On Sep/24/2020 at 04:14, David Spain wrote :
On 9/23/2020 4:29 PM, Alain Fournier wrote:
I'm not sure direction is relevant when you've exceeded the speed of
money.

Dave

The speed of money? Where does that fit in the light-speed,
ludicrous-speed and plaid-speed scale?

The speed of money is essentially somewhere between the speed of
imagination and the speed of realization.

As for using an Alcubierre drive, Serguei Krashnikov proposed a scheme
where only a few negative milligrams of exotic matter is needed to
transport small atoms at super-luminal speeds. The utility of
transporting small atoms like this would be more about transporting
information than about transporting the atoms themselves. So this
brings up the question: are atoms really the best option for
transporting information like this? Could an Alcubierre-Krashnikov
drive be used to transport photons faster than light? I don't think
that the fact that photons are massless is important here, the payload
isn't accelerated at all, it is the space around the payload which is
warped. But if the photon is a gamma ray, it is much smaller than an
atom and volume does seem to be severely restricted for such a drive.
What would be the best payload for such a drive?

Anything that fits inside the transporter beam? Essentially using
quantum mechanics and spooky action-at-a-distance to get around the
light speed hangup. I've always thought that if you can essentially
assemble something in zero elapsed time anywhere in the universe, that's
probably the best way to travel. The trick is getting the receivers
where you want them.

Dave

I thought about this some more. I was wondering what would be the best
payload for an Alcubierre drive. But the answer to my question might
very well be no payload at all. If at destination they can detect that
an Alcubierre drive has arrived, and know when and/or where that has
happened, even if the drive contains nothing, information can be
transmitted this way. And since the size of the drive seems to be a
limiting factor, if you reduce the payload to nothing, you don't have to
bother making the drive big enough to carry it.


Alain Fournier