Comments on: Warp drive may be more feasible than thought, scientists say

By: Wisdo

Wisdo — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:41:24 +0000

No, the ship will not be “travelling” very fast at all , thats the beauty of it. Theres no acceleration (due to the warp field boost) so no “inertial dampners’ a la star trek are needed. Anything the ship encounters “along the way” enters the warp field and is only travelling at the real speed of the ship, not the warp boosted speed.

By: daveb

daveb — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 17:36:04 +0000

So, what you’re saying is … if you take some kind of special material, idunno, maybe “metallic” and shape it so that is “Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top” maybe … it just … might … work?
http://www.roswellfiles.com/FOIA/twining.htm

By: martinandsusie

martinandsusie — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 06:36:23 +0000

Obviously you didn’t “get” the article. That was before some added calculations were done. Now, with a shape adjustment from an oval football shape to a more circular shape, the power needed to power this ship would be the equivilant to 2 Saturn V rockets. Or… was ya’ll just joshin’? :-)

By: Craigers

Craigers — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 03:49:24 +0000

You forget the time contraction effect. to the people travelling on the ship time would contract, the time to the star for them would be much much faster then 5 months.

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 21:55:16 +0000

10 times the speed of light isn’t fast enough to have to worry about hitting stars. The next closest star to the sun is about 4 light-years away. So at 10*C it would take about 5 months to get there. Also, you could speed off in any direction and there is almost no chance of ever hitting a star, even if you continued forever on to other galaxies. Space is very empty.

By: Graham Rounce

Graham Rounce — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:17:46 +0000

Would a very tiny one be possible, as a test?

By: Editor

Editor — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:35:05 +0000

yes, fixed

By: cacarr

cacarr — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:18:35 +0000

“powered by a mass about the size of Voyager”

A Voyager mass worth of energy, presumably.

By: Hans Busse

Hans Busse — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 03:04:30 +0000

Sounds like what Mr. Dyson did with the fan to accelerate air you can do with space, a neat concept.

By: David

David — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:38:00 +0000

@Bri: Effie Chow eastwestqi might know of some. This was my point, science isn’t set up to look at such things, at least in an open way, publications are in obscure journals, but the physical effects are there all the same and if you are lucky you can sometimes get private demonstrations. How to get a warp drive? This is a speculative web page so… Abstract information and some form of unknown body energy seems to have a real existence and cause direct physical effects on the world, in rare situations. So the human body would have to be the initial research tool. The ancient Chinese developed this art quite successfully and physical effects are well known among serious meditators. I think this is possible, but rather than go into that one has to look at the consequences of knowing that information effects are a part of the natural universe. The inner world and personal development then takes on much more importance, and that would completely change our society, and probably much of the scientific outlook too.

By: rob falgiano

rob falgiano — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:28:33 +0000

Just before i got to mikey’s comment, that’s exactly what i was thinking. (no, really i was.) that you’d have to exploit entanglement somehow so that the travel is instantaneous. well actually, there’s no travel at all – you just ‘pop’ from one location to another by some quantum trick.

By: rob falgiano

rob falgiano — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:25:50 +0000

Nice!

By: Bri

Bri — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:27:13 +0000

@David: on You tube there are a few chi demonstrations. Can you direct us to any scientific research reports. There was a report on meditations effects on the brain on this website. It profoundly affected every structure and functioning, causing a tremendous amount of synchronization and strengthening of connectivity. From my own experiences I can tell you that the chakras exist. Focus on the heart center first. Once you get past the babbling brain you’ll find what is described as the hearts cave. In it you’ll feel the connectivity to things. Later you can explore the others.

By: David

David — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 08:10:58 +0000

There is a LOT we don’t know about the natural world. Quantum theory can’t tell us how the classical world arises and there may be other large scale information worlds that are generated by it and can interact with gravity. It seems to me that the main problem is that our science is very poor at investigating phenomena that we don’t yet know how to repeat. There are many indicators that such interactions exist and could ultimately be used for space travel. On the bright side uk schools do now teach this (deficit) at the start of their physics courses – the existence of well documented and currently totally inexplicable phenomena. Also check out what is known and has been discovered about chi energy. Quite repeatable if you have 20 years to spare and the right teacher.

By: Ralph Dratman

Ralph Dratman — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:39:00 +0000

Not sure we should burn up Jupiter for takeoff. And of course you would have to take another gas giant with you for the return trip. Do we really want huge empty spaces in the sky? I think we should hang onto these large objects. Someday they could become collectibles. Then we would be kicking ourselves for using them as firewood.

By: asiwel

asiwel — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 05:44:00 +0000

Something that interacted inversely with the Higgs field would not necessarily be negative matter … it could be “meta-matter.” Pretty soon we would be discussing gravity-cloaks … which would be followed by anti-gravity.

By: Noahventure

Noahventure — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 05:08:31 +0000

E=MC^2

By: Jonny bubonic

Jonny bubonic — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 03:22:48 +0000

Wouldn’t a bumper or maybe a snowplow on the front work?

By: Comacine

Comacine — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:39:36 +0000

“Exotic matter” commodity trading is about to go through the roof, get in now before it’s too late. Also, “powered by a mass about the size of Voyager” is a nonsense phrase. Power and mass are distinct concepts, author. This article does not belong on this site.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:12:07 +0000

If you could turn the drive on and off rapidly( maybe 30 times a second) then you could see where you were going and navigate, to avoid stopping in middle of a star perhaps.

By: star0

star0 — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:09:41 +0000

FTL can be used to violate the principle of causality. That should make people rather skeptical of this work.

By: GAUSS

GAUSS — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:01:18 +0000

We’ll get there. It’ll take while, but we’ll get there.

By: GAUSS

GAUSS — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 17:59:11 +0000

“exotic matter tends to be anti-matter.” Not necessarily. In this case the engine would need to be made of negative matter, or matter with negative mass. There’s nothing absolute in physics to say that this can’t exact. There’s a potential slot for it, so to speak. A hint at this is observed via the Casimir effect, though negative pressure and negative mass may be completely unrelated.

Antimatter proved Dirac’s hint toward matter with opposite charge. Negative matter hasn’t quite been proposed yet that I know of. But again, there’s nothing to say it can’t exist. If it did exist, it would imply that its interaction with the Higgs field was the inverse of that of matter. Hence why discovering the Higgs boson and antimatter (officially) were necessary steps – soon we can begin exploring the possibility of particles experiencing a negative interaction with the Higgs field, or possibly obtaining negative mass through some other phenomenon.

By: Bri

Bri — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:32:57 +0000

I wonder. If your traveling at ten times the speed of light and you hit a small black hole, would you pass through? ( Captain what as that? I don’t know! Why does everything look funny?)

By: Carl Brooks

Carl Brooks — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:31:48 +0000

exotic matter tends to be anti-matter. problem with anti matter it tends to want to annihilate itself with normal matter. BOOM

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:52:02 +0000

Although exciting and I would like to know more…it makes me think of the movie Event Horizon. What happens when you are in that area (whatever it is called) where time/space is going around you?

By: Marcos Marin

Marcos Marin — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:15:54 +0000

“exotic matter” is the name we give to our ignorance of particle physics.

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:21:13 +0000

That’s the way to go, mikeymikemike. An entangled-particle communicator is a must. When all the charted graph lines of technological progress go vertical in the year 2046, then somebody will see how it’s done.

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:18:23 +0000

If space-time can really be warped, the ship would be safe in a bubble of normal space. Unseen space rocks would be surfed away by the bow wave of warped space-time. But it might be a good idea to make short jumps so you could scout out the course with powerful telescopes. Don’t want to run into a dark, rogue world along the way. But maybe while you’re in the bubble you would be out of the rest of space-time, so you could pass right through any obstacle. These scientists need to give us more information — especially about the exotic matter and just where does the gravity come from to warp all that space-time?

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:09:42 +0000

Yeah, Bri. I’ve wanted to know just what’s in the Alpha Centauri system since I was an eight-year-old kid. Even the red dwarf Alpha Centauri C could have a rocky little world in its habitable zone. The odds are against it, for a lot of reasons, but it’s not impossible. Still, stars A and B are closer in size to Sol, so they are the ones to bet on for a habitable planet.

By: tesla111

tesla111 — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:05:20 +0000

How would sensors work if you are traveling 10x light speed; Navigation would be impossible without Warp Sensors – a lot of exploding ships as Davery noted. A recent Kz article noted that scientists may have refuted the Heisenberg Princlple making ‘beaming’ & ‘replicators’ at least a possibility. It looks like we’ll have the computing power soon; so along with the actual tech for Warp we will also need Long-range Navigation Sensors, Shielding and some type of Weapons system. Ah ha: Star Trek!

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:34:07 +0000

Remembering all those shows on Nova about rubber sheet physics makes one wonder how this ship comes up with all the gravity needed to warp time and space. Also, just what is in this “exotic matter”…unobtanium?

By: mikeymikemike

mikeymikemike — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:31:05 +0000

If you could somehow transport entangled particles that could some be used to send information (I know, currently impossible) so that communication could be instantaneous instead of waiting for information at light speed, we could be talking about true intergalactic communities that travel and communicate with each other. Fascinating to think about.

By: Davery

Davery — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:33:34 +0000

Shame that any collision in the Oort cloud or any other spec of dust at those speeds would totally destroy the ship. Shielding?

By: Bri

Bri — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:12:34 +0000

Alpha centori wouldn’t be four light years away. It would be a little over four months!