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  1. NASA Actually Working on Faster-than-Light Warp Drive

    http://techland.time.com/2012/09/19/nasa-actually-working-on-faster-than-light-warp-drive/
    #39050 • 2012-09-20 08:43:20 • Deftones said:

    So a scientist at NASA has maybe found a way to make a working warp-drive possible, the problem before hand was that to power a warp drive, you'd need the power that would be on par with the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter. Though the scientist says that he has found a way to power it with the mass-energy of only 1,600 pounds. Thus making it " plausible and worth further investigation".

    http://i.imgur.com/18U8Z.jpg

    Right now he is doing lab experiments with a miniature warp-drive, and trying to bend the fabric of space and time (Like a boss). That's right, soon we'll be able to go 10x faster than the speed of light, think of all the things that would be possible with this, we'd be able to travel to the closest earth like planets faster than ever, and colonize them, a new era of adventure. Nigga, we are entering a new era.

    The future is looking bright.

  4. #39059 • 2012-09-20 14:57:06 • TokoyamiSenshi said:

    It's a cool story, but I'm really interested in a physical explanation. You know, the thing that convinces people, but is not provided here.

  5. #39060 • 2012-09-20 15:20:15 • Fieyr said:

    I agree with @TokoyamiSenshi.

    The article is big on overarching claims, but no break down of the actual science behind it. It's a little premature to become too overly excited.

  6. #39068 • 2012-09-20 20:03:22 • Deftones said:

    Yeah I guess you're both right. I just got a little carried away with my imagination and how cool things would be, but forgot about the science.

  8. #39072 • 2012-09-20 22:57:40 • Chestnut_Rice said:

    Well if you've ever taken high school science, your teacher's probably mentioned at one point or another that mass does in fact distort space and time, but only enough for us to notice (gravity) and not enough to exploit large-scale at this point. And also, energy is equivalent in some aspect to mass. So the theory behind it is possible, I just don't understand how you would be able to control where and how much space is warped, and there's also that one tiny problem of how the Hell do you get enough energy on a ship to fucking WARP SPACE any way? Once those two hurdles are cleared though, should be smooth warping from there. Of course, there's no way we would be able to do this any time soon, but it's coming. Might not be within our lives, but it's definitely coming.

  9. #39076 • 2012-09-21 01:41:13 * • Fieyr said:

    @Chestnut_Rice Also, how would you handle speeding up and slowing down? If you're somehow using those 1600 pounds to warp space-time... then that mass would be constantly warping space time and propelling you. Until we can figure out how to turn off gravity, then it doesn't seem like there's a good way to stop.

    As far as getting the mass onto the ship, that doesn't seem possible.... at least not in the state that results in propulsion. We would have to transition the matter into a state where it could pinch/expand space, and then transfer it back to it's normal state.

  10. #39077 • 2012-09-21 02:24:39 • JoJoBird said:

    I imagine this is how it will work

    (Only video I could find with a good showing with this surprisingly)

    I love to see a science thread on the forums. This sounds very interesting I would love to learn more on this subject.

  11. #39081 • 2012-09-21 06:22:11 • Inasda said:

    I hope this scientific research will help invent the UNSC, Spartans, Covanent,Forunners, Flood, storm troopers, Space prison, stargate sg-1, battlestar galactica, Jedi, and Death star.

    But in all seriousness, it would be cool to look into this.

  13. #39112 • 2012-09-22 00:23:11 • Red__Dot said:

    e=mc^2 where objects mass goes for infinity as closer it is to speed of light. There fore it would take the energy of the whole universe to get to that speed. I'm a sceptic about this...

  14. #39115 • 2012-09-22 01:23:28 • Fieyr said:

    @Red__Dot

    But, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, I think what the article is saying that they would be able to ignore the speed of light.... because it's not the spacecraft moving through space and approaching the speed of light (therefore gaining infinite mass) but rather manipulating space such that the net effect is that the object moves.

    It's kind of similar to the idea of a wormhole in space... where you would go into something like a black hole where space has been pinched... and pop out... millions of miles away out of a white hole. If you're unfamiliar with white hole theory, here's the wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hole

    The idea here seems to be to create a black hole in front of the space craft, and a white hole in back. Pinch space in front... expand it back out in back. That said, I have no clue what that would do to the mass of the spacecraft. There may be some unknown limit to how quickly you can move objects using the pinch and expand method.

  15. #39130 • 2012-09-22 09:58:38 • Gargron said:

    Yeah, @Fieyr is right.

    Here is a Hacker News discussion on this, they have larger quantities of educated people on there so the discussion on this topic is obviously more lively and less naive*: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4534359

    * No offence to anyone participating in this thread intended. It's just we're really just about 9 people in here, only two of whom I trust to have real knowledge in physics.

  16. #39134 • 2012-09-22 10:53:38 * • TokoyamiSenshi said:

    Reading the original paper なう.

    edit: I've read the paper and all I can say is, good luck generating negative energy densities. As a mathematical model, this works perfectly, but let's consider another mathematical model. Consider an empty bus. Two people exit the bus, and now, in order for the bus to be empty again, you need to put two people inside. A valid mathematical model.

    Alcubierre metric is cool stuff, yo, but it's purely mathematical for now. There are some laws of conservation you'd need to break/rewrite in order to make it work.

    As it has always been when it comes to breaking laws, one has to try it out and see what happens.

  17. #39352 • 2012-09-25 17:29:50 • Warlock said:

    Would be very interesting to see how far this goes during my lifetime. Hopefully we'll get do more on the moon and make a move towards space in my lifetime.

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