Geek Alert: NASA May Have Accidentally Created a Warp Field

[LiberalArkie]

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/04/nasa-may-have-accidentally-developed-a-warp-drive/



“Star Trek” introduced the world outside of rocket science circles to the concept of warp drive – the propulsion system that allowed the starship Enterprise to travel faster than the speed of light. Warp speed is the holy grail that would let us explore the universe safely surrounded and protected by a space-distorting warp field. After watching the SpaceX rocket recently just try to land on a platform, you’d think this ability is years if not decades away. Yet the buzz on space websites is that NASA may have accidentally discovered a way to create a warp field. Wait, what?
To get around the theory of relativity, physicist Miguel Alcubierre came up with the concept of a bubble of spacetime which travels faster than the speed of light while the ship inside of it is stationary. The bubble contracts spacetime in front of the ship and expands it behind it. The warp drive would look like a football inside a flat ring. The tremendous amount of energy it would need made this idea prohibitive until Harold “Sonny” White of NASA’s Johnson Space Center calculated that making the ring into a donut shape would significant reduce the energy needs.


Snip

Also: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36313.1860

[hifiguy]

1. Even the most serious physicists will admit

Alcubierre Drive is not a theoretical impossibility, and it is allowed by Einsteinian field equations; the exotic matter it requires for an energy source might well turn up as "dark matter" or "dark energy." Fascinating stuff for us science geeks to ponder.

[LongTomH]

2. I would advise caution about accepting this too quickly!

Don't get me wrong; I'm a space geek from way back. In 2013, I sat glued to my PC watching Icarus Interstellar's Starship Congress, especially the third day when Dr. Harold 'Sonny' White and others talked about 'Black Sky' (way beyond Blue Sky) concepts like warp drives.

Dr. White and his Eagleworks Laboratories are the researchers on both his tabletop warp bubble demonstration and 'Q thrusters' like the ones described in the article.

Dr. White's presentation at the Starship Congress:

Here's where I need to advise caution; a lot of people in science remember debacles like:

• Cold Fusion,
  
• The 'discovery' that the force of gravity seemed to be lessened over superconducting magnets, and most recently,
  
• The 'discovery' of 'superluminal' neutrinos at CERN

.
I remember a NASA researcher expressing caution about the superconducting magnet research; she made it completely clear that she wanted to avoid another 'cold fusion.'

In summary, remain skeptical, or at least tentative until this is replicated. I understand that other NASA centers and university labs are working to get independent verification.

[NaturalHigh]

3. Cool.

I'm not going to book my flight just yet, though.

[DirkGently]

4. Saw this. Is it about the "Em drive,"

... or the Alcubierre "bubble of spacetime" / "warp drive" thing?

I'd thought the "bubble of spacetime" thinking was seen as conceivable, if highly speculative so far, while the "Em drive" has a long history of being derided as a sort of "perpetual motion machine" fantasy due to its lack of apparent fuel proportionate to its claimed "micro thrust."

If the Em Drive people are just switching the hypothetical source of their hypothetical micro thrust to incorporate the theoretical warp bubble, that doesn't seem super promising. But it does look like the NASA forum people found the whole thing pretty interesting.

Anyone have a take on whether this is a possible thing being melded with an imaginary thing, vs something more plausible?