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Originally Posted by Zaps
It doesn't sound that way to me. If you did you would understand that it's not a matter of hoping a lab comes up with something new. It's going to take a wholesale reconstruction of fundamental physics as we know it, and there is not even one single sound reason to suppose that can or will happen, or even needs to.
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Did I actually say that it
will happen?? No....all I have ever said is that it might happen because we don't know what we might know in 100, 200 or 1000 years. Nothing ever needs to happen...if that's the case then we should still be living in caves. We should've never invented the wheel, learned how to cultivate wild grasses and produce crops from them, build pyramids or anything else we've managed to do in the last 10000 years or so. On any number of occasions throughout history has the world view and knowledge paradigm of a society been changed or turned on its head by new ideas and paradigms that have come out of left field. It happened with Newton and with Einstein and with many others. It can and will happen again, even if you don't like it or want it to. Our present understanding on physics, or anything else for that matter, is not the paragon of understanding and/or knowledge. Nor will it be in the future, for what we might know even then.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaps
This is just plain wrong.
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You reply is wrong, and you know it. What did common sense and scientific knowledge before Einstein formulated SR and GR say about gravity, acceleration, force, energy etc. What did they say after the fact. Whenever a new theory or idea comes up and is proven to within reason, i.e within the limits of what is currently known or testable, the old order is either modified to take into account the new knowledge (i.e what happened with Newton's theories) or it falls by the wayside because we now know better (Geocentric vs Heliocentric world views). It will be no different with Einstein's theories or any other we may hold onto at present.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaps
The intent of the person manipulating the numbers can be honest or dishonest. One plus one equals two. If that's not the answer you want, you can't just fiddle with the equation until it doesn't. It will always equal two.
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All you have done is repeated what I have said, just worded differently.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaps
The well-understood and tested math strongly indicates that practical human interstellar travel is so unlikely as to be safely considered impossible. It's not about playing origami with the numbers, or hoping for a eureka moment.
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You have not negated anything I have written by what you have said there. The well understood and tested maths....according to what we know about the maths and physics at present and only to what limits we can test it at present. If you believe I am playing origami with the "numbers", so to speak, then you can be just as guilty of being narrow minded and not wanting to consider the possibilities...being too comfortable of living inside the box. Neither of us will know for certain what future knowledge will bring about. The only reasonable thing that either of us can be certain of is that both of us will most likely be rather wide of the mark. Eureka moments will occur whether we want them to or not.