Star Trek's Warp Drive: Not Impossible

[Freakzilla]

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology ... drive.html

By Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
posted: 06 May 2009
09:50 am ET

The warp drive, one of Star Trek's hallmark inventions, could someday become science instead of science fiction.

Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.

The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's General Relativity.

Luckily for us, this speed limit only applies within space-time (the continuum of three dimensions of space plus one of time that we live in). While any given object can't travel faster than light speed within space-time, theory holds, perhaps space-time itself could travel.

"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving."

Already happened?

One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang.

"If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.

To make the technique feasible, scientists will have to think of some creative new means of propulsion to move space-time rather than a spaceship.

According to General Relativity, any concentration of mass or energy warps space-time around it (by this reasoning, gravity is simply the curvature of space-time that causes smaller masses to fall inward toward larger masses).

So perhaps some unique geometry of mass or exotic form of energy can manipulate a bubble of space-time so that it moves faster than light-speed, and carries any objects within it along for the ride.

"If we find some way to alter the properties of space-time in an imbalanced fashion, so behind the spacecraft it's doing one thing and in front of it it's doing something else, will then space-time push on the craft and move it?" Millis said. This idea was first proposed in 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre.

In the lab

Already some studies have claimed to find possible signatures of moving space-time. For example, scientists rotated super-cold rings in a lab. They found that still gyroscopes placed above the rings seem to think they themselves are rotating simply because of the presence of the spinning rings beneath. The researchers postulated that the ultra-cold rings were somehow dragging space-time, and the gyroscope was detecting the effect.

Other studies found that the region between two parallel uncharged metal plates seems to have less energy than the surrounding space. Scientists have termed this a kind of "negative energy," which might be just the thing needed to move space-time.

The catch is that massive amounts of this negative energy would probably be required to warp space-time enough to transport a bubble faster than light speed. Huge breakthroughs will be needed not just in propulsion but in energy. Some experts think harnessing the mysterious force called dark energy — thought to power the acceleration of the universe's expansion — could provide the key.

Even though it's a far cry between these preliminary lab results and actual warp drives, some physicists are optimistic.

"We still don't even know if those things are possible or impossible, but at least we've progressed far enough to where there are things that we can actually research to chip away at the unknowns," Millis told SPACE.com. "Even if they turn out to be impossible, by asking these questions, we're likely to discover things that otherwise we might overlook."

[Rakis]

So is that like creating an artificial wormhole ? I don't see the parallel with warp drive for ST...

[Freakzilla]

Kind of... It's like making a curve in space-time in front and behind your ship, kind of like surfing an artificial wave. The ship would be "falling" forward and being pushed from behind.

[SwordMaster]

I read about this in a popsci back in the summer.

[GamePlayer]

Someone is using the Star Trek popularity wave to boost their R&D budgets

[SwordMaster]

Someone is using the Star Trek popularity wave to boost their R&D budgets

haha, why not?

[Freakzilla]

Someone is using the Star Trek popularity wave to boost their R&D budgets

haha, why not?

http://www.space.com/technology/top10-s ... -tech.html

[A Thing of Eternity]

They're talking about the Alcubierre drive, this is nothing new really. It is pretty much exactly the warp drive from star trek, wormholes are pretty different, wormholes are more like foldspace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

It would be possible if we can harness dark energy... which probably would require more than just some breakthroughs in what we already know, we'd likely need to find some kind of exotic (which pretty much means made-up) matter that naturally emits dark energy.

But, if someone can actually create a dark energy emmitter out of known materials... well, then we're on our way.

[Freakzilla]

I firmly believe that if we can dream it we can do it... eventually.

[Freakzilla]

They're talking about the Alcubierre drive, this is nothing new really. It is pretty much exactly the warp drive from star trek, wormholes are pretty different, wormholes are more like foldspace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

It would be possible if we can harness dark energy... which probably would require more than just some breakthroughs in what we already know, we'd likely need to find some kind of exotic (which pretty much means made-up) matter that naturally emits dark energy.

But, if someone can actually create a dark energy emmitter out of known materials... well, then we're on our way.

But wouldn't a wormhole be created in the same manner? Both require bending time-space. Wormholes require a tunnel, warp-drive requires a wave. It seems to me the warp-drive would be much simpler.

[A Thing of Eternity]

They're talking about the Alcubierre drive, this is nothing new really. It is pretty much exactly the warp drive from star trek, wormholes are pretty different, wormholes are more like foldspace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

It would be possible if we can harness dark energy... which probably would require more than just some breakthroughs in what we already know, we'd likely need to find some kind of exotic (which pretty much means made-up) matter that naturally emits dark energy.

But, if someone can actually create a dark energy emmitter out of known materials... well, then we're on our way.

But wouldn't a wormhole be created in the same manner? Both require bending time-space. Wormholes require a tunnel, warp-drive requires a wave. It seems to me the warp-drive would be much simpler.

You're right, they work on the similar principals, warp is much more "theoretically" usable though.

[Freakzilla]

I think you could cover MUCH greater distances in a relatively shorter time with a wormhole though.

[SandChigger]

Zero-point energy and ... zero news value.

Slow day in the science news room.

[SwordMaster]

Fold space is more conceptual then warp drive !

FTL drives maybe more so as well!

No, Im kidding around... from what I have seen the tech is way far off but the best we have on paper thus far.

[cmsahe]

Imitating Pavel Checov who used to say that the russians invented everything, The Warp Drive was invented by a mexican! (I'm making fun of you, of course I do not believe it, it was just a joke, I'm stating this before anyone jumps to my neck) The mexican physicist Michael Alcubierre theorized that a vessel could be encased in a warp bubble sitting in a volume of flat space-time. Then using huge amounts of energy, the whole energy of a star, the bubble would shrink space-time in front of the vessel and expand it behind, creating faster than light propulsion.

Other physicists say that it can't be done because, quantum theory predicts, in their formulas, that the bubble would be unstable.

Here it is the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Meanwhile, I think the answer to interstellar travel lies in building multigeneration ships like the ones envisioned by Gerard O'Neill (his, were space colonies; the concept has been taken by Macross 7 and Macross Frontier)


a Macross Frontier isle:

[cmsahe]

Sorry I answered before reading the complete thread.

They're talking about the Alcubierre drive, this is nothing new really. It is pretty much exactly the warp drive from star trek, wormholes are pretty different, wormholes are more like foldspace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

It would be possible if we can harness dark energy... which probably would require more than just some breakthroughs in what we already know, we'd likely need to find some kind of exotic (which pretty much means made-up) matter that naturally emits dark energy.

But, if someone can actually create a dark energy emmitter out of known materials... well, then we're on our way.