NASA thinks warp drive might be possible.

[jmdrake]

http://gcn.com/blogs/emerging-tech/2012/12/nasa-thinks-warp-drive-travel-might-be-possible.aspx
NASA thinks warp-drive travel might be possible

Last year I got a bit excited about a report that the light speed barrier had been seemingly broken by scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider. Dreams of building a Millennium Falcon and traveling to the stars, the goal of space nerds everywhere, seemed plausible. Einstein's light speed barrier, the chain that keeps us anchored to Earth, could be broken, or so it seemed.

But then, the European Organization for Nuclear Research discovered problems with their experiment that meant that neutrinos probably didn't break the speed of light. Suddenly, we were Earth-bound again.

However, NASA isn't giving up on faster-than-light travel just yet. While admitting that its mostly speculation at this point, NASA believes that one day faster-than-light travel through the use of warp drives might be possible. For those non-nerds among us, this is more the "Star Trek" version of space travel than the "Star Wars" one, though they are similar.

According to NASA scientists, it might be possible to break the laws of special relativity with a ship shaped like a sphere that could be placed between two regions of space-time, with one expanding and one contracting. This requires matter with special properties and could break Einstein's law because the ship isn't actually moving faster than light; space itself is being moved, and the ship is simply falling through the hole — called a wormhole — it created.

That much had been worked out as early as 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. However, in addition to the special matter, his plan also required energy equivalent to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.

But NASA thinks it might not need a planet-sized ship after all. NASA physicist Harold White recently presented a paper showing that by simply tweaking the geography of the Alcubierre warp drive, it could achieve the same results in a ship about the size of NASA's Voyager 1 probe. White is pushing out of the realm of the theoretical too, vowing to use lasers in his lab to demonstrate how the modified drive could in fact perturb space-time by one part in 10 million.

We may not be firing up the Falcon anytime soon, but at least the dream of space travel is alive once again. While some folks might be thinking of booking flights to AlphaCentauri, I think I'll beat the rush and buy a ticket to the planet GJ 667c. With three visible suns, possibly lots of water and an untapped real estate market, it looks like a nice place for a vacation home.

Posted by John Breeden II on Dec 05, 2012 at 9:05 AM

 

[Natural Citizen]

Wow. This is the very fabric of the new era in many aspects of science education. To be reduced to an off topic discussion on a political discussion board is a clear sign of disconnect among the current generation of thinkers and the previous one. It's neat that you at least shared a scribble like this, jmdrake, so rep for that. I see so many discussions that could be better approached if they were done so in scientific fashion. Like the recent discussion on drone spying over private property. A scientifically literate person would approach that completely different than one who does so completely from a political premise. And I dare say they would end up with different results in the end relative to the legality of it. The terms of controversy would be a complete 180. But I'm getting off topic.

Good post. If we had a dedicated platform here for science and technology it would certainly make for one heck of a really great topic of discussion. To have this kind of stuff scattred all over the place and eventually buried is a travesty in my opinion because people are left with the same old recycled opinions on what surmises education which really only removes and separates them from the progress and impact youth are having on tomorrow's world. As it is right now though, the introductory to the concept is being applied like this vid in the classroom. And it's amazing how fast a young mind will say "Wait a minute...tell me about this gravity thing". Which wanders off into territory you're bringing up.


Thank goodness for digital whiteboards and youtube. Makes getting into that particular territory much more easy, interesting and fun.

 

[DGambler]

Sign me up, I'm ready to get off this rock.

 

[VIDEODROME]

I'm going to Mars.

 

[Demigod]

Every few weeks I see this articles from NASA always with some ridiculous title like "Are aliens living on Earth", "There is life on Mars".In my opinion just to keep the positive public opinion and with it the funding.

How about they develop some new rocket or anything at all.But of course it is much easier and cheaper to have a good PR team than to make something,

 

[bolil]

I've always felt that the speed of light is limited by the speed of thought, even more it is affected by the medium it passes through. They say its space, but the fact is our local space, that is to say our solar system, is surrounded by something that differs from others and has an affect.

Analogous to water. In some places there is an obstruction that causes it the flow faster, in other places slower. The universe is the shit, basically, all the shit. In a sense, we are the shit of stars,

 

[Indy Vidual]