With Einstein's ok: Star Trek-type spacecraft can travel at warp speeds

by William Atkins

Friday, 15 August 2008

Page 2 of 3 An excerpt from the paper follows, “(A) sufficiently advanced technology with the ability to locally increase or decrease the radius of the extra dimension would be able to locally adjust the expansion and contraction of spacetime creating the hypothetical warp bubble discussed earlier. A spacecraft with the ability to create such a bubble will always move inside its own local light-cone. However the ship can utilize the expansion of space-time behind the ship to move away from some object at any desired speed or equivalently to contract the space-time in front of the ship to approach any object.” The mathematical method that Obousy and Cleaver propose is based on the “Alcubierre drive,” which is a kind of real-life version of Star Trek’s warp drive. It is named after Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, who first proposed the theory in 1994 (See Alcubierre, M. "The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast Travel within General Relativity," Classical and Quantum Gravity, 11(5), L73-77 (1994).) Also known as the Alcubierre metric, it is a theorized model of space-time in which space-time is stretched in a wave, which causes the fabric of space to contract (compress) in front of a spacecraft and expand (enlarge) behind it. The spacecraft, in theory, is contained in a “warp bubble” of flat space. The spacecraft, in essence, is not moving at speeds faster than the speed of light but, instead, is carried along within this warped region of space as it moves along. Thus, the spacecraft is “effectively” moving faster than the speed of light within this bubble. However, in its localized bubble, the spacecraft (itself) is not moving faster than the speed of light, thus not violating any of our laws of physics and making Dr. Einstein happy, indeed! Read page three concerning what Dr. Cleaver says about his warp drive theory and the enormous amount of energy required for such a propulsion system. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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