Exotic Matter Drives

[mike wightman]

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.

Nope - no tachyons, they have also been disproved.
Go and study Hawking radiation rather than making up pseudoscience.

Here is the PBS spacetime video on the subject to get you started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKj0YnKANw

Dark photons? Interesting idea, where is the paper on them... ah, they are a totally hypothetical interaction between dark matter, so nothing to do with negative mass or energy.

as to regular photons being negative energy carriers - nope.

 

[mike wightman]

Hawking radiation is the stripping of half of a virtual particle.

That's a common simplification of the process, yes.

Is there something equating virtual particles with negative matter? I don't think so.

Not that I can find in the physics literature I have access to. Negative matter is entirely a mathematical hypothesis and has no experimental or observational data to suggest it can even exist in our universe.

The virtual particle is positive matter, just "virtual" on account of the Uncertainty Principle eschewing the zero-point, right?

Yup, right

 

[Werner]

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.

There are two possibilities with virtual particle pairs. In one case the positive particle escape and the negative one gets swallowed by the black hole, the positive particle could be a photon or elementary particle and that is what we call Hawking radiation. In the other case, the positive particle gets swallowed by the black hole and the negative particle escapes, but the negative particle is traveling in a universe full of positive particles, it will eventually meet one and both will nullify, and it will be just as if the black hole swallowed that particle which got nullified in the first place.

I think exotic matter is hard to detect because unlike normal matter, it does not clump together under gravity as its gravity is repulsive, it doesn't form objects but remains as a thinly spread out gas throughout the Universe, causing the expansion of the Universe but very little else.

Now maybe artificially, exotic matter can be harvested and collected to make objects out of, but I do not think the Universe will do that out of it's own accord.

As a science fiction device, exotic matter can give us the Traveller Maneuver Drive, it can produce artificial gravity, it can create warp drives and wormholes, and even time machines.
Some people say that the fact that it could make time machines means that it could not exist, because they refuse to leave the deterministic mindset, they hand wave quantum uncertainty away and at their core they believe the Universe consists of particles that move with clockwork precision, Newtonian style.

 

[whulorigan]

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.

There are two possibilities with virtual particle pairs. In one case the positive particle escape and the negative one gets swallowed by the black hole, the positive particle could be a photon or elementary particle and that is what we call Hawking radiation. In the other case, the positive particle gets swallowed by the black hole and the negative particle escapes, but the negative particle is traveling in a universe full of positive particles, it will eventually meet one and both will nullify, and it will be just as if the black hole swallowed that particle which got nullified in the first place.

I think exotic matter is hard to detect because unlike normal matter, it does not clump together under gravity as its gravity is repulsive, it doesn't form objects but remains as a thinly spread out gas throughout the Universe, causing the expansion of the Universe but very little else.

Now maybe artificially, exotic matter can be harvested and collected to make objects out of, but I do not think the Universe will do that out of it's own accord.

As a science fiction device, exotic matter can give us the Traveller Maneuver Drive, it can produce artificial gravity, it can create warp drives and wormholes, and even time machines.
Some people say that the fact that it could make time machines means that it could not exist, because they refuse to leave the deterministic mindset, they hand wave quantum uncertainty away and at their core they believe the Universe consists of particles that move with clockwork precision, Newtonian style.

The virtual particles in question in Hawking radiation are normal run-of-the-mill matter and antimatter pairs. They are not negative matter.

 

[Werner]

Nope - no tachyons, they have also been disproved.
Go and study Hawking radiation rather than making up pseudoscience.

Here is the PBS spacetime video on the subject to get you started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKj0YnKANw

Dark photons? Interesting idea, where is the paper on them... ah, they are a totally hypothetical interaction between dark matter, so nothing to do with negative mass or energy.

as to regular photons being negative energy carriers - nope.

I took a class in modern physics and it made no sense, my understanding of math is that if you add a negative number that is the same as subtracting a positive number, so if this happens with black holes which at one point had more mass and now has less mass, then that means a subtraction occured. Now common sense dictate that if a black hole would end up with less mass, then some of its mass got subtracted from it either by subtracting a positive or by adding a negative. If your explanation is "techno-babble techno-babble and the black hole shrinks and techno-babble is the reason why", I can't learn that because to me, it makes no sense. I can't just memorize the techno-babble and pretend it makes sense to me because it doesn't! It has to make sense for me to truly understand it rather that just memorizing a bunch of words and phrases like magical incantations uttered by a wizard and then something happens.

 

[Werner]

The virtual particles in question in Hawking radiation are normal run-of-the-mill matter and antimatter pairs. They are not negative matter.

Then they would not cause a black hole to shrink if it swallowed one, and if the cosmos was filled with protons and anti protons coming into existance and then annihilating each other the vacuum would be filled with deadly radiation rather than what we call vacuum. The energy of the vacuum averages out to zero and that would not be the case it it was filled with matter and antimatter. A proton and an antiproton is not a virtual particle pair because both have positive energy that gets released when they come in contact with each other.

 

[whulorigan]

A proton and an antiproton is not a virtual particle pair because both have positive energy that gets released when they come in contact with each other.

Incorrect. A virtual particle pair is ALWAYS a matter-antimatter pair, by definition.

 

[Werner]

That's a common simplification of the process, yes.

Not that I can find in the physics literature I have access to. Negative matter is entirely a mathematical hypothesis and has no experimental or observational data to suggest it can even exist in our universe.
Yup, right

Argument by pointing to authority, this person has a degree so therefore his techno-babble must prove him right. We live in a world of quantum uncertainty, and yet must be fully deterministic in nature full of cause and effect in spite of evidence to the contrary, just have faith man, cause my explanation will not make sense to you because you are not a physicist, or let me substitute the word "Wizard".

Wizards in a fantasy setting can do stuff normal folks can't because they have studied magic. The class of wizardry is exclusive and not everyone can cast spells, and it can't be explained to non-wizards how magic works. Scientists are the "wizards" of the science fiction setting.

 

[Werner]

Incorrect. A virtual particle pair is ALWAYS a matter-antimatter pair, by definition.

And E=mc^2. So if every cubic centimeter of space is filled with matter and antimatter annihilating then where is all the energy? As I understand it a matter antimatter reaction converts 100% of the mass of the two particles into energy, so that can't go unnoticed, the vacuum of space doesn't seem to be filled with that much energy.

To put it another way if matter and antimatter combined to produce nothing, this would not make a great way to propel a starship.

In one sense the vacuum of space is filled with virtual matter and antimatter particle pairs that come into and out of existance and yet we don't notice that, yet the same matter and antimatter is a viable Starship fuel because combining it produces a lot of energy, both can't be right at the same time, can it? As Winson Smith once said two plus two does not equal five, at least until the state tortured him enough to get him to agree that it does, an argument from authority if ever there was one.

 

[whulorigan]

And E=mc^2. So if every cubic centimeter of space is filled with matter and antimatter annihilating then where is all the energy? As I understand it a matter antimatter reaction converts 100% of the mass of the two particles into energy, so that can't go unnoticed, the vacuum of space doesn't seem to be filled with that much energy.

To put it another way if matter and antimatter combined to produce nothing, this would not make a great way to propel a starship.

In one sense the vacuum of space is filled with virtual matter and antimatter particle pairs that come into and out of existance and yet we don't notice that, yet the same matter and antimatter is a viable Starship fuel because combining it produces a lot of energy, both can't be right at the same time, can it? As Winson Smith once said two plus two does not equal five, at least until the state tortured him enough to get him to agree that it does, an argument from authority if ever there was one.

View/Read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle
https://www.universetoday.com/129471/what-are-virtual-particles/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-virtual-particles-rea/

 

[Werner]

Nope - no tachyons, they have also been disproved.
Go and study Hawking radiation rather than making up pseudoscience.

Here is the PBS spacetime video on the subject to get you started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKj0YnKANw

Dark photons? Interesting idea, where is the paper on them... ah, they are a totally hypothetical interaction between dark matter, so nothing to do with negative mass or energy.

as to regular photons being negative energy carriers - nope.

The term "dark" seems to imply they carry negative energy because dark is the opposite of light.

 

[whulorigan]

To put it another way if matter and antimatter combined to produce nothing, this would not make a great way to propel a starship.

They do NOT combine to produce nothing, they annihilate each other producing either a different particle-antiparticle pair (based on what is permissible relative to various conserved quantities) or electromagnetic annihilation quanta (photons) whose combined mass-energy is equal to the mass-energy of the original particle-antiparticle pair. Mass-energy over and above the combined rest masses of the pair is generally expressed as kinetic energy. You are conceptually confusing antimatter with negative mass.

In one sense the vacuum of space is filled with virtual matter and antimatter particle pairs that come into and out of existance and yet we don't notice that ...

That is because of a derivative of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle:

ΔE · Δt ≥ ħ/2

where:

ΔE = Uncertainty in energy magnitude
Δt = Uncertainty in time
ħ = h/2π, and h is Planck's constant

​

If the uncertainty in a particle's total mass-energy is large (i.e. it can potentially have a value over a very large range of possibilities), then the time-range during which it can exist as a virtual particle (before the pair annihilates) must be very small.

The reverse is also true:

If the uncertainty in a particle's timeframe of virtual existence is large (i.e. it can potentially have a value over a very large range of possibilities), then the range of mass-energy values that the pair can possibly have as virtual particles (before the pair annihilates) must be very small.

A virtual particle cannot be observed if it is created and subsequently annihilates within the Δt timeframe given by Δt = 2ΔE/ħ. In order for it to exist beyond the Δt timeframe (and be observable), it must become a real particle-antiparticle pair thru the absorption of energy.

This also goes to the heart of the understanding of how forces manifest in quantum field theory. Virtual photons (for example) can only have large energy values relative to the zero-point if they exist for a very short period of time. Likewise, they can only exist for a long period of time if they have very small energies relative to the zero point. (But note that it is also possible for a low energy photon to exist for only a short period of time, as this still satisfies the equation above).

Therefore, if an electric charge is a "source" (for lack of a better term) of its own associated intermediary particle (the photon), a high-energy virtual photon can only go so far at light speed and interact with another electric charge before it vanishes back into the virtual particle froth (transferring its energy/momentum to the absorbing electrically charged particle, which it acquired from the source particle). A lower energy photon can get farther and interact with electric charges father away, and very low energy photons can react at even greater distances. When this is analyzed statistically, it reproduces the inverse square law, because a photon always has a constant and known speed.

 

[Werner]

They do NOT combine to produce nothing, they annihilate each other producing either a different particle-antiparticle pair (based on what is permissible relative to various conserved quantities) or electromagnetic annihilation quanta (photons) whose combined mass-energy is equal to the mass-energy of the original particle-antiparticle pair. Mass-energy over and above the combined rest masses of the pair is generally expressed as kinetic energy. You are conceptually confusing antimatter with negative mass.





That is because of a derivative of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle:

ΔE · Δt ≥ ħ/2

where:

ΔE = Uncertainty in energy magnitude
Δt = Uncertainty in time
ħ = h/2π, and h is Planck's constant

​

If the uncertainty in a particle's total mass-energy is large (i.e. it can potentially have a value over a very large range of possibilities), then the time-range during which it can exist as a virtual particle (before the pair annihilates) must be very small.

The reverse is also true:

If the uncertainty in a particle's timeframe of virtual existence is large (i.e. it can potentially have a value over a very large range of possibilities), then the range of mass-energy values that the pair can possibly have as virtual particles (before the pair annihilates) must be very small.

A virtual particle cannot be observed if it is created and subsequently annihilates within the Δt timeframe given by Δt = 2ΔE/ħ. In order for it to exist beyond the Δt timeframe (and be observable), it must become a real particle-antiparticle pair thru the absorption of energy.

This also goes to the heart of the understanding of how forces manifest in quantum field theory. Virtual photons (for example) can only have large energy values relative to the zero-point if they exist for a very short period of time. Likewise, they can only exist for a long period of time if they have very small energies relative to the zero point. (But note that it is also possible for a low energy photon to exist for only a short period of time, as this still satisfies the equation above).

Therefore, if an electric charge is a "source" (for lack of a better term) of its own associated intermediary particle (the photon), a high-energy virtual photon can only go so far at light speed and interact with another electric charge before it vanishes back into the virtual particle froth (transferring its energy/momentum to the absorbing electrically charged particle, which it acquired from the source particle). A lower energy photon can get farther and interact with electric charges father away, and very low energy photons can react at even greater distances. When this is analyzed statistically, it reproduces the inverse square law, because a photon always has a constant and known speed.

So pretty much quantum mechanics deals with probabilities and unknowns mathematically because the true values cannot be measured because of the observer effect. Then I guess there is no Hawking radiation coming out of black holes, they are permanent and can only get larger as nothing can escape them and their is no negative mass that can fall into them. Also space cannot expand to create the Big Bang as that would require negative energy which does not exist, so the current theory of inflation must therefore be wrong, and if the universe is measured to have accelerated expansion that must be wrong too.

I would love a model of the Universe where faster than light travel was impossible consistently under all circumstances, no its, ands, or buts, and no you can go faster than light to do this but not that. If I see the Universe expanding faster than light, then I think warp drives are then possible, but then someone says their not, so therefore the universe cannot be doing what they claim it is doing. Too many people want to have their cake and eat it too.

Common sense would dictate that if the Universe was only 1 second old it can be no bigger than a light second in radius, but then they throw in spacial expansion, and I say warp drive, and they say, no you can't do that because it would violate causality. I feel like Lou Costello in "Who's on First".

 

[Condottiere]

Maybe time fulfills the function of anti matter.

 

[whulorigan]

Maybe time fulfills the function of anti matter.

Care to expand on that a bit?

 

[Condottiere]

You can't create matter out of nothing, and anti matter and matter are created equally, and yet destroy each other, which mathematically means you should end up with nothing.

So anti matter becomes the flow of time, separating itself from matter.

Matter and anti matter interaction would be trying to freeze time.

It sort of developing out of my theory of how jump drives might possibly function and interact with the Einsteinian universe and gravity.

 

[Werner]

I apologize if I seem argumentative at times, I am a visual person, not a mathematical person. I just can't think in equations. When I was a student in college, I first pursued a degree in physics, and I did fine because I could visualize what was happening, until I hit quantum mechanics, and they threw logic out the window and once you do that, it becomes impossible to tell what is true or false. Wave-particle duality, the inflation theory of the Big Bang, I changed my major to Economics because all the equations and Greek letters they threw on the board left me dry eyed, I could only copy them into my notebook, and when I reviewed them later they were only symbols to me. If I can't produce a consistent picture of the cosmos in my head. I can't memorize by rote a bunch of inconsistent things, and it's hard to produce a science fiction setting when you have to memorize and bunch of equations and make some sort of sense out of them.

My mind froze, once I started dealing with calculus, the simple concepts were easy to absorb, but when things got complicated, my mind couldn't figure out a way to solve multivariable calculus equations, there were so many methods to solve various integral and differential equations my mind couldn't figure out which one to use, so I tried out each one, and then the time on the test ran out, as I didn't have time to try them all, so I had to guess which choice on multiple choice questions were right and my intuition didn't serve me. I couldn't get a feel for how to solve those equations.

Too many things to remember, too many variables to track. I started failing my classes once I hit calculus, I did pretty well right up to that point, but I couldn't go any further, and thus my modern physics classes didn't make much sense to me either, cause they kept throwing those calculus equations on the black board that I could only copy yet not understand. I couldn't listen to what the professor was saying when my mind was focused on copying everything he threw on the board. I rely heavily on common sense.

 

[Werner]

Einsteinian relativity I can understand, as that is a variation on Newtonian mechanics, and it seems to me that the Universe has 4 dimensions, the first three have a speed limit called the speed of light, the forth one does not, and that is time. There is no limit to how fast forward you can travel in time you can't travel slower than 1 second per second, to do that would require exotic matter. With exotic matter and antigravity you can speed up your own perception to as to make one second ticking for the rest of the universe seem like an eternity. At some point you could even stop time in the rest of the universe and then run it backwards, antigravity is required to do this.

 

[Werner]

And you know what? I don't care. The explanation that the quantum foam is filled with virtual particles full of positive and negative masses than cancel each other out makes the most sense to me, whether it jives with modern physics or not. It makes more sense than other things in science fiction, such as the 100 diameter jump limits and what not. If some physicists on this board don't like it too bad! Most people aren't physicists and I think this theory would strike them as more hard science than things like Star Wars or Star Trek for instance. So I'll lay out some ground rules and assumptions.

1. The universe is a multiverse, it is infinite in scope and duration, though the observable universe is finite, every possibility and configuration is represented in the multiverse, everything that can is or ever will be is included, and this universe is eternal and unchanging, as time is just another dimension.

2. In a campaign only a small portion of the universe is observable. There are 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time. Time and space are interchangeable, one universe's time is another universe's space the thing that separates a spacial dimension from the time dimension is the speed of light. In a spacial dimension, the speed of light is the upper limit on how fast one can travel. Einsteinian physics allows one to draw ever closer to the speed of light but never quite reach it. In the time dimension one is always moving forward at faster than the speed of light, and by "forward" I mean away from the origin of the Universe.

3. The origin of the Universe is where time begins, the 4th dimension begins at the center of the universe or multiverse and spreads outward from it in three dimensions in all directions. The "present" is represented by the surface of a sphere, this sphere is expanding. This sphere's surface represents the 3 spacial dimensions of space even though only two dimensions are seen in this physical representation of the Universe. The Universe only seems to be expanding because the people living in the three dimensional surface of this hyperspace are moving forward in time away from the origin of the Universe at a velocity that is faster than the speed of light in the dimension of time.

4. Every time a choice is made the reality splits between one choice and an infinite varieties of other possibilities each of which occured in some different version of local reality. Time travel backwards in time, means moving back toward the origin of the universe and then following a different path away from the origin point when the time stream is reentered. Paradoxes don't occur because same path away from the origin can never be followed exactly the same twice. It appears to the time Traveller that he is changing history, but he is actually following a different path away from the origin of the Universe from what he followed previously.

5. The Universe contains all the possibilities and each timeline radiating outward represents a different chain of cause and effect branching outward from each choice made. This universe contains both wormholes and warp drives. Warp drives can be used to move forward and backwards in time and either faster slower than the speed of light along the spacial Dimensions. Wormholes can be brought along by these warp drives, and can allow travel back to ones original timeline when all is said an done.

 

[wellis]

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?

Well if this were widely available, for the purposes of a Traveller setting, wouldn't that possibly mean the FTL drives and antigrav technology might be based upon the use of exotic matter?

And thus wouldn't there be some sort of method to harvest and store this matter for use in starship drives, whether they be sublight or for FTL travel?

Possibly FTL travel in this setting might be warp drive based or it might be keyhole drive based (using wormholes).

I in fact once bought a Traveller setting product, specifically for the Cepheus Engine variant, which postulated that starships used exotic matter instead of hydrogen for FTL fuel to help open up wormholes since the FTL varisnt used was for a keyhole drive instead of a jump drive.

You could essentially travel 4x as far as a jump drive ship, but all the fuel was artificially created essentially and you had no hope of wilderness refuelling if you ran out of fuel for the FTL drive.

The formula in use for fuel use for the drive was:

A starship will expend an amount of NegMat equal to one quarter the amount of fuel an equivalent Jump Drive would consume. For example, a 100 dton starship traveling two parsecs via Rabbithole would expend 5 dtons of NegMat. (0.1 x ship’s tonnage x distance in parsecs/4)