Re: Hard Sci-fi?

:: The widget used to create a wormhole endpoint (or at least... 
:: that's' what I remember it doing) is nowhere near massive or
:: energetic enough.  It seems squarely within the realm of
:: applicability of newtonian/maxwellian physics, but it went and
:: produced a wormhole anyways. 

: Erik Max Francis <max@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
: Well, Sagan claimed to have talked with Kip Thorne to try to get an
: FTL system that was consistent with known physics. 

Hm.  Nevertheless, still totally dependent on ultradense handwavium.
And the particular handwavium seems to indicate that you don't need
anywhere *near* as much energy as one would expect.  What's indicated
isn't anywhere near enough to get relativistic effects; it's still
square in the middle of newton-and-maxwell-land.  One can suppose that
there's some subtle loophole.  After all, we've got superconductivity,
superfluidity, and einstein-bose condensates, and those are macroscopic,
yet exhibit quantum effects.  So, one could argue that once we know about
quantum gravity, we can get some sort of free ride.  But it still doesn't
seem good enough to be called "hard", in terms of theories holding true
in their currently known realm of applicability.



Wayne Throop   throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   http://sheol.org/throopw