[Frank_Discussion]

Question for you boris: Do we have Cherenkov-detectors placed around the planet, either on it or in near space? If not, perhaps such evidence just hasn't been collected. This is truly something to consider, and I'm asking in all seriousness.

However:

"Nor have they landed on the White House lawn and requested a private audience with the interns."

C'mon. Denegration isn't required here. I participate (lightly) on a YahooGroup that is looking at Alcubierre's work and subsequent refinements, and they are pretty well on track. They take it very seriously, get published, and don't surrender to hype or UFO cults.

That's reminds me of something I noticed about this paper. One of the frequent criticisms of papers that reference the Alcubierre breakthrough is that his idea requires more negative energy than the total (positive) energy of the universe! Certainly a show-stopper. However, the metric-engineering mentioned in the the article is a big focus of refinement of this field, and as researchers/theorists have moved forward new metric treatments have reduced the energy requirements to concievable levels.

My focus is on the engineering aspects of building the equipment involved, but I'm only recently looking into it. What I find interesting is that if the theories are systematically digested, they aren't that hard to understand. Eating the elephant one bite at a time, as it were.

[boris]

"Question for you boris: Do we have Cherenkov-detectors placed around the planet, either on it or in near space?"

I used "Cherenkov" as an example of potential traces of FTL travel. That's what "e.g." stands for.

And yes, we have lots of such detectors--they are called eyeballs, and almost everyone has a couple.

--Boris

[Quix]

Wonderful to read a balanced reply.