Slashdot Log In
Wormhole Generator (Kinda) Patented
Posted by
Hemos
on Tue Mar 14, 2000 06:45 PM
from the i-want-one dept.
from the i-want-one dept.
Faw writes "Someone has filed a patent for a wormhole generator. It says it is a hyper-light speed antenna, but to me it looks like a wormhole. What do you think?" Here's the abstract: "A method to transmit and receive electromagnetic waves which comprises
generating opposing magnetic fields having a plane of maximum force running
perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating a heat
source along an axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the magnetic field;
generating an accelerator parallel to and in close proximity to the heat source,
thereby creating an input and output port; and generating a communications
signal into the input and output port, thereby sending the signal at a speed
faster than light. "
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Wormhole Generator (Kinda) Patented
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 405 comments
(Spill at 50!) | Index Only
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Re:Backwards in time?? (Score:3)
A much better (but quite long) description can be found here [purdue.edu].
This is all based on the theory of relativity. Quantum physics OTOH allows for faster than light information transport. The most famous example is perhaps the tunnel effect. This effect allows particles to pass through energetical barriers although their energy would not be sufficient to do it according.to conventional physiscs. Tunneling is known for a long time but recently (95 or so) it was discovered that the particles need a shorter time to pass that barrier than light would have taken. It was even calimed that information was sent at about 4 times light speed through a barrier.
For further information use e.g this [weburbia.com].
I do not know how this all relates to this invention (theres something suspicious in there, namely the claim that increased plant growth has been observed
Re:Backwards in time?? (Score:3)
Now, if you think about it, assuming FTL is possible, what will happen is that when someone is coming to you faster than light, it will appear that they arrive before they left because the light showing their departure arrives after the light showing their arrival.
If they're departing from your location, they will appear to arraive at their destination x+y years after their departure where x is the distance in lightyears and y is their travel time in years.
Of course, all the above could be a load of baloney, but still, I don't see how going faster than light would cause you to really go backwards through time.
Fun with patents... (Score:3)
Just you fools wait! You'll all owe me MILLIONS when this type of activity becomes all the rage!
Alternately, I could preemptively patent the "Natalie Portman/Hot Grits" post, and make TRILLIONS of dollars. (But #2, why make trillions of dollars, when we could make....BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!!!!) Also possibly in the future is the Jon Katz flame post patent, the "Slashdot sucks since it's become freshmeat" post patent, and the all-important meta-whiner post patent.
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this
country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not. But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
- Monty Python
It's an option...
What do _I_ think? (Score:3)
Beneficial side effect leaves more questions (Score:3)
Initial benefits
and further, same page and column, lines 48-55:
It has been observed by the inventor and witnesses that accelerated plant growth can occur using the present invention.
For accelerated plant growth, first, you need to create a hot surface that is more than 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Next, you need a strong magnetic field. Only one device is needed for this function. This allows energy from another dimension to influence plant growth.
I want to know more!
How do you protect the plants from the hot surface? Is this the purpose of the magnetic field?
Does this work on cattle, pigs, and other carnivorous delights?
Is there any bill to pay to the other dimension whose energy is used?
The hell with plant growth! Why not simply use the energy to replace oil wells and coal mines and nuclear reactors?
--
Re:Ender's Game, anyone? (Score:3)
Utter crap! Violates Basic E&M (Score:3)
Consider an electromagnetic wave travelling in a particular direction, say down the positive x axis. The oscillatory magnetic and electric fields comprising these waves oscillate in mutually perpendicular planes, and perpendicular to the direction of propagation. For the sake of argument, let the electric field's plane of oscillation be the +/-y axis, and the magnetic field's plane be the +/-z axis.
The Poynting vector (roughly E x B, where x indicates the vector cross product) defines the momentum density of the EM wave. In this case, E x B is proportional to EB(y x z [= x] ). Thus, the momentum carried by the EM wave is transmitted down the longitudinal axis of the wave.
From Newton's second law, F = dp/dt. When the EM wave is incident on a surface, the wave reflects, changing the direction of travel. If the wave is normally incident on a surface, its direction goes from +x to -x, such that the direction of dp is +x, parallel to the longitudinal axis.
Note from the quoted section of the patent application that this wormhole method of communication requires a plane of maximum force perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the magnetic field. There is no plane of maximum force, there is only a direction (vector). A vector (one dimensional object) can lie in an infinite number of planes (two dimensional objects).
Either this guy has developed a completely new universe in which his physics is drastically different from ours, or he never bothered taking a graduate level E&M course.
Eric
The big problem (Score:3)
Yes, we say that to observe is to modify (and indeed, it is).
The theory is that until one of the pair is observed, the particles exist in a superposition of states. When we observe one, we 'cause' it to collapse into the appropriate state. This also, as the particles are entangled, causes the other particle to assume it's state.
This is largely an exercise in abstract thought. THe real issue is that we do not KNOW the state of the other particle in the pair, and by observing it, we screw with the process.
In short, the only way real information can be transmitted using this method is to also transmit initial state information via a conventional method, which defeats the purpose altogether.
Re:Backwards in time?? (Score:3)
A single signal, not necessarily.
However, if you can send signals faster than light, you can set things up to get a signal before it was sent. This is inherent to the geometry of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald transforms.
Now, if you can find another mathematical transform which gives the same answers as the Lorentz-Fitzgerald in all areas where it has been tested, but avoids the possibility of time travel, you might have something. But this theory has been very thorougly tested to a lot of decimal places over a very wide range. As near as we can tell, if you can send a message (or anything else) somewhere faster than light could get there, you can arrange a causality violation.
Re:Backwards in time?? (Score:3)
Anyway, It's pretty easy to show that FTL implies time travel.. just consider what happens when you use your FLT from an accelerated referance frame. The light cone of the accelerated referance frame is rotated on it's side, so the FTL travel points backwards from the original referance frame. It's not hard to fill in the details from this picture.
Also, every physics person I have ever talked to about this says it is true. I think there is even a Hawking quote about "We have not seen any visitors from the future, so there is probable no way to go FTL."
Re:Ender's Game, anyone? (Score:3)
But then again, I could be wrong.
Re:Ender's Game, anyone? (Score:3)
...imitating life. If I remember correctly, the "ansible" is an sci-fi extension of a real quantum theory (how close it approximates reality, I don't know). It even came up in a previous Slashdot discussion [slashdot.org].
Basically, the theory goes that if you have atom with two electrons in the same quantum state except for spin, and you know the spin of one of them and then change it, the spin of the other electron is changed instantly, regardless of distance. However, I think this interaction occurs at the speed of light, and not instantly. It's just that we can't tell the difference between the two because there's no way (presently) to separate the two particles by very much distance.
-Todd
---
Nonsense (Score:3)
Re:Backwards in time?? (Score:3)
Universe.stderr: causality violation, core dumped!
Let's see god read that one and debug!
------
Re:Circular File (Score:3)
Hopefully, the patent office will treat this like they treat applications for patents on perpetual motion machines
You are more correct than you think. I shall try to explain why...
In making his special theory of relativity, Einstein first stated the following two assumptions:
Everything else you have ever heard about relativity is a logical consequence of these two statements. This is the beauty of the theory.
It is the second one which we are interested in here. If this device did work, energy would be transported from one point to another faster than light would take to do the same thing. Now, the observer who activates the machine will see some energy disappear into his machine, then some time later, see it reappear at the other end.
An observer at the other end of the machine, will first see some energy appear at his end of the machine, then later see some disappear from the other end. This would violate the law of conservation of energy for the second observer and is thus a no-no.
I'm not surprised (Score:3)
For example, numerous perpetual motion machines have been patented, as well as unlimited energy supplies and other such nonsense. These are really great for laughs on a rainy day when your own project is on the fritz. Of course, they never work, but this never seems to stop the USPTO from issuing the patents anyway. The laws of physics (and the gross violation thereof) don't seem to bother the patent office.
The man responsible (Score:3)
Q. Todd Dickinson [uspto.gov] is the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks. He's only been on the job for 4 months, so we can't blame him personally for many past failings, but he's the one to address about making it stop. According to his biography, "Under Dickinson's leadership, the PTO is implementing the most sweeping reform in patent law in a half-century and its restructuring into a performance-based organization."
Since IANAL, I can't make much sense of Dickinson v. Zurko [techlaw.com], but it might give some insight on Disckinson's attitudes. It vaguely makes it look like he tried pretty vigorously to strenghten the legal force of PTO decisions that something was prior art and couldn't be patented. It may or may not also strengthen decisions that something is patentable. He says he's trying to hire many more people familiar with software, and make more resources available for recognizing prior art.
There's several of his speeches [uspto.gov] available at the PTO site.
Dickinson did praise the late Judge Giles Sutherland Rich, who wrote the opinion in the State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group Inc. [callaw.com] case that explicitly made it acceptable to patent mathematical algorithms and business models.
It would be great if the slashdot masters could arrange an Ask Slashdot with this guy.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:3)
Re:Backwards in time?? (Score:4)
It is even worse as the reception of the light will be in his past light cone at some time (a signal from the reception can reach him) and the transmission will be in his future light cone (he can send a beam of light to the transmission point before the transmission occurs). Therefore in his reference frame (just as valid as any other) he can see the result of the transmission and then tell them they shouldn't send.
For the record unless this is talking about speed of light in water or anything else other then the signal speed in vaccu it is a load of BS.
YAY! (Score:4)
WooHoo! Now we can contact Voyager!
(P.S.: If that's the abstract, I don't want to see the specifics. heh)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Only for perpetual motion claims. (Score:4)
Many of the Smithsonian exhibits are old working models from patent applications.
Interestingly: A very efficient still (using counter-current heat exchangers and creating near-vacuum by being 30ish feet tall at approximately atmospheric pressure at the bottom) was initially rejected for being a perpetual motion machine (for which they have rather high standards, in addition to the working-model requirement. B-) ) But the inventer was able to convince them to grant the patent after he showed them that you still had to input the heat of solution plus some heat for various losses.
There's more (Score:4)
Some a bit more disturbing than others. [ibm.com]
The USPTO must be reformed NOW! (Score:5)
It is common knowledge that transmitting and receiving electromagnetic waves which comprise opposing magnetic fields having a plane of maximum force running perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating a heat source along an axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating an accelerator parallel to and in close proximity to the heat source, thereby creating an input and output port; and generating a communications signal into the input and output port, thereby sending the signal at a speed faster than light is the easiest way to generate a wormhole. Other more difficult methods include being an alien species in control of vast amounts of subspace energy and doing something weird with the warp core.
If this patent goes through, it will mean the death of the Internet e-commerce for sure. Companies will have to stop using wormhole shipping techniques and revert to slower, more earthbound methods like UPS and Airborne Express. Everyone should write the USPTO right now before this thing gets approved and make sure that the system isn't abused once more and ensuring that future generations will have unlimited access to wormhole generating technology.
NOTE: This post not for the humor (or humour) impaired.
This isn't NEWS... (Score:5)
Wormhole physics (Score:5)
In general, to create a wormhole one must manipulate the general metric, which is a tensor that describes spacetime (for example, the relatively flat Minkowski metric takes on the form diag(-1,1,1,1) where diag refers to a diagonal matrix). Most "constructed" metrics that produce a wormhole solution have pathological flaws. For example, a Schwartzchild wormhole necessarily occludes the throat with a black hole, which tends to kill off passersby. The Kerr metric solution requires a several solar mass black hole formed into a ring and spun at relativistic angular velocities: how we might accomplish this feat of metric engineering anytime soon is troublesome.
The two most plausible ways of doing so is a Morris-Thorne-Wheeler wormhole, which simply requires exotic matter and violation of ANEC (Averaged Null-Energy Condition), and the Alcubierre spacewarp.
"Exotic" matter is simply matter with negative energy density. All matter and antimatter known has positive mass, and so there's only one way that we know of to get it: the Casimir effect. Briefly, the Casimir effect comes about due to vacuum fluctuations. Even the purest ideal vacuum is not truly empty, but has countless particle-antiparticle pairs appearing and disappearing within the time limits set by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The continued existence of these virtual particles has a noticeable effect, and is possibly a source of Einstein's Cosmological constant. At any rate, by setting up a parallel plate capacitor, one can reduce the likelihood of the virtual particles appearing, and thereby generate a negative energy density.
Unfortunately, it would take a spherical capacitor the size of the Earth separated by an angstrom (10 E-10 meters) to create a 10 meter or so wormhole using the Casimir effect.
Robert Forward nicely sidesteps this issue by postulating "negative matter" in his novel "Timemaster". As he explained it to me, "Why not?".
Alcubierre's metric contracts spacetime in front of the "ship" and expands it behind. It also requires exotic matter and violating the weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions. Lastly, Pfenning and Ford (1997 Classical Quantum Gravity 14 1743) show that this configuration is rather implausible, and Hiscock (1997 Class. Quant. Grav 14 L188) shows that a backreaction (warp drag) or tuning of the warp field may be required for it to maintain the Alcubierre metric, a difficult proposition given that past and future event horizons are causally disconnected.
In sum, there's really a renaissance occuring in General Relativity, and these issues are discussed in the professional literature. Like everyone else, I'd have to see a publication in the technical literature to consider seriously the claims made in this patent.
Now, with this in mind, after reading the abstract this patent seems to be nonsensical. Examining the claims:
Generating opposing magnetic fields each having a plane of maximum force running perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the respective magnetic field;
The Lorentz force is given by Il x B, which means that the magnetic force is due to a current, and in general, circulates about the current flow. Due to the cross product, the resultant geometry is not planar. Since we have not discovered any magnetic monopoles, magnetic induction in general forms loops from one pole to another.
generating heat from a heat source along an axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the magnetic field;
Unless the heat source is a thin wire, it is difficult to imagine an axial heat source. Heat conduction tends to be uniform, and while I'm not a material scientist, it is difficult for me to think of a material that has non-isotropic heat conduction (ie different depending on direction -- a composite material with fibers might do the trick).
generating an accelerator parallel to and in close proximity to the heat source, thereby creating an electromagnetic injection point; and generating a communication signal into the electromagnetic injection point, thereby sending and receiving the communication signal at a speed faster than a known speed of light.
What is exactly meant by "an accelerator"? Why does this magically add up to FTL?
Also note one of the other claims:
It has been observed by the inventor and witnesses that accelerated plant growth can occur using the present invention.
For accelerated plant growth, first, you need to create a hot surface that is more than 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Next, you need a strong magnetic field. Only one device is needed for this function. This allows energy from another dimension to influence plant growth.
Again, there seems to be no basis in which to make this claim. A wormhole would certain create a characteristic signature, even leaving causality problems aside. --Adam