Freedom's Last Gasp
Page 26
The Warp Ring leverages this fact in the same way that Doctor Alcubierre’s paper does. It harnesses the expansion and contraction of space itself and in so doing, envelopes the object in a bubble of sorts. The object (e.g. ship, Earth, etc.) isn’t moving, but space itself is moving around it.
In the case of this story, the Earth is riding on this distortion, kind of like a surfer rides a wave.
I’d also suggest reading up on inflation theory. It does provide some good background reading if you’re inclined to learn more about faster-than-light movement.
As an aside, I will note that things like time dilation have been experimentally verified. I’ll refer you to the U.S. Naval Observatory experiments by Hafele and Keating, which documented what happened when four incredibly accurate atomic clocks were synchronized and two of them were flown around the world while the other two remained stationary. When the clocks were brought back together, the time had shifted ever-so-slightly for the clocks which had been traveling at jet-like speeds. For them, time had slowed ever-so-slightly.
The explanations I give in the book are actually congruent with the concept of the Warp Drive that Doctor Alcubierre mentioned.
The only things we’re missing are a substantial (ridiculous amount) of energy and the still theoretical concept of negative mass.
In attaining some of these things, you could imagine our ability to wrap an object (e.g. ship, Earth, etc.) into a bubble of sorts. This bubble is gravitationally isolated and when the bubble itself moves, the contents within it don’t even sense the movement.
Kind of cool, don’t you think? I’m waiting for Doctor Holmes to be born, so he can fiddle with things and we can make it so.
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Space Elevator:
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Space elevators have been written about for quite a while in the science fiction realm, but there isn’t that much fictional about them.
First of all, what is a space elevator?
Simply put, imagine if you could put an object high enough up in space that it would maintain geosynchronous orbit. We do that all the time when we launch satellites. Such an object could act as an anchor for an elevator of sorts.
Imagine if you could drop a rope down from such a height and tie it down wherever it lands on Earth. You could conceivably build something that climbs up and down that rope and easily bring objects into space.
Why bother?
Well, with today’s technology, it is very resource expensive to bring things into space. You could easily imagine that if the Earth had a myriad of space elevators, it would be much easier to assemble large objects (e.g. spaceships?) in space.
So what’s the issue, let’s get started!
The issue has always been, and still largely is, the material that you’d make this hypothetical rope from.
I like to use examples when explaining things, so let’s do that.
You need to be roughly 22,000 miles above the Earth to maintain geosynchronous orbit. That’s the height where the gravity pulling you down and the centrifugal force that makes you want to fly away are effectively even.
That means we need rope that is 22,000 miles long at a minimum. So how much does such a thing weigh?
I’ll take for an example the lightest climbing rope I could find. This rope weighs 48 grams per meter and has a rather impressive 1660 pounds of carrying capacity.
Well, how much does 22,000 miles of that rope weigh?
With my handy calculator in hand, it turns out that it comes to about 1,699,467 kilograms, or about 3,746,683 pounds just for the rope. That basically means that the rope isn’t strong enough to even hold itself up nor any payload.
That illustrates the biggest problem space elevators have faced: what to make them out of.
In this story, I talk rather extensively about graphene. I’ll leave it to the reader who is interested to read up more about graphene and its capabilities, but let’s just say that if the mass manufacturing of graphene can be achieved (which is not an impossibility), then that would make something like a space elevator extremely practical.
I’ll further note that graphene has rather amazing physical properties such as electrical and thermal conductivity that surpasses those of many of the known “best of” types of conductors.
About the Author
I am an Army brat, a polyglot, and the first person in my family born in the United States. This heavily influenced my youth by instilling a love of reading and a burning curiosity about the world and all of the things within it. As an adult, my love of travel and adventure has allowed me to explore many unimaginable locations, and these places sometimes creep into the stories I write.
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I hope you’ve found this story entertaining.
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- M.A. Rothman
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You can find my blog at: www.michaelarothman.com
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I am also on Facebook at:
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And on Twitter: @MichaelARothman