NASA physicist, artist unveil warp-speed craft design

I find it astonishing theoretical physics is about to become real. So many movies and discussions about the subject and it's finally here.

CNN) -- Thanks to a NASA physicist, the notion of warp speed might just travel out of sci-fi and into the real world. NASA's Harold White has been working since 2010 to develop a warp drive that will allow spacecraft to travel at speeds faster than light -- 186,000 miles per second.

NASA physicist unveil warp-speed craft design

Some of you may consider this unnecessary but acknowledging the existence of this technology astonishes me.

a reply to: novrod

Star Trek comes to life. Of course as the article stated there is no propulsion system yet...but the concept of a "starship" is well on its way

Kessell run in 12 parsecs. Pedal to the medal.

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www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: novrod
I find it astonishing theoretical physics is about to become real. So many movies and discussions about the subject and it's finally here.

It's not finally here. It's not even close to finally here. It's a hypothetical concept that's a long, long time from seeing fruition, if it's even a viable concept to begin with.

I searched for a possible duplication before posting but I didn't find it.

Thank you for noticing it.

a reply to: iamhobo

originally posted by: novrod
Some of you may consider this unnecessary but acknowledging the existence of this technology astonishes me.

They have not acknowledge the existence of warp drive technology. They are only discussing the theory behind the idea of implementing warp drive technology. The technology isn't real -- it's hypothetical.

Actually according to a few people here we already have interstellar ability. Its military access only and will not be admitted to until 100 yr from now prolly.

They first have to proof these warp bubbles can exist in nature. So that'll mean using whatever equipment htey can manage to afford and attempting to find their signature or to create them.

But going from that stage to a full size craft wouldn't be easy, I think. I think I read they'd need KG's of exotic matter. Doesn't sound like something we can do yet. And I don't think the physics of bending space/time is completely understood yet. I think i did read something on an official site that discounted the possibility the ship would be completely destroyed after exiting the warp, but as a person on the outside of all this, I'm far from convinced about anything. I would not be shocked if the spaceship really did get destroyed when using the bubble. Like others have stated, this is still hypothetical. For it to be theoretical, I think they'd have to find the signatures of these warp bubbles and start to hammer out some real understanding of what would really happen if we used them in a spaceship.

I'd be surprised if this all turns out to be true and we actually do build a full size spaceship to exploit it. It'd be right out of science fiction.

easy. you know that any object with mass or any concentration of energy creates a curvature of local space time. this is called gravity. therefore there are countless space warps all around everybody and every thing. they are just nearly immeasurably small in most cases. but if your instrument were sensitive enough you could detect the curvature surrounding say a marble.

noone has to prove space is curved by mass anymore. and since that is a space warp that basically settles that. in that sense Dr White's interferometry experiment is going to be anti-climatic. if he fails his instrument was insufficient. if he succeeds well we already knew that matter and energy warps space.

what Dr white should probably do is determine if the relative negative energy density between casimir plates counts as actual negative energy for purposes of creating negative curvature. or determine if the negative energy fraction of squeezed light can be grabbed by some sort of circuit and then amplified. or if sub zero kelvin temperatures have a physical as opposed to mathematical existence such that they could be tapped as negative energy for purposes of producing negative curvature of space. there may be other ways of getting at negative energy or mass but those are the ones i know of. of course Dr White has claimed that he thinks he can do away with negative energy requirements all together probably by tinkering with the permitivity of space with ac fields.

it may be easier to find exotic matter than we think. this (probably) is not exotic matter of the type needed for warp drives but mirror neutrons are a type of exotic matter which may be generated with a mirror magnetic field. and the kicker is the starting point is normal mater.

phys.org...

so anyway if this is not exotic matter then what qualifies? and if this is not the exotic matter we are looking for who says a similar mechanism cannot create exotic matter that qualifies?

eh don't mind me i just read an article that says that the region near the event horizon of a black hole has abundant negative energy. so the particulars of using that as a source... such as getting to a black hole or making one and getting the negative energy without getting turned into spaghetti and designing circuits that can manipulate it are engineering problems.

remember that fuss about the LHC maybe making mini-black holes and destroying the earth a few years back? well there you go...the problem of getting to a blackhole is all but solved. of course you have to figure out how to get the black hole stabilized before it evaporates in a pico-second or less.

EDIT: and that made me remember still another way to get negative energy: by chucking positive energy into one end of a wormhole the principle of cosmic back pressure causes a negative energy charge to manifest on the other end. so like the artificial black hole you could grab a quantum scale wormhole and mess with it to get your negative energy.

I'm definitely not a physicist; in fact, I needed the spell-checker to tell me how to spell "physicist." But I recall reading somewhere, some time after that piece of artwork hit the tubes, an argument by someone (or two, or three) a lot smarter than me why it (the "bubble" hypothesis) would not be a good idea even if it proved feasible. The bottom line was, at the end of the journey the bubble collapsing would generate an incredible amount of radiation, enough to sterilize any planets at the destination.

originally posted by: Cohen the Barbarian
I'm definitely not a physicist; in fact, I needed the spell-checker to tell me how to spell "physicist." But I recall reading somewhere, some time after that piece of artwork hit the tubes, an argument by someone (or two, or three) a lot smarter than me why it (the "bubble" hypothesis) would not be a good idea even if it proved feasible. The bottom line was, at the end of the journey the bubble collapsing would generate an incredible amount of radiation, enough to sterilize any planets at the destination.

i have read that critique but i don't think it is valid.an explanation by Dr White at a conference basically covered that objection. it is essentially the same thing as the why won't the vehicle be destroyed by a ftl collison with space fluff.

Dr White explains that when a particle or grain or lump of matter in normal space enters the bubble region it experiences FTL acceleration only as it is in the field effect which is like a skin or membrane. when it leaves the region of the warp bubble skin into the interior space of the bubble where the ship is at the warp speed multiplication effect terminates and the thing has only the speed it had before it encountered the warp bubble skin. that may be significant and hazardous given galactic orbital speed and the conventional speed of the craft but it is not a warp powered collision. if that holds for material objects i do not see why it would not apply to photons which should mean the doppler shift would only be about that for an object travelling at 10 percent c.

originally posted by: yuppa
Actually according to a few people here we already have interstellar ability. Its military access only and will not be admitted to until 100 yr from now prolly.

People could say anything.

According to me, rainbows are unicorn flatulence.

originally posted by: skunkape23
Kessell run in 12 parsecs. Pedal to the medal.

except a parsec is a measure of distance, just like a light year is

originally posted by: bigx001

originally posted by: skunkape23
Kessell run in 12 parsecs. Pedal to the medal.

except a parsec is a measure of distance, just like a light year is

yeah that was a stinker. lucas eventually retconned it. the explanation was Kessel was a region of blackholes and the distance you could go into it meant your time to destinations in the kessel system was shortened. so the news story is if you can to the kessel run using 12 parsecs of distance you were one fast pirate.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: bigx001

originally posted by: skunkape23
Kessell run in 12 parsecs. Pedal to the medal.

except a parsec is a measure of distance, just like a light year is

yeah that was a stinker. lucas eventually retconned it. the explanation was Kessel was a region of blackholes and the distance you could go into it meant your time to destinations in the kessel system was shortened. so the news story is if you can to the kessel run using 12 parsecs of distance you were one fast pirate.

That's as dumb (on Lucas' part) as re-editing the film to make Greedo shoot first.

It would have been fine if Lucas just left well enough alone with the "Kessel run in 12 parsecs" thing. Maybe Han simply misspoke, or maybe he missed that lesson in school because he was under the football stands with a girl.

Han went to the imperial navy academy. he didn't miss that lesson. and yup it is still a tortuous explanation for a mistake. SW wasn't about scientific believability it was about drama. no automated gun systems because it was more heroic to try to manually target highly maneuverable fighters and captial ships travelling 50 thousand miles an hour or 100s of thousands of miles per hour. manual AA gunnery is obsolete and has been since the introduction of jet fighter aircraft really even the faster propeller planes. about the end of WW2.