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Comment by cfv | Hacker News Reader

So, the biggest question I have about all this eminently theoretical physics video thing is, has anyone ever managed to experimentally demonstrate you can __voluntarily__ bend the brane our reality resides on by any measurable amount, and also demonstrate this causes an actual translation in 3d space? At all? Ever?

Or are we conjecturing what would happen if this was even slightly viable?

We've only very recently managed to experimentally demonstrate that unimaginably huge cataclismic events can make this happen, but, has anyone ever built some device that can make a crease of any significance at all in reality, and do so at will?

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> bend the brane our reality resides on by any measurable amount, and also demonstrate this causes an actual translation in 3d space?

Bends in spacetime creating measurable effects is how LIGO’s interferometers see gravity waves.

You’re asking for a light bulb when we’ve barely begun grinding lenses for a telescope.

Apologies in advance if this sounds excessively rude, but I'm not asking for anything as there's noone to actually ask to, I'm asking about that.

That distinction matters, since I personally find it easier to derive enthusiasm from concrete, tangible tools that may prevent the entire species as a thing from dying choked in a toxic miasma of our own creation than from the purely numeric advances in our grasp of the rules of a universe we're basically guests in.

> I'm not asking for anything as there's noone to actually ask to, I'm asking about that

We have witnessed spacetime ripples bending the length of an inferometer chamber. These ripples are far weaker than those we can, with known physics, create. (Most of LIGO’s work involves removing the effects we unintentionally create.)

> tangible tools that may prevent the entire species as a thing from dying choked in a toxic miasma of our own creation

Bending materials with spacetime ripples is known physics. You are asking for (or about or whatever) something we have.

If you are unsatisfied with anything short of a functioning interstellar drive, see the earlier point about demanding light bulbs from those just grinding lenses. There are those doing the work. There are those oblivious of it. And there are those shouting at it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%E2%80%93Juday_warp-field...

So... no?

My reading is, 'needs better measuring tools'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment Does this not qualify?

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