"I discovered ways to reduce the energy requirements by many orders of magnitude"(Image: NASA) To pave the way for rapid interstellar travel, NASA propulsion researcher Harold "Sonny" White plans to manipulate space-time in the lab The idea that nothing can exceed the speed of light limits our interstellar ambitions. How do we get round this? Within general relativity, there are two loopholes that allow you to go somewhere very quickly, overcoming the restriction of the speed of light. One is a wormhole and the other is a space warp. What is a space warp and how can it help? A space warp works on the principle that you can expand and contract space at any speed. Take a terrestrial analogy. In airports we have moving walkways that help you cover distance quicker than you would otherwise. You are walking along at 3 miles an hour, and then you step onto the walkway. You are still walking at 3 miles an hour, but you are covering the distance much more quickly relative to somebody who isn't on the belt. What would a starship with warp drive be like? Imagine an American football, for simplicity, that has a toroidal ring around it attached with pylons. The football is where the crew and robotic systems would be, while the ring would contain exotic matter called negative vacuum energy, a consequence of quantum mechanics. The presence of this toroidal ring of negative vacuum energy is what's required from the math and physics to be able to use the warp trick. What would it be like to travel at warp speed? You would have an initial velocity as you set off, and then when you turn on the ring of negative vacuum energy it augments your velocity. Space would contract in front of the spacecraft and expand behind it, sending you sliding through warped space-time and covering the distance at a much quicker rate. It would be like watching a film in fast forward. Even if traveling at warp speed is theoretically possible, don't the huge energy requirements make it unlikely? When the idea was first proposed mathematically in 1994 it required a vast amount of negative vacuum energy which made the idea seem impossible. I did some work in 2011 and 2012 as part of the 100 Year Starship symposium and discovered ways to reduce the energy requirements by many orders of magnitude, so for a 10-metre diameter spacecraft with a velocity of 10 times light speed, I can reduce the negative energy needed. How close are you to making this a reality? We are very much in the science rather than the technology phase. We have got some very specific and controlled steps to take to create a proof of concept, to show we have properly understood and applied the math and physics. To that end we will try to generate a microscopic instance of a warp bubble in the lab and measure it. If successful is the next stop Alpha Centauri? We don't just go from the lab to an interstellar mission. There will be intermediate steps, other things we would do with this long before we get to some of the romantic pictures of a captain on the bridge telling the helmsman to engage warp drive.
Once you press the button for negative vacuum energy and get going faster than the speed of light.. How do you stop? Has an e brake been invented along with this starship warp drive? Sent from my Desire HD using Grasscity Forum mobile app
You better hope so cause it's gonna hurt like a bitch if you bail out at that speed. And it'd be a loooong walk home.
Would you be actually moving at the speed at which the ships traveling across space? Sent from my SGH-T989 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
I accidently hit reply, and cant edit or delete my post. But anyway, i mean the ships going a certain speed, once warped is engaged the space moves differently not the ship. So like if you did bail would you be going at the warped speed or the original speed? Sent from my SGH-T989 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
You're right actually, you'd just be going the same speed as the ship was originally going. To be fair you might be fine bailing out at near light speed anyways, I mean you'd probably be zooming through space for a fairly long time before you crashed into anything. Or you go through a dust cloud and just get atomised haha. Just make sure you've got your space suit on.
So the professor was right. Futurama is finally hitting nasa. Sent from my SGH-M919 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Lets take a car for example. A human also accelerates with the car. However, when the car stops, the force of the brakes is stopping the car, not the human. Is it even hypothetically possible right now to allow humans to fly in machines like this? Doubtful. The only way I could see human travel as possibly if a ship can either be large enough to have a strong enough gravitational pull to keep the humans on deck, or we have a technology that does so.
I don't understand what makes it seem implausible that the reverse of the effect would slow you down, although I don't think that would even be needed (may be useful in slowing down incoming debris though?). The analogy used is that of the people mover in an airport. Relative to yourself, you are always moving at walking speed. If the belt is turned on, relative to outside of the belt your speed increases. When the belt turns off, your speed returns to normal walking speed relative to outside of the belt. So you would get up to a decent velocity, turn on the ring and accelerate relative to the rest of space. Then turn off the ring and return to your original speed relative to the rest of space. I assume I'm understanding it correctly. My questions about this are more about what happens (if anything) to time inside the warped field.
If you bail in the void of space you should be alright (assuming you're otherwise protected) since there is no medium of friction to slow you. This assumes the field is a bubble including the space around the ship. I have no idea what happens when the field is flipped off, but it might be similar to the "spaghettification" some talk about when venturing too close black holes. It would be interesting to pack a jetpack and wander around inside the bubble to see what it does to you. The space to the fore of the ship should be contracted and the space to the aft should be expanded, so a question is whether you would experience differential contraction or if you would just appear distorted to viewers inside the ship.