ruthless Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 i had an idea today that i wanted to share. imagine a sheet of paper, and you fold it, so it looks kind of like a japanese fan. if you press the paper all the way down, it is flat, and takes up very little room. if you pull on the top end of the paper, it starts stretching out, like an accordion, and it takes up alot more room. i was thinking maybe this is how the universe works. at the beginning of the big bang, it was similar to a flat sheet of paper. getting from point a to b would be easy, because there is not much space. when the universe expanded, (pulling the paper) it took alot longer to get from point a to b. if there is some way to use this information to skip the empty spaces between the paper, well wouldnt that be nice? any comments are appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruthless Posted May 30, 2011 Author Share Posted May 30, 2011 i also wonder if light itself is the force that expands our universe. if the theory is correct, (probably not) then the universe must have been very dense. we all know that visible light does not pass through opaque objects well, and that transparent objects do not expand when exposed to light. i guess the question is, how much light can you pump into a box before it expands? ...or will it ever expand. i need to go to school and learn more math. smarts can only get you so far without technique and wisdom, i guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darby Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 ruthless, Once again you show some great insight. What you see in your mind and with your example is very similar to how a wormhole or Alcubierre's warp drive principle work, at least in theory. In each case instead of moving very fast (close to light speed) from Point A to Point B you avoid all of the relativistic effects by folding spacetime and taking a sub light speed short-cut. One of my professors at UCSB used a pizza as an example. In his example you are at point A along the edge of the crust and you want to get to B at another point along the crust. Cut a slice of pizza out making the cuts near A and B and then pull (warp) the open edges together. A & B are now next to each other and the pizza is shaped like a cone. On paper is looks good but in practice not so good. This will be a very hard trick to pull off if it can be pulled off at all. But if we ever want to travel to another star system and be able to tell our friends about it it is the only known method. Traveling at near the speed of light works well inside the ship but if the trip takes a thousand years each way according to clocks here on Earth it's not much in the way of practical use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruthless Posted June 3, 2011 Author Share Posted June 3, 2011 its really too bad that they dont make something that grabs nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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