FTL is not possible, but Dr. Jones proceeded to offer great insight with the words, It is therefore very easy to show the futility of the endeavor. There are certainly many people who do not think that the "new science" is a work of progress, but we can find many signs in our field that it is not science, and therefore cannot be progress. We can do without the help of these people and without the time wasted for argument in talking to them. Unfortunately, I don't have the rest of Dr. Jones's book at my disposal to read and see where the "new science" starts, but what is most interesting to me, is that I find it very hard to identify the "new science", as, if Dr. Jones is correct, no one is doing any science at all, regardless of the names they choose. And with that thought, I think I will leave it here and let you all discuss what you think the science of the FTL propulsion is. I can be reached at bm@physics.arizona.edu. Feel free to contact me, Dr. Jones, or whomever else here might know more than the community. A: The question is phrased "where does the technology come from?" and in fact there's a fairly clear answer: It came from the same source as all human technological progress, which has been the advancement of knowledge and mathematics, not the discovery of the laws of physics. There's a clear difference between the latter and the former, which are both forms of mathematical physics. The latter is more speculative, and in many cases, not useful at all, but the former is applicable to all forms of matter and energy and has been successfully used for thousands of years to solve our problems in a wide range of fields. So what we see in that part of time are many thousands of years of technology applied in many fields, but with basically no improvement. A: Answering the implicit question, first, not all scientists see themselves as working in that way. Most of the early scientists were religious. Galileo was a Catholic. Newton was a Christian. Sir Isaac Newton even wrote in the preface to his book "Principia" that the book was "written for the satisfaction of my own mind." A lot of people still work in that way. Even before that time, the most famous scientists worked like that. Aristotle, the Greek scientist, was a realist. If you saw Aristotle talking about any idea he thought was new or that had not been understood before, you would get the sense that he was describing something that was going to be understood. There were some Greek philosophers that were less philosophical, and they came up with some ideas that we now know were wrong. Aristotle was more in the middle. Even as the Greek culture moved from thinking in the mode of Greek philosophy to a modern scientific view, Aristotle continued to be somewhat more comfortable with the way we do things. You could say Aristotle was writing in the mode of Galileo's more scientific way of working. He was working in a culture that had already developed the mode of scientific thinking. It's likely that there are other cultures in which the scientists continue to believe that their knowledge comes from religion. In many of those cases, this has meant that the culture in question has not had the scientific or technological culture to support scientific thinking. A: It is not an academic issue, it is a technological one. For example, the first ships had sails and a rudder. They didn't have FTL but they were using the force of wind and waves. Sailboats could actually go faster than the force of gravity could pull them. If you want to find out why things work the way they do, just look for a natural explanation. But once you do something then you can do it again and again. Science and technology advance the ability to do things. Things they couldn't do with the hand of God. In your time this would be called sorcery. In ours it would be called religion. Your question assumes that the question will be asked at all. There will be no FTL and no energy free energy. Your question isn't even appropriate. Unless you have evidence, all you have is your own preconceived ideas. You can see that I'm not a fan of your question. Why? Because the question as asked isn't answerable. People in different cultures use different technologies, for the same reason that people use their bodies in different ways. We don't have to have similar equipment to share ideas and discoveries. There is a scientific explanation for the current state of FTL tech. We do things differently here, it isn't magic. We don't have to use some magical source of energy or physics to make our technology work. It's not magical; it's quantum physics. The scientific explanation is that since we're so tiny and big things are pretty big in relativity, the universe will bend space-time to accomodate our technology. There will be no physics because there will be no quantum physics. What exactly are you asking? Where does the technology come from? No, that would be too simple. It comes from our ability to explain things using physics. Our ability to come up with theories that explain and predict behavior and observations. It comes from our observation of the physical world. Or am I asking the wrong question? Asking the wrong question and not knowing what you are asking is the wrong question. Wouldn't someone explain it to me? This is what science is all about. We don't understand everything, but we understand enough to come up with the right explanation, or explanations. Once we do, other scientists come up with ideas that we understand and put them to the test. If those ideas make predictions and the predictions hold up, we say that they explain what we observe and understand about the world. This is like the case of the first automobiles. When the automobile was developed, it was so new that people were still puzzled by it. You had some sort of machine that got around by rolling through the air. It seems like magic. They didn't have an engine. But once they did, they could replace all the parts of the machine and have a better machine. Their cars had no wheels and no fuel, but once you have those things, you can do things they couldn't do before. There are four parts to the question: What is science? What is FTL? Where did the technology come from? How did it get to me? Your question only deals with one part, the first. That's a good start. The three other parts are for a different thread. That thread is the topic of philosophy, which isn't really a science but it does make good conversation. I hope that you have found a philosophical forum where they talk about philosophy.