out the relationship between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. In the process we found a way to accelerate through space without using precious mass of the spaceship but just energy. With this kind of travel we can start to explore our galaxy, but it will still be limited by the speed of light.
  3. The very cool Universe where we can control worm holes in spacetime and travel faster than the speed of light. Here all science fiction books are realistic but frankly, I still have doubt we are living in this Universe.

We can hope there is a strong relationship between Electromagnetism and Gravitation. When you think about it:
The relationship between space and time in General Relativity is: The speed of light!

I know scientist and astronomers are trying to verify that the 2 parameters: the speed of electromagnetic waves and the gravity space/time ratio, are actually equal.
As of our knowledge, they are equal. So, a strong underlying physical system is relating both theories.
The question is:
Is this link between Electromagnetism and Gravity able to accelerate a space craft without using some kind of fuel mass?
Are we living in a Funiverse?

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