Five Popular Talks

Over the last ten or fifteen years I’ve done a number of slide talks at Balticon, Philcon, & Farpoint, three local science fiction conventions. A number of these have been relatively heavy on the physics – within the context of a science fiction convention of course – and I thought it might be fun to post them. As Rod Sterling might have put it, presented for your consideration:

Title Year Description Megabytes
Faster than light 2007 How to travel faster than light, from a physics point of view.

  • What faster than light travel means
  • Potential problems
  • Tachyons
  • Alcubierre, Krasnikov and other warp drives
  • Paradoxes and their management
4.1
The future of time travel 2002 This was about time travel in science fiction, with a few mentions of the relevant physics. Areas covered:

  • Time Past — history of time travel stories
  • Time Present — current time travel stories
  • Time Future — what kind of time travel stories could we write
  • All Time — time travel stories that do not fit neatly into any three dimensional box.
3.0
How to build a (real) time machine 2009
  • Plot devices
  • Patents (!)
  • Physics of time machines
  • Pthought experiments
  • Present state of time machine research.

See also this year’s Philcon talk: How to build a time machine, by Goldberg and Blomquist.

11.1 (!)
Physics of time travel 2003 Time in special relativity, tachyons, frame-dragging, general relativistic time machines, paradox management, chaos, arrows of time, why study time travel… 1.4
Quantum time 2008 A popular discussion of my dissertation. 1.5

Other Links to this Post

  1. Time and Quantum Mechanics» Blog Archive » Five Popular Talks | Sci Fi Club — December 10, 2009 @ 5:19 pm

WordPress Themes