Exotic Paths To The Stars JOHN CRAMER

Exotic Paths To The Stars JOHN CRAMER
Everyone knows from pop science fiction such as Star Wars and Star Trek that ideas of how to cross immense distances in a twinkling of time do emerge from the odd and sometimes extravagant realms of theoretical physics. How plausible are such notions?

The truthful answer is that no one knows. Progress in the furthest realms of General Relativity and quantum mechanics must proceed from experiment, and there are few lab experiments that can touch on such issues. To survey the current landscape of such thinking, the 100 Year Starship Symposium held an Exotic Technologies Session chaired by John Cramer. Here he reports on the major ideas treated there, with some insightful criticisms of his own, and much background material useful to the interested but non-specialist observer. One recalls the Mark Twain observation, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”