Article - Scientific Explanations

I got bored so I figured I would make a list of possible scientific explanations for the various pieces of technology in 0x10^c:

Let's start with propellantless, energy-based engines:

Alcubierre drive (Warp Drive) Warp drive is a theoretical concept that would be physically possible. It working contracting space-time in front of it and expanding space-time behind it. The cool thing about this is the rules of special relativity do not apply since the ship would be stationary within a "warp bubble" between the warped space-time. Scientists have theorized that it could be accomplished by expanding the 11th dimension in front of the ship and shrinking it behind the ship creating dark energy. http://news.discovery.com/space/warp-drive-spaceship-engine.html This is a fairly decent explanation of how warp drive would work.

Field Drives Field drives are another cool type of "engine". These are not dissimilar to the warp drive except instead of contracting and expanding space-time it folds space time to create a sort o artificial gravity field. This can be done in a few ways, the diametric drive, for example would have an artificial positive mass in front of the ship and an artificial negative mass behind the ship creating negative gravity - a pushing force - behind it and positive gravity - a pulling force in front of it. There are types of field drives you can read about here:http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/1997-J_AIAA_SpaceDr.pdf These field drives would of course not be superluminal.

Now let's look at energy sources, Notch said that it would be a fixed amount of energy and we would not need fuel. Now I would say that leaves us with solar power, but that may be tricky in a dying universe:

Zero-Point Energy Zero-point energy is a controversial subject that borders on pseudo science but recently there have been promising breakthroughs. Zero-point energy is the idea of harnessing the background energy fluctuation that exists everywhere. if you were to remove everything from the universe there would still be resonant energy known as "quantum vacuum energy" that would still exist. The amount of energy that exists in this "quantum vacuum" is huge (10³⁶ to 10⁷⁰ J/m³⁾ and if we can tap into even a fraction of it, we could probably power a warp drive. There is more info at these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energyhttp://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20050170447_2005172301.pdf (pg 65)

This sort of energy source could be used to explain just about any piece of technology that require much more energy than achievable today.

TL;DR Much of the technology that would need scientific explanation can be easily explained through warp drive, field drives, and Zero Point Energy

Edit: As GreyTheory pointed out, these scientifically valid hypotheses and not true "explanations" for the futuristic technology. However I feel that they are some of the most "scientifically valid hypotheses" that can be made for the futuristic technology that would exist in 0x10^c

By Mavvik