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

William Atkins
Thursday, 14 August 2008 21:44

Science - Space

Gerald B. Cleaver is an associate professor of physics at Baylor University and Richard K. Obousy is a graduate student at Baylor.

They propose to manipulate the (theoretical) tenth dimension within string theory with enormous amounts of energy, which, in theory, allows a spacecraft to “effectively” travel faster than the speed of light within a warp bubble. The pair suggests that such action would alter dark energy within the three standard spatial dimensions of space-time: length, height, and width.

Currently, we know of four dimensions: length, height, and width (space) and time. However string theory suggests that ten dimensions exist, but we just have not found the other six because they are extremely small and we are not technically advanced enough (yet) to find them.

Cleaver states, “Think of it like a surfer riding a wave. The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would be traveling faster than the speed of light." [SpaceDaily.com: “Traveling Faster Than the Speed of Light”]

Thus, Cleaver and Obousy propose to vibrate “strings” (fundamental one-dimensional "hypothetical" objects in string theory that vibrate and are only about 10^-35 meters in length) in the tenth dimension of space. The vibrations could alter dark energy and, thus, allow material objects to travel faster than the speed of light. Their proposal follows M-theory, a theoretical proposal by physicists that unifies five (current) ten-dimensional superstring theories into one single 11-dimensional theory.

Of course, the amount of energy necessary to accomplish such a feat is enormous. The Baylor physicists estimate that “the amount of energy needed to influence the extra dimension is equivalent to the entire mass of Jupiter being converted into pure energy for a ship measuring roughly 10 meters by 10 meters by 10 meters.” [SpaceDaily.com]

They conclude in their paper, “We have proposed that a sufficiently advanced civilization could utilize this relation to generate a localized expansion/contraction of spacetime creating a ‘warp bubble’ in which to travel at arbitrarily high velocities. One vital aspect of future research would be how to locally manipulate an extra dimension. String theory suggests that dimensions are globally held compact by strings wrapping around them …. If this is indeed the case, then it may be possible to even locally increase or decrease the string tension, or even locally counter the effects of some string winding modes. This would achieve the desired effect of changing the size of the extra dimensions which would lead to propulsion under this model."

And, "It would … thus be prudent to research this area further and perform calculations as to the energies required to affect an extra dimension and to try and relate this energy to the acceleration a spacecraft might experience.”

Cleaver comments, "That is an enormous amount of energy. We are still a very long ways off before we could create something to harness that type of energy." [SpaceDaily.com]

For additional information on “warp drive” NASA has websites called “Status of ‘Warp Drive'” and “Breakthrough Propulsion Physics .”