Re: FTL

Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Sat, 21 Dec 1996 12:10:30 -0500


Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> On Fri, 20 Dec 1996, Michael Lorrey wrote:
>
> > One should also be able to travel into the
> > past with a simple black hole, according to the latest from Hawking.
>
> How is that supposed to work?

I'm not sure exactly, but its supposedly involves either diving into the
black hole (you never actually hit it, apparently) or skipping across
its event horizon.

His latest stuff has pretty much left most physicists agog and
incredulous anyways, so I wouldnt claim anything more than cursory
knowledge anyways.
>
> > > > 2) The very rapid rotation would cause the cylinder to fly apart.
> >
> > Neutronium has such a high gravity gradient that it is self supporting,
> > as evidenced by black holes that spin nearly at the speed of light.
>
> Well, black holes doesn't consist of neutronium at all (the matter has
> left the picture), rather a self-sustaining curvature of spacetime
> (gravitonium?). Neutronium can't withstand too fast rotation since the
> pressure drops low enough for it to turn into normal matter; it has an
> excellent pressure strength, but no tensile strength. Black holes are
> similarly limited, above a certain limit angular momentum and charge the
> Kerr solution vanishes and we get something else (unfortunately you cannot
> accelerate a black hole beyond this limit according to some theorem, see
> _Gravity_ by Misner, Thorne, Wheeler).

True. I did read about utilizing a type of fullerene type carbon sleeve,
where the whole sleeve is one interconnected molecule, in the
containment of this structure. I don't know who said that it had to
rotate near light speed, as that would not be necessary. You only need
it spinning fast enough for centrifugal forces countering the
neutroniums own gravity gradent beyond a few cm to maintain the tubular
structure, thus allowing ships to traverse the hole. The neutronium's
gravity gradient is neccessary to neutralize the gravity gradient of the
wormhole, so the ships don't get torn apart by tidal forces.

-- 
TANSTAAFL!!!

Michael Lorrey --------------------------------------------------------- President retroman@tpk.net Northstar Technologies Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/ --------------------------------------------------------- Inventor, Webmaster, Ski Guide, Entrepreneur, Artist, Outdoorsman, Libertarian, Certified Genius.