Warp Drive Now Possible

[36grit]

I wonder what it'd be like to look out the window.

[Moontanman]

quick question, if we built a ship this ship and it took off from near earth orbit; would people on earth see it moving away from us at the speed of light, or would it disapear in an instant.

 

I once came up with this little fantasy to explain what that would look like, I'm not sure if the warp field would complicate this scenario but here goes. If you had a space ship that could travel faster than light, my idea was a ship that makes lots of tiny but instantaneous jumps and the cumulative effect was FTL. I think the ship would suddenly appear and an image of the ship would appear to recede into the distance away from you as the light reflected off the ship got to you after the ship arrived. Now, what would the ship leaving look like?

 

and if the ship traveled four million light years away and came back, within a few weeks, would the earth still be here?

 

 

Why wouldn't it?

[Mr Monkeybat]

I wonder what it'd be like to look out the window.

 

This is I think the best demonstration of what traveling close to the speed of light would look like I have seen.

http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/

I'm no expert but it would seem warp drive would produce much of the same effects, perhaps more extremely. Compressing space in front would further blue shift the light while expanding space faster than the speed of light would prevent it from reaching you.

 

But if you where to survive the warp bubble would have to be manipulated so that all the gamaray shifted, concentrated light and and hawking radiation piling up in front of you is bent away from you so it would be pitch black. The light piling up at the front of the warp bubble would have to somehow be shuffled of during flight so that it isn't all released in dangerous amounts when you stop.

[seriously disabled]

"How NASA might build its very first warp drive." io9. We come from the future.. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Jan. 2013. <http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive>.

 

This sounds like a crackpot article to me. Empty space cannot expand because it is empty so what is there to really expand if it's just empty space?

[Moontanman]

"How NASA might build its very first warp drive." io9. We come from the future.. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Jan. 2013. <http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive>.

 

This sounds like a crackpot article to me. Empty space cannot expand because it is empty so what is there to really expand if it's just empty space?

 

 

I think I'd do a bit of reading the science pertinent to this before i made that assertion, space can indeed expand and contract...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space

[36grit]

I wonder if earth will be able to communicate with this ship as it travels or when it stops so far away.

[Moontanman]

I wonder if earth will be able to communicate with this ship as it travels or when it stops so far away.

 

 

No, the warp field isolates the space craft from the rest of the universe... yes when it stops it can communicate with the earth but the speed of light would still be the limiting factor...

Edited February 16, 2013 by Moontanman

[Alyaarn]

No, the warp field isolates the space craft from the rest of the universe... yes when it stops it can communicate with the earth but the speed of light would still be the limiting factor...

 

Unless if we could enclose our communication signal within the same "warp bubble" spoken of.

[Mr Monkeybat]

Unless if we could enclose our communication signal within the same "warp bubble" spoken of.

 

In other words send a message on another warp ship.

Ha with warp ships the postal service becomes faster than radio or laser communications.

[Moontanman]

In other words send a message on another warp ship.

Ha with warp ships the postal service becomes faster than radio or laser communications.

 

 

that is weird, it would seem to throw causality out the window...

[Mr Monkeybat]

There are highly speculative ways to add extra special frames of reference to relativity allowing faster than light travel without causality violations or contradicting historical measurements. But such ideas can be viewed as too convenient, only when or if faster that light travel is achieved can it be proven whether is violates causality or not or is possible in the first place .

Edited February 26, 2013 by Mr Monkeybat

[A Tripolation]

There are ways to add an absolute frame of reference to relativity allowing faster than light travel without causality violations or contradicting historical measurements. But such ideas can be viewed as too convenient, only when faster that light travel is achieved can it be proven whether is violates causality or not.

 

This is not true at all. There are no frames in which a photon is at rest. Please do not be misleading and post errant information as fact.

[Mr Monkeybat]

This is not true at all. There are no frames in which a photon is at rest. Please do not be misleading and post errant information as fact.

I did not mean that, nothing is at rest anyway. I mean you can hypothesize extra rules of physics that prevent FTL causality violations without totally contradicting known physics, I thought I was clear that this was far from hard science, I have edited that post to hopefully make the speculative nature more clear.

[Cassandre]

[..] This "Warp Drive" I speak of, is actually the same theoretical drive speculated on in one of Miguel Alcubierres' papers. In theory, this warp drive bends space to allow for quick travel between two points (tesseract). In theory, this drive could propel spacecraft to over one billion million times the speed of light, but would require 10^64 kg of exotic matter (matter that has negative mass). Because of this, warp drive technology has been ignored... until now.

 

In January of 2013, Howard White discovered that he could reduce the energy requirements to about a metric ton of exotic matter. This was done by oscillating the warp bubble, and slightly changing its shape. As of January, NASA is currently working on building a practical warp drive with the use of an infernometer. .]

Refernces:

 

"How NASA might build its very first warp drive." io9. We come from the future.. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Jan. 2013. <http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive>.

My first reaction is that space "warping" can be done with mass and this results in more time required to reach a destination. The riddle is how to achieve the contrary effect.

Looking at your references, I see "the negative vacuum energy ring". Hmmm... Next, the paper looks serious, but it has the interesting remarks that "exotic matter is needed" that delivers negative energy densities and which is suggested to be "forbidden classically" but allowed in QM "in special circumstances"..

To me that all looks like pure speculation, although interesting.

[Mr Monkeybat]

quick question, if we built a ship this ship and it took off from near earth orbit; would people on earth see it moving away from us at the speed of light, or would it disapear in an instant.

and if the ship traveled four million light years away and came back, within a few weeks, would the earth still be here?

 

More interesting might be when in it returns to near Earth orbit you would see the light from its arrival before you see the light of it coming. Presumably you would see some kind of flash from the energy released and the light build up in the compressed space etc with the ship hopefully surviving, the you see the light from earlier when the warp bubble was further away, so you sea the warp bubble receding off into the distance when when actually your seeing the arrival of the ship that is already here.

 

Or when you see a fly by first you would see the light from the warp bubbles closest approach And then the earlier light from it coming and the later light from it leaving both as the same time, so it looks like two warp bubbles erupt suddenly out of nothing from the same spot heading in opposite directions..

[36grit]

I don't want to go off the subject but I wonder if any objects exist that warp space/time like this in nature, and I thought perhaps this is how magnets work.

[antmck2013]

As I understand it NASA is using a toroidal capacitor to generate a warp bubble. I know that a capacitor is used to store electric charge. How does this warp space-time?

Do the electrical conductive plates of the capactior need to be really close - less the width of a human hair. With such small distances does the Casimir effect work here to create an area of less density between the plates then the density of space surrounding the capacitor? Is this what they mean by negative energy? At any rate I still don't understand how this can create a warp bubble.

[SciFiReal]

I wouldn't say they've made it possible... Yet.

[36grit]

I wonder what it's gonna cost.

[between3and26characterslon]

I've not read all of the replies here so if this has been covered I apologise.

 

But what would propell this ship forward?

 

This 'warp bubble' would only appear to serve as a way of isolating the ship from the relatiavistic effects of FTL travel, this I understand but if the space around the ship is isolated from the rest of space by what mechanism is the forward propulsion of the ship/warp bubble system controlled?

 

EDIT: spelling mistake

Edited March 9, 2013 by between3and26characterslon

[Moontanman]

I've not read all of the replies here so if this has been covered I apologise.

 

But what would propell this ship forward?

 

This 'warp bubble' would only appear to serve as a way of isolating the ship from the relatiavistic effects of FTL travel, this I understand but if the space around the ship is isolated from the rest of space by what mechanism is the forward propulsion of the ship/warp bubble system controlled?

 

EDIT: spelling mistake

 

 

The expansion of space behind the bubble and contraction ahead of the bubble propels the bubble forward.

[between3and26characterslon]

The expansion of space behind the bubble and contraction ahead of the bubble propels the bubble forward.

 

Is that another way of saying gravity?

[Moontanman]

I am going to be honest, this is not my theory, to me it sounds far too good to be true but minds greater than mine say it is at least possible. From what I understand gravity has nothing to do with it except I would have to assume negative mass would have negative gravity and negative mass is necessary for this to work as well as negative energy. I and some others, i think, have provided links to the details of this.

[Alyaarn]

Apparently electromagnetism could be used to do the very same thing... experiments with

bending light (like gravitational lensing) via magnetic field are currently taking place.

 

Read More: http://aerorocket.com/WarpMetrics.html

[harryk]

So, in a manner of speaking the warp bubble would be creating a region of space separate from it's surroundings, inside and outside of which the laws of physics are separately valid. As for the grains of dust, think 'forward deflector array'