Hyperspace - a reality sooner than we might think?

Yeah right. I remember being told the same stuff 30 years ago. Don't hold your breath.

I'm not a physicist and if I read the paper on the theory I wouldn't understand most or any of it, but from the description it did seem to hold some promise. Perhaps when engineering allows the experiment to be carried out we'll know. As for now, this seems to be highly speculative stuff, that hasn't gone through any peer-review even. Still, something to keep an eye on to see what might happen in the future.

To quote the article:

Dröscher is hazy about the details, but he suggests that a spacecraft fitted with a coil and ring could be propelled into a multidimensional hyperspace. Here the constants of nature could be different, and even the speed of light could be several times faster than we experience.

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I read a great short-short a while ago which explored this.

To circumvent the limit fundamental speed limit (the speed of light) they finally (after many trials and tribulations) found a way to get into hyperspace.

But the speed limit in hyperspace wasn't faster. It was SLOWER.

Perhaps hyperspace exists, but is a dead end?

Mac

Yeah, sure. I'm still waiting for the flying cars they promised 60 years ago.

Tim Gasolene said:

Yeah, sure. I'm still waiting for the flying cars they promised 60 years ago.

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Well they have 'em.

It's just that it's more affordable (and funner) to own a Hummer.

I must quote Spock: Fascinating. String theory was equally bizarre and seemingly incomprehensible when first proposed, but now the physics community is taking it quite seriously, so who knows what following this particular path will lead to?

Let's not forget that people said the sound barrier could never be broken, too.

Just because we figure something is impossible, very improbable, or highly unlikely because of our current understanding of the universe and how we think it works doesn't mean that is actually the case.

Lately I have observed many people of various backgrounds (writers, scientists, etc) seeming to disparage or denounce new ideas or theories or whathaveyou simply because our reality doesn't allow for it to be instantly true. Hyperspace and FTL travel is a great example. Just because we can't do it now doesn't mean we never will. If we assume for the sake of argument there is life elsewhere in the galaxy, it doesn't have to follow at all that just because we can't travel beyond our solar system that they must not be able to, either.

I agree that a certain degree of doubt is good to keep people grounded, but it seems more and more that people aren't even willing to give things any consideration right from the start. It's just, Nope, that's no good, next!

I wonder why it is that these people I've observed allow their imaginations/dreams/etc to be so limited by our reality. Why does humanity have to be capable of something right now or know "for certain" that something is possible in order for it to be acceptable?

For example, someone once argued with me that if I was going to have aliens in my story, they must be alien as to be incomprehensible to my human characters and therefore incomprehensible to my readers. I know a lot of other writers feel this way also. I don't agree with that view. I think this falls in the same vein as what I mentioned above. Why do people give us (meaning humans) so little credit? When Earth was still being explored and different cultures came into contact with one another for the first time, they were certainly different and probably incomprehensible to each other, too, but we still figured each other out, given time. Why then should we assume we'd be incapable of figuring out aliens? It might take longer and require more effort, but I don't think it needs to be impossible.

Just my $.02.

Anyway, that's probably a little off-topic. But the idea of hyperspace or any other mode of travelling through space like that possibly being feasible is certainly exciting. The avenues it could open up...! Even if the ideas they have prove fruitless at this time, perhaps they'll lead to other lines of discovery instead. ^^

The one thing I'm missing in this article (either because it's not there, or because it's in one of the sections I didn't really understand) is what the power requirements for this system would really be. They talk about the field strength needed to use it with a 150-tonne spacecraft, but not what sort of power that would require long term. Could we even generate that power in something of that size?

For that matter the field-strengths they give only seem to be to get the spacecraft of the ground, or possibly for normal flight. As far as I can see hyperspace is mentioned only as needing an even stronger magnetic field etc.

Still I would love to see this actually happening. Even though it would probably make the world a harder place for science fiction writers for a while. (You'd have to actually understand this stuff before you could write it!)

Jarsto said:

Still I would love to see this actually happening. Even though it would probably make the world a harder place for science fiction writers for a while. (You'd have to actually understand this stuff before you could write it!)

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I would say it's coming, and there's no stopping it (although it's all in its infancy right now). Many countries (USA, UK, etc) have contributed to the particle accelerator being built in Europe, costing billions. Miles long, it is due to go online within the next couple of years.

A great book dealing with the subject (easy reading too) is Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku, one of the founders of string theory.

Tim Gasolene said:

Yeah, sure. I'm still waiting for the flying cars they promised 60 years ago.

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i think you're gonna keep waiting for that, but look on the brighter side, you've got cloning. you've got the internet (which is severely taken for granted), and you've got the new space and computer technology that's about to start skyrocketing....

German scientists just inveneted a transparent LED, too. Yup, displays that can show on glass. Checkit.