Which of the following technologies/feats would be hardest to create?

Faster than light travel
Colonization of the solar system
Death Star like super weapon
Time Travel
Gravity manipulation
Planet Terra forming
Figuring out (scientifically) how the universe formed/started
Creating matter
Creating a formula that calculates human behavior
Mind control

Gravity manipulation is already being done in huge numbers of ways so that one is easy. Spinning manned space stations, the "vomit comet". G-force manipulations for different purposes...All technically "gravity manipulation"

Time travel is also done already to an extremely small extent. The proof is in the fact that 3 atomic clocks were set to a specific and matching time. 1 was kept in London. 1 was kept in New York and the 3rd was on a plane travelling between the 2. It was noted that because of the speed of travel, when the plane landed, the two clocks on either side of the Atlantic were still identical but the one on the plane had changed by 3 millionths of a second. It was called the Hafele-Keating experiment and it was designed to prove some aspects of special relativity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele-Keating_experiment

A for a death star type weapon. Simply not enough resources on this planet to build one so it would take some of the other technology to do it. i.e planet terraforming and colonising of the solar system. (both of which i believe will be possible within 50 years)

Figuring out how the universe started has been done whether some people accept the big bang theory or not. The evidence for it is huge. Just because some people don't understand it or want to doesn't make it untrue.

Creating matter?

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/matter.html

Faster than light for objects with mass I believe will always be impossible given that for an object to travel at the speed of light it would have infinite momentum. To achieve infinite momentum it would either need to have finite acceleration for an infinite period of time or infinite acceleration for a finite period of time. Neither of which is possible.

Particles with no mass, if I remember correctly, have already been made to go faster than light but only through medium which is not a vacuum and so doesn't condradict relativity.

FTL, because according to everything we know about the universe, it's impossible.

Time travel is possible in a limited form (time dilation, etc.)

All of the rest of the things you listed are at least theoretically possible (unless you mean creating matter from nothing, instead of creating it from energy, which can be done)

Back then, scientists "mathematically proved" that making a flying machine was impossible. But they were wrong. In other words, I'm pretty sure humanity will figure out a way...if they survive long enough.

About gravity manipulation, I meant like anti gravity or something super sci fi like.

Originally posted by Hewhoknowsall
Back then, scientists "mathematically proved" that making a flying machine was impossible. But they were wrong. In other words, I'm pretty sure humanity will figure out a way...if they survive long enough.

They may find a way to traverse distances faster than light could but that doesn't mean going faster than light. That means bending the universe. In other words, a wormhole. These would require exotic matter which is only theoretical and would need a negative density/mass and so would be repelled by gravity. This would indeed be a weird substance because it would need to have negatives in all 3 mass types. Intertial mass and active and passive gravitational mass.

In the case of intertial mass, this would mean that it would have to accelerate in the opposite direction in which is was pushed.

It would also mean that negative mass would be attracted to positive mass but postive mass would be repelled by negative mass.

Negative gravitational mass would also be attracted to negative gravitational mass but due to negative intertial mass would accelerate in opposite directions.

One aspect for showing negative mass is that if it existed in equal proportions to positve mass in the universe that each would accelerate away from one another indefinitely so this is perhaps why the universe is still speeding up in its expansion. One side of the universe being positve mass and the other undetectable negative mass. Thus possibly making the universe twice as large as we thought.

I'm wandering into ****ed up shit right now but it's fun.

Did you study this kind of stuff at university and now work in the field or just a very big interest?

I've done a bit of physics at uni. Not a lot though as i did a degree in forensic science and then related masters and PhD mostly in chemistry and biology

But yeah, I have a pretty big interest in stuff related to space. I regularly visit my local observatory.

Death stare like superweapon. Can be done. Launce a satalite up in space with enough nukes and fire. That should destroy the earth

Originally posted by Csdabest
Death stare like superweapon. Can be done. Launce a satalite up in space with enough nukes and fire. That should destroy the earth

Using conventional thermonuclear weapons you would need to build a bomb probably bigger than most countries to actually destroy the earth

I think FTL will be very difficult, if not impossible to develop. The amount of technology that would need to be developed must be massive, providing it's even possible.

Here are 2 more:

Defying logic (making 2 + 2 =5)
Making something bigger on the inside than on the outside (you know what I mean)

I have a feeling the logic one is impossible...

Both of those are probably impossible, although the latter might be possible

Time travel

That is just an impossibility. At least not with physical matter. Maybe a transference of consciousness.

Originally posted by jinXed by JaNx
Time travel

That is just an impossibility. At least not with physical matter. Maybe a transference of consciousness.

Actually it's not. Although it would only work in a forward motion at a high enough velocity. Time dilation is real and has been proven. The only reason it has no effect at the moment is that we haven't got a propulsion system that would give a high enough speed.

This is what is meant by the theory that if you travel away from the earth at a high enough velocity and return a year later....longer than a year will have passed on the earth. The faster you travel, the longer time will have elapsed in relation to the person in motion.

Originally posted by Endless Mike
FTL, because according to everything we know about the universe, it's impossible.

Time travel is possible in a limited form (time dilation, etc.)

All of the rest of the things you listed are at least theoretically possible (unless you mean creating matter from nothing, instead of creating it from energy, which can be done)

He's also being deceitful because neither is moving faster than the speed of light. Perhaps their combined speed is faster than the speed of light but neither is actually travelling FTL. That was also Hubble's law and has since been updated to say that the galaxies themselves aren't moving at all. It's the space itself between the galaxies that is expanding faster than light which is actually possible because space itself has no mass and so can achieve FTL expansion.

Originally posted by LDHZenkai
The black professor dude...i forget his name. He's insanely awesome them.

But anyway, I'd have to go with FTL being the toughest to achieve, FTL, as in some kind of space-warping effect. Unless we find some loophole, just the energy-requirement alone to warp space in such a fashion is mind-boggling. Consider: it takes the mass of the Sun to warp space as much as it does, and that degree of warpage is no where near what would be need to achieve an FTL effect. Basically, you're looking at near-black-hole intensities / energy-equivalents.

Originally posted by Mindship
Neil De Grasse Tyson. Currently I can't think of a better heir to Carl Sagan's legacy.

But anyway, I'd have to go with FTL being the toughest to achieve, FTL, as in some kind of space-warping effect. Unless we find some loophole, just the energy-requirement alone to warp space in such a fashion is mind-boggling. Consider: it takes the mass of the Sun to warp space as much as it does, and that degree of warpage is no where near what would be need to achieve an FTL effect. Basically, you're looking at near-black-hole intensities / energy-equivalents.

I can see what you're getting at. Kind of like if you lay a piece of fabric over a hole and push down on top, the outer edge of the fabric get pulled in towards each other. Then you pull them flat and they get further apart again. Thus and thing that went from 1 side of the hole to the other while the fabric had been pushed down will end up even further apart once the fabric is straightened again.

The problem with that is you'd need to have something with huge mass and thus huge gravity but with a regulated outward force so that the mass didn't just collapse in on itself to infinite density and zero volume (just like a black hole)

What you're talking about is some kind of super-dense and negative charged electromagnetic substance. Effectively large planet sized object that was just short of being as dense as a neutron star whereby it's own gravity would be pulling it in on itself whilst a regulated opposing electromagnet would be repelling its outer layers and preventing it from collapsing into a neutron star or black hole.

The vesself flying over the space "well" it would also have to be magnetically oppose so as to not be attracted to it and thus not crash into it via massive gravitational pull.

You would then regulate the outward magnetic push of the object and thus while not effecting its mass, it would alter its gravitational distortion on space and so the well would get shallower and the object which crossed from one side to the other would get further apart.