Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say

[Bosonic]

HOUSTON — A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.

A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.

Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially brining the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.

"There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight.


http://news.yahoo.com/warp-drive-may-more-feasible-thought-scientists-161301109.html

[CJCRANE]

1. The engines cannae take it Captain!

[DeSwiss]

8. LOL!!!

[hollysmom]

2. go, Trekkies!

[TlalocW]

3. In the 90s, there was a light-info one-shot show called, "The Science of Star Trek"

Talking about what had come to past that Trek predicted, what their mistakes were and how they covered them (Heisenberg Compensator on the transporters to get around the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - How do they work? Very well, thank you for asking), and problems with trying to implement it all interspersed with amusing scenes from the Star Trek franchise. One scientist explained in simple terms the problems with the accelerations and decelerations of starships would lead to any passengers being turned into chunky human salsa.

TlalocW

[ahg]

4. That is what the inertial dampeners are for.

[progressoid]

6. I think I still have that show on VHS!

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. I also recall an episode of TNG where they discovered warp drive was bad for the galaxy. Was this

strictly contrived in order to speak allegorically about fossil fuels in our day and age, or was there ever any scientific fact to that I wonder? Considering we are still trying to figure out if warp drive can be done, I guess we're not at a place where we can know about potential hazards from it.

[Shitty Mitty]

11. pretty sure it was allegorical

Most TNG shows were in some way

[Confusious]

15. It was strictly allegorical. Nt

[Warpy]

7. Well, we already got the communicators

and ion drive. I guess warp drive isn't that far in the future.

The transporters and replicators, though? Those are just plain silly. 3D printers don't grab random molecules out of thin air, they use layers of built up plastic.

[LongTomH]

9. There's a better writeup on the Centauri Dreams website

A Lab Experiment to Test Spacetime Distortion.

Sonny White’s work on exotic propulsion has galvanized the press, as witness this story in the Daily Mail, one of many articles in newspapers and online venues. I was fortunate enough to be in the sessions at the 100 Year Starship Symposium where White, an engaging and affable speaker, described what his team at Eagleworks Laboratories (Johnson Space Center) is doing. The issue at hand is whether a so-called ‘warp drive’ that distorts spacetime itself is possible given the vast amounts of energy it demands. White’s team believes the energy problem may not be as severe as originally thought.

Here I’ll quote Richard Obousy, head of Icarus Interstellar, who told Clara Moskowitz in Space.com: “Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light. But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light.”

On that idea hangs the warp drive. Physicists Michael Pfenning and Larry Ford went to work on Miguel Alcubierre’s 1994 paper, the first to examine the distortion of spacetime as a driver for a spacecraft, to discover that such a drive would demand amounts of energy beyond anything available in the known universe. And that was only the beginning. Alcubierre’s work demanded positive energy to contract spacetime in front of the vessel and negative energy to expand spacetime behind it. Given that we do not know whether negative energies densities can exist, much less be manipulated by humans, the work remained completely theoretical.

As noted in the links, stories on warp drive are popping up all over the net. The Centauri Dreams article did quote some experts who remain skeptical:

“I did my doctorial stuff in General Relativity. When I was in Austin for Armadillocon, last August, I asked my adviser, Richard Matzner, about the Alcubierre deal, since Richard does a lot of numerical GR he knows Alcubierre (who is an ace numerical GR guy), says he never heard him talk about his warp drive. Richard is not much interested in it either, thinks the solution is Lyapunov unstable. I have seen some works from Italy about Alcubierre and other ‘exotic matter’ warp solutions that show the models are unstable. Richard said he thinks Kip Thorne is no longer interested in it. I have never seen a really ‘heavy hitter’ like Hawking or Thorne, or a whole lot of other first string GR theorists ever remark on Alcubierre or the other recent solutions. There was a ‘name’ relativistist, William A. Hiscock, who did, he felt the solutions were not physical, but he thought people should keep trying. Alas that guy died young, only a few years ago.

But it is interesting that these solutions exist. I think, it’s going to take more imagination and further discoveries before something can be made of this.”

There are more warp drive articles on the Icarus Interstellar website: Daydreaming Beyond the Solar Sytem with Warp Field Mechanics and Defending the Interstellar Vision. Icarus Interstellar and Centauri Dreams are great resources for anyone interested in interstellar flight, exoplanets, SETI, etc.



Backstory on this: Back in the 90s, I sat in on a talk by Marc Millis, at an International Space Development Conference. Marc is the former project manager of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion study at the NASA Glenn Research Center near Cleveland. The topic of his talk was "Warp Drive When," which is also the title of Marc's webpage for lay readers. His Powerpoint presentation was illustrated with slides of the Starship Enterprise, and images illustrating the way the Alcudierre Warp Drive would literally warp spacetime around the spacecraft. Note that the Warp Drive on the vessel in the the above jpeg image is in a ring around the vessel, not in two warp pods like the enterprise.

Marc is now affiliated with the Tau Zero Foundation (Centauri Dreams is their news forum) and Icarus International.

[bananas]

12. Thanks for posting all those links. nt

[LongTomH]

13. You're welcome! I hope you find them useful.

For myself, I need to spend more time on science sites. I think I've developed a DU addiction.

[Shitty Mitty]

10. If only RW bull could power starships

We'd be freakin' everywhere!

[Odin2005]

14. To the stars! To the stars!