Carrying on from last time… to travel across the universe
through hundreds of super clusters, we can’t do anything about the vast
distances involved, we can’t accelerate past the speed of light so we can’t do
anything about the time involved except redefine time making billions of years doable
and survivable.
We have an almost infinite and renewable energy source (two
singularities), we have the renewing biosphere needed for life, our ship is
made out of nanite-based materials that won’t decay, we have immortality (we
don’t grow old) and we have a hibernation chamber that will preserve us for
millions, even billions of years. Finally we have the time compression from our
near light speed and proximity to a singularity.
Any yet, eventually we will still be stymied by a universe
that is expanding faster than the speed of light.
If we look at current physics for a solution, it strongly
suggests that if we look below, that is smaller than, the virtual quarks and
gluons popping in and out of existence…look into what is sometimes referred to
as ‘the foam’, there we will find wormholes which can transport matter from one
point to another faster than light. To use these however, three problems
immediately come to mind.
1.
First, there’s the landmark issue that applies
to any method of beating the speed of light; violation of casualty[1].
2.
Second, how could we possibly use such a tiny passageway
for anything?
3.
Finally, if they exist at all, these wormholes
are generated randomly, last only brief and random lengths of time and, lead to
random locations.
This time, if we look to current physics, well, we find...suggestions
(that’s perhaps too strong a word) of ways we might get around these problems…or,
paths that, if extended, could resolve these problems.
To get around violation of causality we can (as my story
does) embrace the quantum ‘Other Worlds’ theory. This goes back to the double
slit experiment where light traveling through two slits cut into, say
cardboard, creates a wave pattern on a cardboard backdrop. I don’t have the
room here to go into details but it shows us that sub-atomic particles travel
in waves of probability. The ‘Other Worlds’ theory says that this probability wave
does not collapse and that all probable futures really exist in alternate dimensions
or timelines. This knocks down ‘causality’ because if someone goes back in time
and kills their grandmother, they simply create a separate timeline in which
they do not exist while they can go on existing in their own timeline.
The second and third problems of how we might use these tiny
wormholes are a bit harder and I’m afraid you’ll have to read my sci-fi series
to find out how I get around these.
Rusty
[1]
Violation of casualty is where you ‘kill your mother before you are born’ type
of thing by traveling back in time which is what you do when you get from one
point to another faster than the speed of light.
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