Warp Drive Engine Would Travel Faster Than Light

[n2doc]

Eric Bland, Discovery News




Tapping the Fabric of Space-Time

July 28, 2008 -- It is possible to travel faster than light. You just wouldn't travel faster than light.
Seems strange, but by manipulating extra dimensions with astronomical amounts of energy, two Baylor University physicists have outlined how a faster-than-light engine, or warp drive, could be created that would bend but not break the laws of physics.
"We think we can create an effective warp drive, based on general relatively and string theory," said Gerald Cleaver, coauthor of the paper that recently appeared on the preprint server ArXiv.org
The warp engine is based on a design first proposed in1994 by Michael Alcubierre. The Alcubierre drive, as it's known, involves expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship would rest in between the expanding and shrinking space-time, essentially surfing down the side of the bubble.
The tricky part is that the ship wouldn't actually move; space itself would move underneath the stationary spacecraft. A beam of light next to the ship would still zoom away, same as it always does, but a beam of light far from the ship would be left behind.

more:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/28/warp-speed-engine.html

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. My head has trouble comprehending this, but the Trek geek in me still says, "Cool!"

[silverweb]

9. My sentiments precisely.

Cool!

Gene Roddenberry was way ahead of his time -- right up there with Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Leonardo da Vinci.

[The Doctor.]

15. This may not help, but it's part of an exchange I had in another thread;

Yes, It is impossible to exceed the speed of light, and therefore no physical craft can travel through space fast enough to make interstellar travel reasonable in even a hundred human lifetimes.

But space, my friend, is not a constant, neither is time. Both are confluent with gravity, each interacting with and influencing the other.

Time X Mass produces gravity, which, in reality, is the effect of massive objects acclerating towards each-other in time more than in space. The linear expansion of space in time becomes less counteractive as massive objects become closer, and then their acceleration in time becomes an overwhelming acceleration in space whereupon they will either influence each-other's trajectory, orbit one-another, or collide.

That aside, time, space, and gravity have interchangeable characteristics; Increase time, mass, or both; increase gravitation. Increase gravitation; bend space. Increase gravitation with a HUGE amount of mass/energy and direct it; do what you will with space.

With enough gravitational power, we can quite literally warp space, and instead of travelling from point 'A' to point 'B', we can bring point 'A' and point 'B' together and simply take one small step across what is essentially a vast distance.

This is quite theoretically possible, and I believe if we find the island of high atomic weight stable elements, and can produce enough energy, we can find ways to do just that.


And that's without getting into hyperspace theory, or the FACT that we can actually teleport mass now... just in very small amounts.


This was part of the exchang; http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=125&topic_id=216869#216897

I think cobalt1999 should hear about this.

[GreenPartyVoter]

23. That really helped, thanks. Actually it reminded me of "tessering" in Madelein L'Engles

book. They explained it as wrinkling the cloth of time and space so that point A connects to point B, hence "A Wrinkle in Time".

[roguevalley]

27. snivel. I WANT ONE! Make it so. :-D

(Edit: my emoticon didn't work) :(

[opihimoimoi]

2. Soon, Tours to distant Galaxies and other Universes.too. Level 6 stuff.

[Warpy]

3. Five or six years ago (if my admittedly hazy memory is serving me at all)

I read a brief article in some overly erudite journal or other that suggested a phenomenon closely resembling a warp field had been created for a nanosecond or two in the laboratory. The article was remarkably short on details and referred one to papers deep within the bowels of an offshore university.

Roddenberry was remarkably prescient. We already have the clunky communicators in the first series. It won't surprise me in the least to have a "warp drive" explained on the theoretical level, at least, within the next few years. The problem will be that we'd need a Mr. Fusion to power it.

Forget about the transporters, though. That was pure hogwash.

[n2doc]

5. Of course he had fusion engines ("impulse") and used antimatter to power the Warp Drive

So still another prediction that might come true. The only thing about the communicators is, by the time we get to there we will have ultra small wearable or implantable ones, like the bluetooth headsets of today but with all the components in the headset. Not on the chest.

[Hugabear]

7. Actually transporters are not hogwash - it's already been done

There was an experiment within the past few years where scientists were able to "teleport" an atom from one end of a tank to the other. In theory, you could teleport larger, more complex items. However, I read somewhere that in order to teleport something as complex as a human, it would require more memory than currently exists in the world.

Let's just say that I do not want to be one of the first people to ever test out a transporter. I've seen Galaxy Quest, I know what can happen.

[FiveGoodMen]

13. I teleported home one night with Ron and Sid and Meg

Ron stole Meggie's heart away And I got Sidney's leg.

[The Doctor.]

18. One of the most under-appreciated movies of all time.

Just wait to be the first guy to test a holo-deck when the safeties go down.

[GreenPartyVoter]

24. I love that movie. It's an all-time fave

[hootinholler]

25. Hmmm, I'd heard that they'd tranmitted information instantaneously...

Haven't heard of that experiment. Do you know where it was done?

-Hoot

[Hugabear]

26. It was a few years back, I can't remember exactly where I read it

Can't remember if I saw it in some online article or in a magazine blurb somewhere. But I did manage to find some info via Google

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/quantum_teleportation_010926.html

http://science.howstuffworks.com/teleportation1.htm

[The Doctor.]

17. Ummmmm...... I wouldn't write it off just yet.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/09/47191

If we can map and transfer exact quantum states, then the biggest problem of teleportation is already solved. Consciousness can be transported along with the repatterning of matter.

[Occulus]

22. But wouldn't that mean you'd BE conscious

during the process?

I wonder what having the particles that make up your body moved from one place to another would feel like...

[The Doctor.]

28. Once dissasembled, your nervous system wouldn't be sending signals anywhere...

that we know of. ;)

[Evoman]

33. I don't think Roddenbery was as "prescient" as he was inspiring.

The reason many physics nerds do this stuff is that they got the ideas from star-trek.

[AndyA]

4. "Beam me up, Scotty. Mr. Sulu, Warp Two." n/m

[Hugabear]

6. There are other methods as well

The one that I'm most familiar with entails finding a wormhole at the quantum level, positioning the other end where you want it (don't ask me how, this goes WAY beyond my level of understanding), enlarging it, and keeping it stable long enough to traverse.

It's pretty interesting stuff, but most of it relies on unproven theory (there are many physicists who dispute string theory).

[DireStrike]

8. I think this would be akin to getting a skateboard and a hammer

And beating the earth in front of you, until wherever you want to go is downhill. Impossible on many different levels.

There's got to be a better way.

[Phoonzang]

10. But..but..but....scientists say its impossible

for us to get to other solar systems without it taking hundreds of years and that another species couldn't possibly come here either. I mean the scientific establishment is ALWAYS right. Look at how they were right about the Earth being flat.

[Occulus]

11. Does the Alcubierre warp bubble depend upon an exception

in Einstein's Theory of Relativity?

Here, consider my rough illustration:



Label these in order of size from largest to smallest- A, B, and C. Assume B and C are in orbit around A.

If I were to somehow instantly spawn A into deep space, given B and C already exist, in what order would B and C experience the gravitational effects of A? Does gravity have a "speed", or are the effects of gravity instantaneous on both B and C?

Now apply that question to the Alcubierre "warp bubble". If the gravity well in front of the bubble is near infinity- say, a steerable, controlled black hole (!!)- what are the implications?

Is a black hole's gravity considered finite? Light cannot escape...

What am I missing here? Apart from Unobtanium, of course.

Edit, for those who care: I used the premiere open-source 3D modeling and animation package Blender for this illustration. It took me about five minutes; I could easily have animated the image if I wished. I created the largest sphere first, duplicated it twice, and moved them; then, I created a plane and assigned a default material to all four objects (3 spheres and a plane). I set the plane's material to 'wireframe' and used a connected transform on the vertices (why does spellcheck reject that word?) beneath the largest sphere to create the 'ditch' the largest sphere sits in. Then, I added a simple lamp object, changed the world background to white, and rendered the image. All this took, as I said, about five minutes.

You can see Blender shine like a star here. Also, there are lots and lots of plugins, scientific and not, available for Blender. It's really a great tool for hobbyists and professionals alike, and I highly recommend Blender if you have any interest in/use for 3D modeling.

[The Doctor.]

21. That's a good question.

In terms of Relativity, there would be no 'observable' effect on the surrounding bodies unless 'A' were a supermassive object, or an Earth-like mass arriving in close proximity to 'B'. Then I'm not sure given that the effect on local space could result in a much greater chance of collision as the volume of space necessarily displaced would create very small margins for error. Of course, that's assuming that your apparent relationships are actual. That's a problem that should scale to any mass/proximity relationship, but I get the sense that the MOE would scale down geometrically with the volume and therefore decrease the chance of 'tapping' another massive object's gravity well.

But a ship would create a very minimal effect on local space as it is the source and therefore the epicenter of the distortion. The distorted space at the arrival point should merely be roughly the volume of space the ship would occupy. I suppose this depends on just how well developed the technology is. Considering the amount of energy it takes to bend space, I imagine efficiency would be a VERY big deal. But if the area is larger, the level of distortion will most likely diminish as the distance from the arrival point increases.

From If an observer stood at 'B', it would appear as though the ship "A" were a suddenly elongated object from the point of it's origin to the point of arrival, which would then 'snap' into it's actual shape at the arrival point. Yes... it really would look like it does in Star Trek and such. Local space, however, would 'seem' unaffected because all the spatial relationships would not actually change.

I don't know if that helps answer the question. If I didn't quite hit it, please let me know what I missed.


I'd do the visual if I had time right now, I'll try playing with Blender later. It looks really neat, thanks for posting it.

[Indenturedebtor]

12. Flat earthers were basically pre-scientific method

Though the establishment has been wrong and will be wrong again. This particular approach to warp drive requires both that String Theory is correct (doubtful imo), and that we have a mass of energy the size of Jupiter (per the article). Tall order that.

[Chulanowa]

14. Just one question...

Who controls the spice?

[The Doctor.]

16. Who Else?

.....

[girl gone mad]

19. "We think we can create an effective warp drive, based on general relatively and string theory"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


Some people's science porn is other people's comedy gold, I suppose.

[Occulus]

29. GR doesn't restrict the speed of space itself, IIRC

I think, given the determination of people in some scientific circles, we may well see a viable FTL drive sometime in the future. Maybe within fifty years.

I hink for that to happen we need to accept that we don't know everything there is to know about the laws of physics. Very, very weird things happen at extreme energy levels. We'd need fusion power to make it happen, and in fact Dr. Rick Nebel and others at EMC2 out in Santa Fe are working on the Polywell design, brainchild of Dr. Robert Bussard.

Once we have fusion power, interesting things are bound to happen.

[formercia]

20. What about the wake?

I can see buoys in space saying 'Leave no wake.'

and you thought compression braking on a semi is bad. Just wait until someone hot rods in your solar system.

[Hugabear]

30. I think this guy might be able to help answer your question

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

31. In theory yes, but in practice?

Harnessing the energy needed to warp space and push an object through a warp would require so much power that I don't see how we could ever master this feat -- at least not in the next several centuries. Who knows what the extremely distant future holds in technology...

[Evoman]

32. "Astronomical amounts of energy". Honey, we are out of gas. Could you

please take this Jerrycan and go pick up a few million suns?