OK I know the big "E" says matter can not go FTL. but this is science fiction. assuming God gave us the ability (or how ever we got it)I would like some ideas or opinions about how would we track an object going FTL in space. obviously it could not be seen.
In F&F I have gotten a couple comments, thanks Survivor,on this topic I'd like to see what everyone else thinks.
Oh by the way if this topic has come up before I got here does anyone know how I might find it?
Posted by Slartibartfast (Member # 4673) on :
There are unproven particles called tachyons which travel FTL. Presumably, a race which had such ships also would have mastery over these particles, and could use a beam of them to scan/track other ships.
Wikipedia has a wealth of information on FTL travel including instances in sci-fi.
Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :
Maybe they can't be tracked. Doesn't that make things more interesting?
Posted by xardoz (Member # 4528) on :
Does it really matter? Seriously, we've all heard the axiom that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If you're referring to the F&F post I'm thinking of, your characters accept tracking an FTL object as a given. They understand it without bogging each other down in theory and technical jargon.
Modern radar operators don't talk about the electrical mechanics of tracking aircraft, unless they've got to fix their scopes, so why would your far-future scanner operators? Unless, of course, they're explaining why they suddenly can't track a new type of Chosen vessel.
If you have to, here's a freebie (you get what you pay for ): There's a "tachyon-compression wave signature" that lets them see where it has been and the computers use a set of "quantum algorithmic decision trees" to predict where the ship is/will be in real-time.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
"E" says that no electromagnetic phenomenon can propogate through space-time faster than the speed of propogation of electromagnetic phenomena through space-time.
That's entirely different from whether things can travel faster than light.
Using a singularity to distort spacetime in such a way that conventional relativity no longer applies is one way to travel faster than light. It's expensive and very polluting, but it works. There are better ways to travel FTL, but the best of them fall victim to the "indistinguishable from magic" problem. Go with what works for your story.
Posted by ChrisOwens (Member # 1955) on :
Off the top of my head, isn't there something called Checkov radation? Of course, the FTL would have come and gone before it was detected.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Cherenkov radiation? It's the blue glow associated with radioactivity.
Posted by Rahl22 (Member # 1411) on :
A quick (and off-topic) note from your friendly, neighborhood radiation physicist:
Cerenkov radiation results from a particle traveling faster than the speed of light in a particular medium. The speed of light decreases when it travels through a non-vacuum. If you shoot a particle through this medium at a greater velocity, it would emit radiation. It has to do with shock waves, similar to the sound barrier. This particle doesn't have to be from a radioactive source, either.
Regardless, this won't help you with the FTL argument.
For my money, don't try to explain it. Half of your audience doesn't care, and the other half will call bullshit the moment your physics gets a wee bit wonky.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
I figure faster-than-light, as a literary device, is something you can use to put your characters somewhere not on Earth in a hurry, but that can be mentioned and passed over before you get to the action.
If you're doing something more than that, say, like some kind of interstellar war with a space fleet action, you may need to define any abilities and limits your FTL drive has on it. If the fleet can be detected approaching, a space battle would be different than if they couldn't. (If you're doing a battle on a planet surface in this war, you need not define things as rigorously.)
Posted by tchernabyelo (Member # 2651) on :
The corollary of the famous E=mc-squared equation is another, mor ecomplex one, verified experimentally, that as a particle increases in speed it also increases in mass. The upshot of this equation is that at the speed of light, mass would be effectively infinite (there would be a divisor of zero). However, fast than light, the divisor would be the square root of a negative number, and nobody has the remotest clue what that would actually mean in "real" terms; this is definitely NOT the same thing as being impossible (though obviously there is an issue about how to get to FTL travel without at some point travelling at the speed of light).
I'm not aware of any current equation in physics that proves FTL travel is impossible, but I am probably several years behind on current reading; someone may have come up with something.
Posted by ChrisOwens (Member # 1955) on :
Oops. Now that Star Trek is on TVLand... at least, I didn't say Sulu... that was how Kirk always learned of FTL wessels...
): There's a "tachyon-compression wave signature" that lets them see where it has been and the computers use a set of "quantum algorithmic decision trees" to predict where the ship is/will be in real-time.