A few months
ago, physicist Harold White shocked the very wide range of aeronautics industry
when he announced that his team at NASA was in the process of developing a
faster-than-light warp drive. His design could one day transport a spacecraft
to the nearest star in a matter of weeks.
The idea
originally came to White while he was considering an equation formulated by
physicist Miguel Alcubierre in his 1994 paper titled, “The Warp Drive:
Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity. Alcubierre suggested a mechanism
by which space-time could be “warped” and behind a spacecraft.
Michio Kaku dubbed
Alcubierre’s theory a “passport to the universe,” which harnesses a quirk in
the “cosmological code” that allows for the expansion and contraction of
space-time. If proven true, it could allow for hyper-fast travel between
interstellar destinations. In order to accomplish this, the starship would need
able to expand the space behind it rapidly to push it forward. For passengers,
it would look like a lack of acceleration.
White
believes a drive like that could result in “speeds” that could take us to Alpha
Centauri in just a matter of weeks, even though the system is only 4.3
light-years away.
Essentially,
a bubble would be created that moves space-time around the object,
repositioning it.
“Remember,
nothing locally exceeds the speed of light, but space can expand and contract
at any speed,” White told reporters at io9. “However, space-time is really
stiff to create the expansion and contraction effect in a useful manner in
order for us to reach interstellar destinations in reasonable time periods
would require a lot of energy.” However,” White added, “based on the analysis I
did in the last 18 months, there may be hope.”
“My early results suggested I had discovered something that was in the math all along,” he recalled. “I suddenly realized that if you made the thickness of the negative vacuum energy ring larger — like shifting from a belt shape to a donut shape — and oscillate the warp bubble, you can greatly reduce the energy required — perhaps making the idea plausible.”
The next
step for White will be a proof-of-concept. His team are in the lab and working
on actual experiments to make that a reality.
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