Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say

[BornFromTheVoid]

"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."

More here http://news.yahoo.co...-161301109.html

Being a big star trek fan, I love hearing these things!

The thought of humanity reaching other stars is incredible, even if unlikely to happen in my own lifetime.

So, at the 10 times light speed mentioned in the link, that's just 22 weeks to Alpha Centuari

[Coast]

[Gavin Hannah]

I liked the idea in the article that it may only take a small amount of energy to achieve results. Will be interesting to see if they can get a positive result in the Lab and then to see if it's scaelable.

[cheeky_monkey]

i would expect in 1000yrs time (if we haven't destroyed ourselves) mankind to have reached out and explored our own Galaxy and to have colonized planets in our solar system at least.

[pottyprof]

How would we know if the experiment worked though? Would it be like the transporter idea where a photon was doing something strange by being in two locations at once?

[A.J]

A frustrating article to read if I'm honest.....The yahoo article is basically recycling news from 1994!....The Alcubierre Drive was hypothesized back in 1994, and the inherent problems with physics in this hypotheses are still there but haven't been reported on in this article, for example, the 'Warp Drive' technology is dependent of 'exotic matter' in this instance 'negative matter' (not to be confused with anti-matter, which is something totally different). Negative matter has been theorized by theoretical physicists, but that's all it is, theory, it hasn't been discovered in nature and may well not exist.

Another example of the inherent problems with the physics is that to make this type of technology work is that of causality. Inside the 'warp bubble' the area of space that the space craft resides in would be causally separated from space-time outside the 'bubble' the result being that the craft could not be steered, stopped or manipulated in anyway, so to make this technology work with our current knowledge of theoretical physics would be to have some sort of staging post infrastructure already in place, an analogy of this would be a railway network, where the train rides along pre-laid tracks and cannot deviate off those tracks. This pre-existing 'warp network' whilst not breaking the laws of known physics is well beyond the realms of current technology and resides squarely in realms of science fiction.

Still the fact that scientists and physicists are looking at these scenarios and that cutting edge physics such as String/MTheory & Quantum Loop Gravity theory are providing answers to previously unanswerable questions means that the future bodes well for the possibilities of superluminal space travel within the next few hundred years

[summer blizzard]

A frustrating article to read if I'm honest.....The yahoo article is basically recycling news from 1994!....The Alcubierre Drive was hypothesized back in 1994, and the inherent problems with physics in this hypotheses are still there but haven't been reported on in this article, for example, the 'Warp Drive' technology is dependent of 'exotic matter' in this instance 'negative matter' (not to be confused with anti-matter, which is something totally different). Negative matter has been theorized by theoretical physicists, but that's all it is, theory, it hasn't been discovered in nature and may well not exist.

Another example of the inherent problems with the physics is that to make this type of technology work is that of causality. Inside the 'warp bubble' the area of space that the space craft resides in would be causally separated from space-time outside the 'bubble' the result being that the craft could not be steered, stopped or manipulated in anyway, so to make this technology work with our current knowledge of theoretical physics would be to have some sort of staging post infrastructure already in place, an analogy of this would be a railway network, where the train rides along pre-laid tracks and cannot deviate off those tracks. This pre-existing 'warp network' whilst not breaking the laws of known physics is well beyond the realms of current technology and resides squarely in realms of science fiction.

Still the fact that scientists and physicists are looking at these scenarios and that cutting edge physics such as String/MTheory & Quantum Loop Gravity theory are providing answers to previously unanswerable questions means that the future bodes well for the possibilities of superluminal space travel within the next few hundred years

Excellent summary.

In this way it more like hyperstream from Andromeda or Stargate.

[Methuselah]

Excellent summary.

In this way it more like hyperstream from Andromeda or Stargate.

Quantum Slipstream from Star Trek Voyager...

[mike Meehan]

There are so many unanswered questions but who knows what is round the corner - bring back a man from just a 100 years ago and our modern world would be absolutely awe inspiring to him - now we reached the stage where different discoveries are being made exponentially it seems. It is almost impossible to visualise how the world would be another 100 years hence and no doubt further discoveries would awe us, should we live that long.