Exotic Matter Drives

[Werner]

This is the stuff that keeps wormholes open and makes warp drives possible, it is matter with negative mass-energy, when in large concentrations it produces antigravity fields and it has negative inertia. For game purposes exotic matter is found in nuggets at negative densities similar to the positive densities of neutron stars, and the usually are positively charged or negatively charged but never neutral as like charges attract and opposite charges repel due to negative inertia.

How would this affect the Traveller Universe if it was widely avaliable?

 

[whulorigan]

This is the stuff that keeps wormholes open and makes warp drives possible, it is matter with negative mass-energy, when in large concentrations it produces antigravity fields and it has negative inertia. For game purposes exotic matter is found in nuggets at negative densities similar to the positive densities of neutron stars, and the usually are positively charged or negatively charged but never neutral as like charges attract and opposite charges repel due to negative inertia.

My understanding according to theoretical-based conjecture is that positive mass would always be attractive (toward either positive or negative mass) and negative mass would always be repulsive (toward either positive or negative mass): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass#Runaway_motion

On the Talking M-Drive Acceleration thread, ATPollard and I were discussing some topics tangentially related to this:

Perhaps the MD just reduces mass relative to the universe slowly so I accelerate until I am massless and travel at the speed of light. Then what happens if it continues to reduce mass and I start to have negative mass (which is the equivalent of negative energy). Will I accelerate past the speed of light?

I have always thought that would be an interesting basis for an ultra-tech Inertialess Drive - one in which the rest-mass of the ship can be "tunably" decoupled from the Higgs Field (which gives fundamental particles their intrinsic rest-masses), allowing the ship to produce a pseudo-acceleration as the inertial-mass gets "tuned down" toward zero.

An interesting consequence of negative mass would be that it experiences a repulsive force from either a positive or negative mass, while at the same time a positive mass would attract either a positive or negative mass. The result is that a negative mass and a positive mass coupled together would accelerate as a unit toward lightpseed in order to preserve conservation of momentum and energy (remember, the masses as well as the velocities will have signs in the conservation equation), which is completely counter-intuitive.

There are actually scientific papers written on this conjectural topic. See: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/3.23219?journalCode=jpp&

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How would this affect the Traveller Universe if it was widely avaliable?

1. It would revolutionize STL travel for one thing. Maneuver Drives with no reaction mass or power requirements for drive operation. (Perhaps there would be other energy costs or complications associated with producing/maintaining the negative-mass in a useful configuration, however).
2. You would potentially have a true perpetual motion machine that does NOT violate the laws of physics, especially if you can convert the system to circular motion in some fashion.
3. Depending on the speed a particular FTL negative mass-drive (Alcubierre Warp-Drive) could achieve at a given TL, there could be potential interstellar travel in less than 1 week.
4. There could be potential FTL-communication systems

 

[Werner]

My understanding according to theoretical-based conjecture is that positive mass would always be attractive (toward either positive or negative mass) and negative mass would always be repulsive (toward either positive or negative mass): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass#Runaway_motion

On the Talking M-Drive Acceleration thread, ATPollard and I were discussing some topics tangentially related to this:

The greater mass magnitude wins out. You could have a negmatter planet orbiting a positive mass star, it will orbit a little slower at the same radius as a positive mass planet. At the densities I'm talking about, this negmatter planet would have a diameter measured in centimeters and it would be held together by something other than gravity. Maybe electric charge a negmatter planet would have a positive charge and be surrounded by a cloud of electrons.

 

[Werner]

I got to think carefully. The gravitational formula has two masses and if the sum of the two masses is positive then the gravitational force between them will be attractive, if the sum is negative thenforce will be repulsive.

 

[whulorigan]

I got to think carefully. The gravitational formula has two masses and if the sum of the two masses is positive then the gravitational force between them will be attractive, if the sum is negative then force will be repulsive.

Sum? Newtonian Gravitational Force is proportional to the Product of two masses. Or am I misunderstanding what you are getting at?

But the relationship for positive and negative masses is based on the articles I referenced above. You cannot simply assume the Newtonian formula works algebraically for negative mass in the same way as positive mass, as Newton did no experiments with, nor took into account negative masses in his formulation. We also have a much more sophisticated understanding of Gravity than Newton did as well.

 

[Werner]

Sum? Newtonian Gravitational Force is calculated based on the Product of two masses. Or am I misunderstanding what you are getting at?

But the relationship for positive and negative masses is based on the articles I referenced above. You cannot simply assume the Newtonian formula works algebraically for negative mass in the same way as positive mass, as Newton did no experiments with, nor took into account negative masses in his formulation. We also have a much more sophisticated understanding of Gravity than Newton did as well.

I was going from memory, didn't have the equation right in front of me. We have no experience with negative mass at all, there are a few guesses. Antigravity would have tidal force, it would have a pan caking effect rather than a stretching on. The part of you that was closest to the antigravity source would be pushed away the hardest. Antigravity would obey the inverse square law just as gravity does. And while gravity bends space creating a gravity well, antigravity would create a gravity hill, light would bend away from the source of antigravity. Stable orbits are impossible to achieve as centrifugal force and antigravity both work in the same direction unlike with gravity where they cancel each other out to achieve orbit.

Time would move faster the higher up the antigravity well you would climb. Light traveling outward would be blue shifted. You can't make a black hole with negative mass, the event horizon would be turned inside-out and be something you cannot enter rather than escape from. Time would also be infinitely accelerated at that inside-out event horizon and a white hole would only last for an instant, there would be and explosion and it would be gone, while black holes last nearly forever!

Also when negative mass comes in contact with positive mass, you have nullification rather than annihilation, whereas matter and antimatter produce energy, matter and negative matter just produce nothing. If you drop negative matter into a black hole, it shrinks, that is what Hawking radiation is, negative matter falling into a black hole leaving its positive matter twin particles to come out as radiation.

 

[whulorigan]

... Antigravity would have tidal force, it would have a pan caking effect rather than a stretching one. The part of you that was closest to the antigravity source would be pushed away the hardest. Antigravity would obey the inverse square law just as gravity does. And while gravity bends space creating a gravity well, antigravity would create a gravity hill, light would bend away from the source of antigravity ... .

Time would move faster the higher up the antigravity well you would climb. Light traveling outward would be blue shifted. You can't make a black hole with negative mass, the event horizon would be turned inside-out and be something you cannot enter rather than escape from. Time would also be infinitely accelerated at that inside-out event horizon and a white hole would only last for an instant, there would be and explosion and it would be gone, while black holes last nearly forever!

Also when negative mass comes in contact with positive mass, you have nullification rather than annihilation, whereas matter and antimatter produce energy, matter and negative matter just produce nothing. If you drop negative matter into a black hole, it shrinks, that is what Hawking radiation is, negative matter falling into a black hole leaving its positive matter twin particles to come out as radiation.

All true.

Stable orbits are impossible to achieve as centrifugal force and antigravity both work in the same direction unlike with gravity where they cancel each other out to achieve orbit.

But remember that much of the discussion depends on the equivalency principle. Inertial mass and gravitational mass are identical by all measurements to date (and General Relativity as formulated and observed to date requires their magnitudes to be identical). Now, all measurements to date have been measurements of positive inertial masses and positive gravitational masses, and it is clear that they are identical as regards their magnitude. But as to whether an object can have a positive value for one and a negative value for the other, that is a matter of conjecture. There is no reason to assume that they should not be identical in terms of sign for a given particle of mass, but neither is there a way to prove it to date. And there is no fundamental requirement from General Relativity that inertial mass and gravitational mass have the same sign. But conceptually there is no reason to think that they shouldn't.

For negative-mas/negative-mass interactions, "orbital" trajectories would be hyperbolic, a negative-mass being forced away from the anti-gravitating negative-mass center (which would be located at the opposite focus external to the hyperbola interior) as compared to a gravitational hyperbolic trajectory for a positive-mass object interacting with a positive-mass center, whose focus would be the center of gravitation located at the "interior" focus (but could also be a parabola, ellipse or circle, whose foci are also all located interior to the trajectory-path). A negative-mass and a positive-mass would accelerate as a unit along a vector in the direction of the positive mass, if full inertial/gravitational mass equivalency holds.

Also, a force applied to a negative mass would result in an acceleration in a direction opposite to the force applied. Like electric charges on negative mass particles would attract, and opposite ones would repel. The same would be the case for the Strong Nuclear Force: like color-charges would attract, and opposites would repel.

 

[Werner]

All true.



But remember that much of the discussion depends on the equivalency principle. Inertial mass and gravitational mass are identical by all measurements to date (and General Relativity as formulated and observed to date requires their magnitudes to be identical). Now, all measurements to date have been measurements of positive inertial masses and positive gravitational masses, and it is clear that they are identical as regards their magnitude. But as to whether an object can have a positive value for one and a negative value for the other, that is a matter of conjecture. There is no reason to assume that they should not be identical in terms of sign for a given particle of mass, but neither is there a way to prove it to date. And there is no fundamental requirement from General Relativity that inertial mass and gravitational mass have the same sign. But conceptually there is no reason to think that they shouldn't.

For negative-mas/negative-mass interactions, "orbital" trajectories would be hyperbolic, a negative-mass being forced away from the anti-gravitating negative-mass center (which would be located at the opposite focus external to the hyperbola interior) as compared to a gravitational hyperbolic trajectory for a positive-mass object interacting with a positive-mass center, whose focus would be the center of gravitation located at the "interior" focus (but could also be a parabola, ellipse or circle, whose foci are also all located interior to the trajectory-path). A negative-mass and a positive-mass would accelerate as a unit along a vector in the direction of the positive mass, if full inertial/gravitational mass equivalency holds.

Also, a force applied to a negative mass would result in an acceleration in a direction opposite to the force applied. Like electric charges on negative mass particles would attract, and opposite ones would repel. The same would be the case for the Strong Nuclear Force: like color-charges would attract, and opposites would repel.

Also negative mass objects would tend not to form, if they occured in nature. In order to make an object, you need to overcome their gravitational repulsion so that shorter range forces such as electric charge can hold them together. Now if you do this, that is clearly a sign of intelligence at work. If there was a clump of negative matter orbiting a star, someone made it and put it's there, as negative particles that formed naturally would stay apart and not form objects, they might be the reason the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. The Universe might have zero net mass, with each positive mass particle negated by a negative mass particle with equal magnitude but opposite sign mass. As the Universe expanded and cooled the positive mass would clump together and form stars, planets and galaxies, the negative mass particles would not, they would however exert an anti gravitational field over the entire universe, maybe causing such expansion to accelerate, just speculation on my part.

 

[aramis]

Also negative mass objects would tend not to form, if they occured in nature.

That does not follow.

Positive Mass creates a deformation of spacetime which attracts positive mass.

Negative mass, mathematically should generate an opposite deformation of spacetime which would repel positive mass; it should them also draw other negative mass.

 

[Werner]

That does not follow.

Positive Mass creates a deformation of spacetime which attracts positive mass.

Negative mass, mathematically should generate an opposite deformation of spacetime which would repel positive mass; it should them also draw other negative mass.

Gravity exerts a force on all objects in proportion to their mass. If for example you let go of a 1 kg object, Earth's gravity will pull it downwards exerting 9.8 newton's of force accelerating it downwards at 9.8 meters per second. Now if you dropped an object with a mass of -1 kg, the Earth's gravity will push it away with -9.8 newton's of force, and since it has negative inertia a push is a pull and it still falls toward Earth. But if we had a negative Earth worth of mass under it ,this negative Earth would pull the negative 1kg toward itself but since it has negative inertial a pull is a push and it falls upward, where it would push away a positive 1 kg and that would fall upwards as well, it all depends on which is the larger mass.

 

[Werner]

Another more simpler way of looking at it is instead of viewing gravity as a force, view it as a curvature of space, a negative curvature of space is attractive, it attracts all objects and bends light toward the source of the space curvature, a positive curvature of space is repulsive and it repels all objects and bends light away from the source of the positive curvature.

The more negative mass-energy you drop into a positive gravity field, the more that field flattens, if you add enough negative matter it will reverse the curvature of that gravity field and it will instead become repulsive and all the matter will fly out of it. Now gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces but also the longest range. If we can clump that negative matter together using short range nuclear forces to bind it, we can have a negative mass object producting a repulsive gravity field, if we make it too massive it will explode under it's own gravity, so we don't go above that limit. What can we do with it?

One possibility is we can make a push-pull drive. The negative matter nugget is extremely dense and it is contained within a Starship of equal mass to it. The Starship has zero net mass, it will sit on a planet's surface because gravity attracts all things. If you want to levitate you can push down on the negative mass nugget with an electric or magnetic field, and the moment you do that the Starship will rise up off the surface of the planet and float, just like a gravity vehicle would, you are accelerating upward at the same rate gravity is pulling you downward, if you want to ascend, you push down harder on the nugget and the ship accelerates upward at a rate faster than gravity is pulling it downward. That ship can keep on accelerating, energy is expended on maintaining the nugget, as you need to overcome entropy to allow it to continue to exist, this requires a fusion reactor, and you can accelerate the Starship as long as it has power, the typical duration is 4 weeks. The power input is the same as listed in the Traveller books.

As the ship accelerates to higher velocities, its net kinetic energy remains the same, as the positive kinetic energy increases so does the negative kinetic energy of the nugget the Starship is pushing on. That is how the maneuver drive could work.

As for artificial gravity, you need high densities of positive matter below your feet and high densities of negative matter above your head, the net mass is zero. Gravity plates under your feet have dense degenerate matter, and antigravity plates above your head have them same in negative matter. So long as you are inbetween those two plates you experience gravity on board the ship. You can adjust this gravity to your liking, this allows you to sustain accelerations higher than 1g without feeling that acceleration. You just adjust your gravity plating to compensate.

 

[whulorigan]

Also negative mass objects would tend not to form, if they occurred in nature. In order to make an object, you need to overcome their gravitational repulsion so that shorter range forces such as electric charge can hold them together. ...

The electromagnetic force and the gravitational force are both infinite range forces, and in fact are mathematically identical in the classical approximation. So if you had (for example) a cloud of nega-protons (or some equivalent positive electric-charge particles), their like electric charges would repel each other against a negative-inertia, causing them to be effectively attracted to one another. Since electromagnetism is orders of magnitude stronger than gravity, negative mass should theoretically be able to clump thru electromagnetic forces.

The color-charge of the Strong Nuclear Force is very short-range, however, despite being the strongest of all of the 4 forces.

 

[Adam Dray]

If you drop negative matter into a black hole, it shrinks, that is what Hawking radiation is, negative matter falling into a black hole leaving its positive matter twin particles to come out as radiation.

Hawking radiation is the stripping of half of a virtual particle. Is there something equating virtual particles with negative matter? I don't think so. The virtual particle is positive matter, just "virtual" on account of the Uncertainty Principle eschewing the zero-point, right?

 

[Werner]

Hawking radiation is the stripping of half of a virtual particle. Is there something equating virtual particles with negative matter? I don't think so. The virtual particle is positive matter, just "virtual" on account of the Uncertainty Principle eschewing the zero-point, right?

How do black holes lose mass then if they aren't swallowing negative matter and nothing is escaping their event horizons? Can you answer that. Event horizons are one way only, swallowing negative matter or energy is the only way they can lose mass. Unless you think Stephen Hawking was wrong of course, do you?

 

[mike wightman]

Black holes evaporate by emitting photons and other particles, it just takes a really long time for a black hole to evaporate via Hawking radiation.

Stellar mass and larger black holes can not emit Hawking radiation until the temperature of the surrounding universe drops to below the nanoKelvin range - which is a long long time in the future.

A microblack hole can theoretically evaporate in a few nanoseconds but we still await experimental or observational confirmation of this.

You do not need negative mass to explain how black holes evaporate via Hawking radiation.

 

[aramis]

Hawking radiation is the stripping of half of a virtual particle. Is there something equating virtual particles with negative matter? I don't think so. The virtual particle is positive matter, just "virtual" on account of the Uncertainty Principle eschewing the zero-point, right?

The Virtual Particle pairs are one matter one antimatter, and normally pop into existence, then attract and self-annihilate; this is part of the so-called "Zero Point Energy"...

Hawking radiation is half the pair being pulled in, at least as Hawking himself explained it in a science show. Which is why the finding of hawking radiation is proof of quantum vacuum state including the reality of VPPs...

Now, recent work shows that antimatter does, indeed, have positive mass, but only reversed charge. So it's not useful for finding strange matter with negative mass.

 

[Werner]

Black holes evaporate by emitting photons and other particles, it just takes a really long time for a black hole to evaporate via Hawking radiation.

Stellar mass and larger black holes can not emit Hawking radiation until the temperature of the surrounding universe drops to below the nanoKelvin range - which is a long long time in the future.

A microblack hole can theoretically evaporate in a few nanoseconds but we still await experimental or observational confirmation of this.

You do not need negative mass to explain how black holes evaporate via Hawking radiation.

Then you need tachyons, since the escape velocity at the event horizon is the speed of light, you need something that exceeds that velocity to escape a black hole, or else you need dark energy.
What is dark energy? One form of it is photons that carry negative amounts of energy, they travel at the speed of light just like regular photons do, and be emitting dark energy, you actually gain energy, and whatever absorbs these dark photons loses energy, and in fact a dark photon is just a reverse time regular photon traveling backwards in time.

 

[Werner]

The Virtual Particle pairs are one matter one antimatter, and normally pop into existence, then attract and self-annihilate; this is part of the so-called "Zero Point Energy"...

Hawking radiation is half the pair being pulled in, at least as Hawking himself explained it in a science show. Which is why the finding of hawking radiation is proof of quantum vacuum state including the reality of VPPs...

Now, recent work shows that antimatter does, indeed, have positive mass, but only reversed charge. So it's not useful for finding strange matter with negative mass.

To be fair, no one has proven that hawking radiation exists, we haven't had very many black holes to experiment with after all, it's just a theory.

Antimatter is created when a high energy photon hits a virtual particle pair giving both particles positive mass, one is positively charged, the other negatively charged.

 

[whulorigan]

Black holes evaporate by emitting photons and other particles, it just takes a really long time for a black hole to evaporate via Hawking radiation.

Stellar mass and larger black holes can not emit Hawking radiation until the temperature of the surrounding universe drops to below the nanoKelvin range - which is a long long time in the future.

A microblack hole can theoretically evaporate in a few nanoseconds but we still await experimental or observational confirmation of this.

You do not need negative mass to explain how black holes evaporate via Hawking radiation.

The Virtual Particle pairs are one matter one antimatter, and normally pop into existence, then attract and self-annihilate; this is part of the so-called "Zero Point Energy"...

Hawking radiation is half the pair being pulled in, at least as Hawking himself explained it in a science show. Which is why the finding of hawking radiation is proof of quantum vacuum state including the reality of VPPs...

Now, recent work shows that antimatter does, indeed, have positive mass, but only reversed charge. So it's not useful for finding strange matter with negative mass.

Then you need tachyons, since the escape velocity at the event horizon is the speed of light, you need something that exceeds that velocity to escape a black hole, or else you need dark energy.

For the case in question, the virtual particle-pair creation occurs just above the event horizon, where one of the pair falls past the horizon, and the other escapes.

 

[whulorigan]

Now, recent work shows that antimatter does, indeed, have positive mass, but only reversed charge. So it's not useful for finding strange matter with negative mass.

Actually, matter vs. antimatter shows all properties (I believe) reversed, but both having positive mass. This is largely because of quantities that are conserved in particle physics (charge, spin, lepton number, color-charge on quarks, etc.); they must sum to zero.