On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:25:07 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

On 15/10/2012 2:20 PM, Painius wrote:

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:11:37 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

I do think that at some point it will be possible to go faster than the
speed of light, and the solution may turn out to be quite similar to the
problem and solution to going faster than sound. In the case of sound,
you just need find something more rigid than the air around it, which
won't get torn up by the air around it.

Similarly, you would need to find something that's more rigid than the
surrounding space around it. Much harder to do when the rigidity of
matter is entirely dependent on the rigidity of space. So as a lot of
people of said, we'd have to obtain some exotic negative mass to create
bubbles of space that are of a different rigidity than standard space,
in order to transitition through the superluminal barrier.

Does negative mass equal antimatter? Antimatter is used in both SF
and science-proposed FTL spacecraft drives.

No, negative mass and negative energy are pretty much the same thing,
just as mass and energy are the same thing. Just as mass is a highly
compact, organized form of energy, negative mass would thus be the
similarly compacted and organized form of negative energy.

So what is negative energy then? The universe is supposed to have a net
zero amount of energy when all of it is added together. Think of
building a dirt hill on a flat piece of ground: if you want dirt to
build the hill, then you'll have to dig it out of the surrounding flat
ground. You'll thus have a dirt hill, but you'll also have a dirt
trench, out of what was previously flat ground. Positive energy can be
thought of as the dirt hill, while negative energy is the trench.

If positive energy is what makes up all of the matter and the 3
non-gravitational forces, then negative energy is thus made up of the
4th force, gravity. All of the matter in the universe creates gravity
because the matter itself is positive energy, while the gravity is its
attendant cancelling negative energy.

Now somehow when the universe got formed, the positive energy went from
its original randomized state to some form of organization. But the
negative energy never got organized just exists in random form. But the
negative energy should be just as capable of being organized into
negative mass. With some unknown technology in the future, if they can
organize negative energy, they can then create negative mass. This
negative mass can then be used to wormholes and warp drives.

That's very interesting, Khan!

I imagine that mainstreamers ridicule that idea (especially since you
called gravitation a "force", which is contrary to the general theory
of relativity's "gravity is an 'effect', not a 'force'"), but I *like*
it!

You describe the negative energy as gravitational, which goes into
matter to eventually, perhaps over great periods of time, cancel out
the compacted positive energy that is called matter.

However (isn't there always a "but"? g), I still don't quite
understand why you appear to have answered an adamant "no" to my
question about antimatter being equal to negative matter.

You see, scientists have been able to produce antimatter, such as the
positron, in cloud chambers...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron

It was then found that when an electron collided with a positron, the
two particles would be annihilated, and there was an astonishing
amount of (positive and negative?) energy produced.

If a positron were actually a particle of negative matter, then the
cloud chamber was able to briefly convert the negative energy of
gravitation into a particle. It would seem that as long as negative
energy remains an energy (and not negative matter), there is no
immediate annihilation when it meets positive matter, but instead it
produces gravitation.

Well, what do you think now, Khan?

--
Indelibly yours,
Paine @ http://astronomy.painellsworth.net/
"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to bitch and moan."