NASA Scientists to Test Warp Drive Theory

Who needs a space shuttle anyway?

Move over Star Trek! According to state-of-the art theory, a warp drive could cut the travel time between stars from tens of thousands of years to weeks or months. Harold G. White, a physicist and advanced propulsion engineer at NASA and other NASA engineers are trying to determine whether faster-than-light travel — warp drive — might someday be possible. The team has attempting to slightly warp the trajectory of a photon, changing the distance it travels in a certain area, and then observing the change with a device called an interferometer.

“Space has been expanding since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago,” said Dr. White, 43, who runs the research project told the New York Times. “And we know that when you look at some of the cosmology models, there were early periods of the universe where there was explosive inflation, where two points would’ve went receding away from each other at very rapid speeds. Nature can do it,” he added. “So the question is, can we do it?”

In 1994, a Mexican physicist, Miguel Alcubierre, theorized that faster-than-light speeds were possible in a way that did not contradict Einstein by harnessing the expansion and contraction of space itself. Under Dr. Alcubierre’s hypothesis, a ship still couldn’t exceed light speed in a local region of space. But a theoretical propulsion system he sketched out manipulated space-time by generating a so-called “warp bubble” that would expand space on one side of a spacecraft and contract it on another.

An Alcubierre Warp Drive stretches spacetime in a wave causing the fabric of space ahead of a spacecraft to contract and the space behind it to expand. The ship can ride the wave to accelerate to high speeds and time travel. The Alcubierre drive, also known as the Alcubierre metric or Warp Drive, is a mathematical model of a spacetime exhibiting features reminiscent of the fictional "warp drive" from Star Trek, which can travel "faster than light/"

Quite a bit more here:
www.dailygalaxy.com...

reply to post by JadeStar


That is SO awesome. I wish I could understand the details behind this theory. The math...well, its great to be living in a world with such brilliant minds.

Maybe one day we will reach a type 1 civilization before we all kill ourselves over grub....

S&F!

so when are they testing this?

JadeStar
...told the New York Times.
... the NYT reports
... via New York Times

Quite a bit more here:
www.dailygalaxy.com...

And more at the original source, rather than the plagiarised source:
newyorktimes

AthlonSavage
so when are they testing this?

the public roll out should take place 1000 years from now ,if we make it that long,,in the meantime your taxes must be raised to pay for it..

Don't see why we have to pay for it when they can stretch the fabric of economics by twisting the pound and accelerating the fiscal gravity a bit more creating light-speed pennies.

One thing I've always thought when watching Star Trek and they go into warp .. When travelling so fast through space that has asteroids planets stars suns meteor/ asteroid fields .. When travelling so fast what's going to stop you slamming into one of these

reply to post by JadeStar


Looks like it would take alot of energy, and some exotic matter. But cool.

exotic matter

When ever I see threads like this, done with good intentions from the OP (I assume) I wonder about the intentions of the agency that produced the story/data. I see this constantly, especially, in the Aircraft Projects threads. Glowing reports of this or that work being done to develop a space drive or improve the F-35, build a gigantic helium balloon for transporting equipment and people, etc. All cover stories for the real work being done in black projects.

If you can accept two virtually proven facts: First, UFOs are real and probably alien craft, and second, that the rather recent appearance and records of the triangles appearing in our skies are a strong indication that we have developed our own version of the UFO mechanisms.

If you can do those to simple things, you can develop a critical eye when you run across information that tends to tell you that everything is progressing nicely toward "new and improved" somethings. Rarely will you find information about how we or anybody is/are working to perfecting a massless field drive unit that seems to be the mode of power for the UFOs and triangles.

A massless drive system is the key to the control of earth and near space. Actually, it would be the key to exploring the galaxy as well. Einsteinian equations in regard to the limits of space travel due to mass are dismissable to books of history once such concepts can be engaged and developed for fun and profit. That day is here, but we stole the principles and can't mention from where.

reply to post by JadeStar


I think integration is the key, start really really small and work out how to warp space around an atom. Mabey this could be done by manipulating and influencing the atoms nucleus somehow to warp it. Then integrate add more atoms until you can demonstrate it on an ball size object then go to a larger object again.

reply to post by ThePeaceMaker


well on Star Trek they have energy shields around the ship I think. If I understand the drive correctly this problem wouldn't be a concern as the bubble is the object moving at superluminal speeds. Apparently survivability within the bubble is a concern because of Hawking radiation. Also some argue that the pilots within the ship would have no ability to steer or stop.

there are some major difficulties with the practicality of the theory I think. Even if they find the exotic matter necessary the amount needed to enclose a large ship is unattainable.

Let's not get too excited.

It's all theoretical for now, for this to happen all the theories will need to be proven. The good news is that most physicists predictions eventually come true, like the Higgs boson and the standard model. If they say it's possible then it most certainly is.

But it will take time, sadly we may not be around to witness it.

reply to post by taoistguy


THAT
Is the smartest comment I have heard so far. Star for the laugh.

reply to post by Josephus

Even if they find the exotic matter necessary the amount needed to enclose a large ship is unattainable.

They also said that heavier than air aircraft could never fly and that man could never go to the moon. Both of these were "unattainable" and proven to be wrong. The impossible we can do immediately, miracles just take a little longer. If the mind of man can conceive it, man will find a way to do it.

"And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do." Genesis 11:6

We once again have one language, 1010101, and anyone that thinks we will not figure it out is naive. What was SI FI twenty years ago is science fact today in many cases. Warp drive is sooner than you think, just look what man has done in the last 150 years and the majority of that was without a computer! We now have quantum computers!!!

reply to post by ThePeaceMaker


its not the stars and planets which you can plot to avoid it is the specs of dust which will rip a ship in half when its travelling at near light speeds...

let me know when they have a working deflector dish.

reply to post by JadeStar


This is a really good thing that they are seeking a method to test the practical application of this theory, According to observations made on the relative strength of gravitation compared to the strength of electromagnetic spectrum energy's it appears to be millions of times weaker and this gave some quantum physicists the idea that maybe it comes from outside (let's say below and call it subspace membrane) our universal membrance (this is were the universe is considered according to another theory called membrane theory (which has spun off/influenced the holographic universe theory and several others) is considered to be a membrain floating around it superspace with other membranes and they sometimes collide creating structures such as our universe), not if this is actually true then there may be a small hurdle even if the drive can be proven by creating the spacial warp effect and that is that the compression of time space behind the craft would have a higher gravitational constant and the streched time space in front would have a lower gravitational constant that may well be equal in resistive force to the potential displacement of the vessel and therefore possible cancell it out but let's hope they have a work around for this.
S+F

ThePeaceMaker
One thing I've always thought when watching Star Trek and they go into warp .. When travelling so fast through space that has asteroids planets stars suns meteor/ asteroid fields .. When travelling so fast what's going to stop you slamming into one of these

That's what Sulu was for. Navigation.

I think having an instrument just to measure faster than light speed is problematic, what is your reference point(s)...if you were traveling at 1.235644 the speed of light, or at 1.235642 the speed of light, how would you now that?...at that speed, navigation could be a life ending problem. and how about gravitational pull from dark matter , or dark energy? would that throw the path off enough to (again) be a life ending problem. and, even if it did work, what are the chances of us back here being able to duplicate the distance and route, due to fluctuations in electro-gravitational forces, unknown space debris (traveling at 1000's of miles a second) route interference...etc...

Fascinating.
Announcements like these always prick my suspicion and get me to wondering that maybe this has already been achieved sometime ago and this is the usual we find out 10 or 20 years after the fact.

I am also still puzzled as to why all the Shuttles were retired thus leaving no space vehicle operational and ready to go in an emergency. Unless they have already developed something else that is far more advanced that is now operational.

And are the WD development and the retirement of the Shuttles connected in someway.

I do think that we have operational spacecraft technology that is superior to the Shuttle!

reply to post by jimmyx


The measurment of relative velocity would have to be made from the base point of origin as warping space is not actually movement but displacement so the speed is irrelevant but the relative displacement can be refered to as relative speed and to calculate this you would have to establish several test prototype experiment's if successful and then a calculation based on the force used relative to the warp effect could be refined so that a practical formuae beyond the hypothetical could be constructed and this would then within a tolerance provide the only viable method of predicting relative speed.