Re: Faster Than Light Travel

----Or you can just cease to exist in one location and reappear
somewhere
else i.e. quantum jumping on a macro scale. This is actually possible,
its
just that the probability is infinitessimal. Now if we can just figure
out
how to get all the subatomic particles in this ship to become excited in
such a way that the probability equations resolve simultaneously to
locate
them now one light year away ( all with the same xyz translation
preferably
- otherwise the paperwork gets messy ). The point about this is you
travel
from a to b without passing through anywhere in between and so the speed
of
light is not a limiting factor. Its been about 10 years since I did any
quantum mechanics or statistical thermodynamics and so they are somewhat
rusty now.

Craig

. From: Joachim Heck - SunSoft <jheck@East.Sun.COM>
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
Date: 11 September 1997 13:19
Subject: Re: Faster Than Light Travel

Chris McCurry writes:

@:) But thinking about it, I can only think of three truly different
@:) ways to travel at high speeds in S.Fiction.  Every thing else is
@:) just a variation of one of those themes:
@:)
@:) 1) hyperspace / warp space / worm holes / etc.
@:) 2) Folding / warping (changing the reality of space time)
@:) 3) conventional travel

  I think you're right.  Basically you either traverse some space to
get from A to B or you don't.  If you do, you either traverse normal
space, your option (3), or you traverse some other kind of space, your
option (1).  If you don't traverse any space to get where you're
going, you either stay put and move the universe, your option (2), or
you stay put and _don't_ move the universe, which is something of a
degenerate case because you don't go anywhere.

  The closest thing I can think of that is any different from any of
these is some kind of teleoperation/astral projection scheme, but then
you're not really going anywhere, I guess, so it doesn't count.

  I too would be very interested to hear any ideas that are somehow
different from these apparently catch-all transportation methods.

-joachim