While the concepts outlined in the team’s new paper pave the way toward making travel through space nearing light speed a reality, constructing such an engine is likely something that will only be feasible far in the future, as the present state of technology would not allow for such a device.
The paper is paywalled and I am too lazy to look for a free/open link, but the shown graphs indicate many squared meters of energy concentrations of 1 - 10 * 10^39 joules.
The entire energy output of the Sun, in a year, is around 10^34 joules. 6.6 * 10^39 joules is apparently the estimated total mass energy of the Moon, if you basically perfectly E = mc^2 transformed it into pure energy.
In 2010 the estimated total energy consumption of humans on Earth was 5 * 10^20 joules.
So we just need something around ten billion * ten billion more joules than that, presumably generated by something i dont know, naval frigate sized?
Their theory of atoms was also that they were indivisible, being the most basic building block of all matter. Obviously now we know that that’s not true.
They described a lot of things, and were wrong more often than not. Their biggest contribution was really just progress in the scientific method itself.
It was not really what we would know as science, as it does not revolve around strictly constructed experimentation, hypothesis, or reproduceablility or predictivity, so much as it was the concepts of logic itself, of arguing about things with rationality and rhetoric.
A whole lot of Greek philosophy uses what seem like decent arguments to lead to decent sounding explanations that do not actually work if explored further or tested, though there are genuine examples of actual experimentation that still hold up fairly well, like Eratosthenes approximating the size of the Earth based on geometry and shadows.
Theyre basically just known for formally getting the ball rolling of inquisitive discourse on the nature of the world.
So if we could completely annihilate a mass equivalent to the Moon with an equal mass of antimatter and capture all of the energy with no losses to heat and without ripping the device apart, that would work?
… by an astounding margin.
The paper is paywalled and I am too lazy to look for a free/open link, but the shown graphs indicate many squared meters of energy concentrations of 1 - 10 * 10^39 joules.
The entire energy output of the Sun, in a year, is around 10^34 joules. 6.6 * 10^39 joules is apparently the estimated total mass energy of the Moon, if you basically perfectly E = mc^2 transformed it into pure energy.
In 2010 the estimated total energy consumption of humans on Earth was 5 * 10^20 joules.
So we just need something around ten billion * ten billion more joules than that, presumably generated by something i dont know, naval frigate sized?
Yeah. Faaaaaar off indeed.
Like Hippocrates telling people that a new breakthrough in medicine could allow bones to be seen in detail without cutting into flesh
Didn’t he or some other Greek philosopher also describe atoms?
Rudimentary atomic theory was independently “discovered” multiple times and places throughout history.
Hippocrates also described the four humors.
Their theory of atoms was also that they were indivisible, being the most basic building block of all matter. Obviously now we know that that’s not true.
They described a lot of things, and were wrong more often than not. Their biggest contribution was really just progress in the scientific method itself.
It was not really what we would know as science, as it does not revolve around strictly constructed experimentation, hypothesis, or reproduceablility or predictivity, so much as it was the concepts of logic itself, of arguing about things with rationality and rhetoric.
A whole lot of Greek philosophy uses what seem like decent arguments to lead to decent sounding explanations that do not actually work if explored further or tested, though there are genuine examples of actual experimentation that still hold up fairly well, like Eratosthenes approximating the size of the Earth based on geometry and shadows.
Theyre basically just known for formally getting the ball rolling of inquisitive discourse on the nature of the world.
So if we could completely annihilate a mass equivalent to the Moon with an equal mass of antimatter and capture all of the energy with no losses to heat and without ripping the device apart, that would work?
No problem, we’ll have it done next week.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.02709
Thanks! =D