Do you think we will invent a spaceship like the ones we see on Star Trek that has warp drives allowing us to travel to other universes in a short period of time?

Do you think a hyperdrive will ever be invented?

I never really thought about it

I've always suspected that's how Earth began. Warp speed? Maybe so.

if we don't we'll never get off this planet

the closest star system is one year's travel away (assuming traveling at the speed of light)

I think the answer to this question depends on when and how man learns to manipulate the fabric of space-time, rather than building bigger, faster stronger engines. It's likely that we'll understand the nature of quantum singularities and black holes long before we'd be able to make an engine that can outrun light, if that's even possible in this universe.

we are going to kill this planet before we get a chance to even think about that

nah.. the planet will be fine and will continue to turn ans tumble through space. mantle will continue to convect, plates shift, volcanoes erupt, rain fall, glaciers advance and retreat just as has been for millions and millions of years..

So what.. do you think that 'man' is the cause of global climate change? I take tthat's what you were refering to..

yes ....... and i really dont think EVERYONE is going to make the effort to chang things.. alot of people are going die... mybe i dont know anything though.

global warming is a joke.....however, man had better figure some way of traveling to another planet at some point, because the sun is going to burn Earth in the future...it is burning brighter and we are getting closer to it

the closest hospitable planet that we know about is one of Jupiter's moons...and by the time the sun scorches the earth, then the climate conditions should be somewhat similar there to what it is now on Earth

thats about a billion years away man

well, i don't want to derail this topic but I'll say this. what's being dubbed "global climate change' has been occurring on this rock for hundreds of millions of years. In the Pleistocene alone there are dozens of episodes of glacial pulsing (advance and retreat, repeat). At present, we are just barely out of an Ice age. And while temperatures should be on the rise if you look at the long term trend, year-to-year, decade-to-decade, even century-to-century trends are erradic at best.

Yes, I'm in the camp of skeptics. Al Gore is not a scientist, he's a politician. When examining an issue such as this, I ask myself what the motivation is to promote the idea that man's activity on the surface of the earth is having adverse effects on the climate. Given that politicians are stucturing new tax laws based on such an assumption, the answer I cannot escape is money, power and the consolidation thereof.

The political issue of "global warming" is a far different issue from the scientific issue of climatic trends over the history of the planet..

thank you for the insight

From what I remember of a late night with only Popular Mechanics in the John to keep me company. Liquid Magnesium would be the appropriate space ship fuel. You damn Nerd, ask the right questions, like do you think we'll find green Orion slave s, like on Star Trek!?

It would take alot of energy to bend the laws of gravity around an object, but yes, I do think so, and likely within my lifetime.

If it happened in my lifetime, I sure as hell wouldn't volunteer to be first.

I'd be the 50th.

You're very right about that, but such radical climate change has never happened in "civilized history." Whether the climate change is natural or caused by humans does not change the fact that humans live will, due to Earth's changing climate, change significantly in the next 20-100 years. For one, if you can believe Nat. Geographic, the intensity and frequency of hurricanes has been increasing and the oceans have been rising. As a result, certain inhabited coastal and island regions may be completely submerged in the next 20-50 years.

Of course, whether the climate changes are man-made or not is still an important question. If we have caused, or at least, accelerated the changes that are happening, we need to adapt and start being more careful. Even if there's a 70% chance that global warming is not at all influenced by mankind, we just can't afford to keep doing what we've been doing all along.

In short, we've got to do something.


P.S. Yeah, I think Star Trek-esque warp drives, or something similar, is how we are going to get off this rock. It is known that a bigger combustion engine and more fuel is *not* and will never be the answer.
Anyhow, physicists (the geeks that they all are at heart) have been theorizing about innovative ways to create starships for a while now.

One way, which *is* how the Star Trek warp drives actually work, is called the Alcubierre Drive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

If you're really an ST junkie, though, you'll remember a couple experimental warp drives from Voyager that actually used the same idea...but give the writers a break; it's tough to make up that sort of stuff, lol.

Two other resources on space travel and warp drives:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/warp.html
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/28/warp-speed-engine-02.html

One of the scientists from the second link quotes how much energy would be needed to employ the Alcubierre Drive. Personally, I'm banking on cold fusion and/or some other yet-undiscovered form of energy...maybe something to do with dark matter (?!?!). I don't know if anti-matter (ala Star Trek) has this sort of potential, but who knows what the future will bring. Just think - Rudolf Diesel built the first Diesel Combustion Engine in 1897. We've come a long way in the past 100 years compared to how fast mankind has progressed throughout history. Science moves faster everyday. I still have my fingers crossed that I'll one day see the first starship leave Earth's atmosphere. ;-)

And maybe some pointy-eared aliens will just then decide to pay us a visit. XD

So,, more like Dune than Star Trek

More like The black hole than dune or Startrek, but localized and unstable in front of the object to be moved faster than light. Who knows if anything human would survive the trip. Doubtful. Of course, there was a hypothesis that someone had in the early 20th century that nothing would survive fast than 35 mph, and later that nothing would survive exceeding the sound barrier, but those hypothesis proved to be false. Until gravity can be manipulated, faster than light travel in normal space will be impossible.

No. Einstein was wrong. There are no "warps".