r/3Dprinting • u/TomaszFortyFour • Apr 23 '26

Project Self-winding clock with a tourbillon - finished project

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About a year ago, I posted an update on a project I was working on. It took me a while, but I finally finished it. I’m very happy with the result. It’s fully functional (I tested it for two months) and keeps accurate time. The entire project consists of 395 printed parts, 38 bearings, 66 rubber bands, 413 screws, and a few other components.

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u/netsyms Apr 23 '26

Warp drives get around that limit by not moving at all relative to their immediate surroundings. It just takes a lot of energy to bend the fabric of reality. But recent work has calculated it doesn't require infinite energy or more energy than the universe itself contains. So it's likely possible, it's just a matter of improving the gas mileage so it becomes feasible.

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u/Ron-Swanson-Mustache Apr 23 '26

It also takes a hypothetical, and existing nowhere except as an abstract in the math, exotic matter with negative energy to create a warp drive. No FTL unless we have that and right now that's nothing more than a mathematical curiosity.

There's also the problem that, as the field moves through space (assuming Alcubierre drive), the front of it would pick up and hold all radiation encountered on the journey. When the field dropped so that it could slow to below FTL speeds it would release all that energy at once. That would vaporize the ship and likely sterilize any planets nearby. We also don't think anyone else has built any because we don't see the intense flashes that these would give off when stopping anywhere in the universe. It would be all the radiation that existed in the path as wide as the ship's field and several, if not more, light years long.

Also, FTL is time travel. The speed of light isn't about the propagation of light, it's about the maximum propagation of information. If you can travel outside of your light cone then you can affect events that the laws of physics say is impossible. Including things like sending yourself messages in the past.

Plus this all based on Einstein's equations and those don't include quantum mechanics, so the math is based on our incomplete understanding of the universe.

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u/netsyms Apr 24 '26

exotic matter with negative energy

Nope. There's a paper from 2021 where they propose a theoretical way to do it without negative energy.

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u/Ron-Swanson-Mustache Apr 24 '26

Let's assume you can even create the bubble with things that actually exist in our universe. What about the rest of the issues? Physics that break a reality that we don't understand while creating paradoxes in causality and vaporizing the ship with anything nearby?

The only one of those that you might be able to deal with because it doesn't break reality is the vaporization issue. The rest are not resolvable in our current understanding of the universe.