The IM Ambush: Lori & Ian Do Spacetime in 30 Minutes Flat

June 13, 2009

Like most days, us Discovery producers are preparing new articles, organizing future ones and discussing editorial choices with our director, Lori Cuthbert. It's a very enjoyable process that I'm gradually getting to grips with, and it helps that I get to work with talented professionals who genuinely have a passion for their work.

So, this afternoon, Lori and I were chatting via IM about the science behind an article about Richard Obousy's warp drive I had prepared to make the physics more informative to the reader. I had made the article fairly brief as it was attached to a slideshow, so it needed some work. After our conversation, I half-jokingly said that we should publish the text, as there was a lot of information in it... and Lori instantly replied with, "DO IT."

So here it is, an "IM Ambush" (as opposed to an IM Interview, when the participants actually know their conversation is going to be published before they start talking) where Lori and I make an attempt at summing up spacetime, superstring theory and getting locked up in physics prison...

NOTE: Feel free to get involved and leave a comment at the bottom of the post. Keep in mind, we did this very fast (30 minutes), so it's light on details, but I think it's a really nice insight to what happens behind the scenes of Discovery Space... Enjoy!

lcbigpants (12:36:01 PM): hi

lcbigpants (12:36:07 PM): what's spacetime?

astroengine (12:36:12 PM): hello

lcbigpants (12:36:19 PM): is it ... space?

astroengine (12:36:32 PM): yes, space and time...

lcbigpants (12:36:44 PM): i thought time was a human creation

astroengine (12:36:55 PM): 3 dimensions of space (x,y,z) and time = 4 dimensions, or "spacetime"

astroengine (12:37:12 PM): no, it's a dimension in its own right

astroengine (12:37:32 PM): it's natures way of stopping everything from happening at the same time

lcbigpants (12:37:41 PM): i thought Einstein was the one who said humans had invented calendars and such to keep themselves sane

lcbigpants (12:37:56 PM): but that everything is happening everywhere, all the time, at the same time.

astroengine (12:38:04 PM): lol, that's "organizing time"

lcbigpants (12:38:21 PM): so I've had that wrong all these years?

lcbigpants (12:38:46 PM): and everything doesn't happen at the same time?

astroengine (12:38:57 PM): well... there are some theories that suggest some people's time is more valuable than others... so it all could be relative

lcbigpants (12:39:23 PM): more valuable to whom?

lcbigpants (12:39:35 PM): cause I KNOW my time is at the top of the list.

astroengine (12:40:17 PM): lol, I'll make a note of that

lcbigpants (12:40:27 PM): you throw 'spacetime' out there like it's a common word

lcbigpants (12:40:33 PM): I've never heard of it before now

astroengine (12:40:48 PM): well, it's also written as space-time

lcbigpants (12:41:02 PM): yes, we have it written that way in the news story.

lcbigpants (12:41:22 PM): which brings me to the news story, which is written for people like me, by a person like me - ie: non-scientist.

lcbigpants (12:41:32 PM): I'm going to work a bit more on your slide show.

astroengine (12:41:33 PM): "spacetime" is more general I think

lcbigpants (12:41:39 PM): will send it on soon.

astroengine (12:41:49 PM): Cool, let me know if I can help...

lcbigpants (12:41:57 PM): yep, I will

astroengine (12:43:41 PM): I think I'll try to get one of our bloggers to do a post on "What is spacetime?"

lcbigpants (12:43:52 PM): good!

astroengine (12:45:09 PM): definitely needed -- in fact I should have thought about that at the *start* of the wide angle... but then that damned warp drive came along and I was hooked!

lcbigpants (12:47:20 PM): what's space-time thought to be like?

lcbigpants (12:47:24 PM): does it have a texture?

lcbigpants (12:47:38 PM): or is it just black?

astroengine (12:48:00 PM): that's one hell of a good question... physicists don't really know

lcbigpants (12:48:11 PM): i'm trying to come up with some more imagery.

lcbigpants (12:48:22 PM): like flying through something slightly viscous?

lcbigpants (12:48:45 PM): or utterly still and black, like the very deep sea?

astroengine (12:49:33 PM): space is a vacuum, BUT quantum mechanics and string theory says that the vacuum is actually full of energy -- virtual photons pop in and out of existence in the vacuum

astroengine (12:49:42 PM): so it's never really "empty"

lcbigpants (12:49:49 PM): the theory he's talking about,

lcbigpants (12:50:17 PM): "At the front of the warpship, space-time would be compressed, and behind the ship, it would expand."

lcbigpants (12:50:32 PM): suggests that space-time is something to compress

lcbigpants (12:50:36 PM): you can't compress nothing

astroengine (12:50:43 PM): then you have tightly curled dimensions that are predicted to exist throughout spacetime --

lcbigpants (12:50:56 PM): so he's talking about manipulating a something, not a nothing.

astroengine (12:50:57 PM): ah yes, that's where the extra-dimensions come in

lcbigpants (12:51:14 PM): do the extra dimensions equate with space-time?

astroengine (12:51:53 PM): he's compressing these extra dimensions, therefore shrinking the distance between objects

astroengine (12:52:12 PM): the balloon analogy is probably the best

astroengine (12:52:15 PM): to explain

lcbigpants (12:52:21 PM): would the dimensions be like itty-bitty springs that were squeezed and let unfurl to sort of boing the ship forward?

lcbigpants (12:52:46 PM): what balloon analogy?

astroengine (12:53:08 PM): Kinda, like tightly curled springs -- dark energy can squeeze them tighter or expand them

lcbigpants (12:53:11 PM): the one you have is for space-time.

lcbigpants (12:53:24 PM): oh - does 'fabric' mean outside edge in this case?

lcbigpants (12:53:29 PM): or what's inside the 'balloon'?

lcbigpants (12:54:40 PM): and what happens if you break the laws of physics?

lcbigpants (12:54:45 PM): physics prison for you?

astroengine (12:54:59 PM): Spacetime is what we understand as our 4 dimensional universe (3x spatial dimensions, 1x time dimension). This is like our "classical" interpretation of our universe

lcbigpants (12:55:10 PM): ja

astroengine (12:56:15 PM): superstring theory predicts there's possibly 7 "extra-dimensions" including our classical interpretation of spacetime (so that's a total of 11 dimensions)

astroengine (12:56:36 PM): some of these dimensions are predicted to be vanishingly small

astroengine (12:56:52 PM): but they have an influence on classical spacetime

lcbigpants (12:57:09 PM): so this would depend on finding them and getting familiar enough with them to manipulate them.

astroengine (12:57:44 PM): Therefore, if you have the ability to manipulate these teeny tiny dimensions, you can warp our classical spacetime, thereby sidestepping the speed of light problem

astroengine (12:57:51 PM): yes

astroengine (12:57:58 PM): this is all complete theory

astroengine (12:58:12 PM): until an experiment like the LHC can find evidence

lcbigpants (12:58:12 PM): and seriously, what happens if you break the laws of physics?

astroengine (12:58:19 PM): you cant

astroengine (12:58:34 PM): in theory, you can try to fiddle the numbers

astroengine (12:58:43 PM): but in reality, you cant

lcbigpants (12:58:55 PM): cause they're laws.

lcbigpants (12:58:57 PM):

lcbigpants (12:59:30 PM): OK, coming back at you. slightly tweaked.

astroengine (12:59:30 PM): so when someone says "but you're breaking the laws of physics" it either means you've done the calculations wrong

astroengine (12:59:41 PM): or you've discovered a new law of physics

astroengine (12:59:56 PM): the latter is preferred and gets you Nobel Prizes.

lcbigpants (1:00:02 PM): I think we need a big fat clear 'this is ALL theoretical and contains very many what ifs and unknowns' right at the front.

astroengine (1:00:11 PM): Absolutely

lcbigpants (1:00:20 PM): cause ... there are pictures there

lcbigpants (1:00:31 PM): and once there are pictures, it begins to seem real

lcbigpants (1:00:43 PM): and this has little if any bearing on reality.

lcbigpants (1:01:04 PM): so I'm fascinated, as a general reader fascinated with stuff is, but I need reminding that it's all theory.

astroengine (1:01:15 PM): sure, the images are based purely on theoretical calculations with two HUGE assumptions: 1) we'll be able to harness dark energy and 2) superstring theory is correct

lcbigpants (1:01:16 PM): b/c most of us don't live in a theoretical world.

lcbigpants (1:01:24 PM): oh goodie. say that pls.

lcbigpants (1:02:13 PM): or instead of 2) the theory that predicts there are extra dimensions, and that we could ultimately a) find them and b) learn to manipulate them

astroengine (1:02:17 PM): both assumptions are valid, but putting it into practice will take a long, long time... I suspect warp drives will explode when you turn them on, but there's a lot of physicists that don't agree with that.

astroengine (1:02:29 PM): Awesome, will do that

lcbigpants (1:02:30 PM): we won't be here to find out.

astroengine (1:03:08 PM): unless we work out how to harness VAST amounts of energy tomorrow, no, not a chance

lcbigpants (1:03:26 PM): and for 1) we'll be able to figure out exactly what dark energy is, where it is, and how to harness it

astroengine (1:03:53 PM): yes -- dark energy is a theory, but without it, the universe wouldn't make sense

astroengine (1:04:34 PM): I think we need to publish this IM!

lcbigpants (1:04:51 PM): oh, you are BRILLIANT.

lcbigpants (1:04:53 PM): DO IT

Comments

[Ian O'Neill]

Hey Nicole,

That's why I wanted to make it clear that the universe wouldn't make sense without the presence of dark energy -- the point Lori was making was based on transparency with the reader. On Discovery, the readership is waaay different to what I'm used to on my blog, so just differentiating between theories, laws and experimental proof becomes key to the text.

You're right though, one has to be careful about the "just a theory" card, but in this case we were simply emphasizing that warp drives aren't possible right now... but they are theoretically possible in the future.

Cheers!

Ian

[Nicole]

Beware of throwing around the phrase "it's just a theory". Remember that a theory in science is something that has been very well tested with evidence and consistent models! When talking about something more speculative, then that is a hypothesis. It is the misunderstanding of these terms that creationists hurl at us with "evolution is just a theory!" Theory means a different thing in science than in colloquial language, so we need to be careful not to mix the two.