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Star Trek Warp Drive may be feasible

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by Supermac34, Sep 17, 2012.

  1. Supermac34

    Supermac34 President, Von Wafer Fan Club

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    http://news.yahoo.com/warp-drive-may-more-feasible-thought-scientists-161301109.html

    HOUSTON — A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.
    A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.
    Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially brining the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.
    "There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight.
    Warping space-time

    An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind.
    Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn't being warped at all.

    "Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light," explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar spaceflight. "But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light."
    With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the cosmic speed limit.
    The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.
    But recently White calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring. He found in that case, the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.

    Furthermore, if the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more, White found.
    "The findings I presented today change it from impractical to plausible and worth further investigation," White told SPACE.com. "The additional energy reduction realized by oscillating the bubble intensity is an interesting conjecture that we will enjoy looking at in the lab."
    Laboratory tests

    White and his colleagues have begun experimenting with a mini version of the warp drive in their laboratory.

    They set up what they call the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer at the Johnson Space Center, essentially creating a laser interferometer that instigates micro versions of space-time warps.
    "We're trying to see if we can generate a very tiny instance of this in a tabletop experiment, to try to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million," White said.

    He called the project a "humble experiment" compared to what would be needed for a real warp drive, but said it represents a promising first step.
    And other scientists stressed that even outlandish-sounding ideas, such as the warp drive, need to be considered if humanity is serious about traveling to other stars.

    "If we're ever going to become a true spacefaring civilization, we're going to have to think outside the box a little bit, were going to have to be a little bit audacious," Obousy said.
     
  2. DonkeyMagic

    DonkeyMagic Contributing Member
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    [​IMG]
     
    1 person likes this.
  3. DrLudicrous

    DrLudicrous Contributing Member

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    Ludicrous speed is by far the best speed.
     
  4. CrazyDave

    CrazyDave Contributing Member

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    I kinda stopped listening at this point. I read it, and it sounds cool, but... where to find this elusive exotic matter... potentially?
     
  5. DonkeyMagic

    DonkeyMagic Contributing Member
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    Thailand?
     
  6. heypartner

    heypartner Contributing Member

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    We've already successfully made it at a secret laboratory on a secret South Pacific island.

    Problem is, she's warping the scientists who created her, so they are now worried they can't contain her.

    [​IMG]
     
  7. Surfguy

    Surfguy Contributing Member

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    Let me illustrate with this piece of paper.

    What is the shortest distance between these two points written on this paper?

    Random person: Easy...a straight line.

    Wrong. If I fold this piece of paper and align these two dots evenly, then I can take my pencil and push it in at one point and out the other. You see.

    This is what my gravity drive does. It bends space/time and allows us to travel from one point to another point by matching the origin point with the destination point. It's that easy. We actually go through a worm hole only going a few feet if we were traveling normally...like riding a bicycle. Nevermind the principle of an event horizon (or getting stuck in the gravitational pull forces of the worm hole where we cannot escape because the forces are so great). That doesn't apply here with my gravity drive...because it creates an equivalent force that offsets the forces of the event horizon.

    With my gravity drive, we don't need the warp drive.

    To summarize, pencil, paper, two points, fold, enter, exit ... gravity drive.
     
  8. Dr of Dunk

    Dr of Dunk Clutch Crew

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    All we need to do is capture unicorn farts!
     
  9. Precision340

    Precision340 Member

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    you forgot the hands (energy) that are needed to fold the paper
     
  10. JunkyardDwg

    JunkyardDwg Contributing Member

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    Contact the Vulcans.

    [​IMG]
     
  11. pirc1

    pirc1 Contributing Member

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    As long as it it is not in the middle east, I think we should be fine. :)
     
  12. robbie380

    robbie380 ლ(▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿ლ)
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    i don't get why these interesting science threads generate these kind of responses.

    it's like people are afraid to be intellectual.
     
  13. DonkeyMagic

    DonkeyMagic Contributing Member
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    [​IMG]
     
  14. robbie380

    robbie380 ლ(▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿ლ)
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    BTW when they are talking about when they say the mass of a Voyager 1 sized object they are still talking about a massive amount of energy.

    That's in the neighborhood of how much energy is consumed globally every year just to move a football shaped object.
     
  15. SwoLy-D

    SwoLy-D Contributing Member

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    :grin: I stopped reading here:
    :eek:
     
  16. JayZ750

    JayZ750 Contributing Member

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    The article said football shaped, not football sized. Maybe it meant football sized, too, as it wasn't specific there.

    That said, if they get to the point where either it is a football sized or normal sized but football shaped craft ready to go through space-time, I don't think anyone will complain too much if they have to use voyager1 like power again. Does it make repeated and regular attempts more problematic? Sure, but we're years away from that anyways, and it took less than 20 years from the amount of energy needed to go from the size of Jupiter to the amount used for Voyager 1.

    cool news is cool.
     
  17. Rockets R' Us

    Rockets R' Us Contributing Member

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    Ha! Here we are complaining and worrying about Mexicans illegally crossing into this country when they're already pushing way past that and illegally crossing into different galaxies. Genius.
     
  18. dachuda86

    dachuda86 Member

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  19. Zboy

    Zboy Contributing Member

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    This article is clearly trolling....
     
  20. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    Can somebody explain the mass-energy measurement they're using here, or else liken it to an energy equivalent I can understand. The mass-energy of Jupiter or the mass-energy of Voyager is gibberish to me.
     

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