Warp Drive Breakthrough Could Enable Constant-Velocity Subluminal Travel, Physics Team Says
Warp Drive Breakthrough Could Enable Constant-Velocity Subluminal Travel, Physics Team Says
A warp drive breakthrough has been unveiled by leading propulsion researchers in in a groundbreaking new study.
While the concepts outlined in the team’s new paper pave the way toward making travel through space nearing light speed a reality, constructing such an engine is likely something that will only be feasible far in the future, as the present state of technology would not allow for such a device.
51... by an astounding margin.
The paper is paywalled and I am too lazy to look for a free/open link, but the shown graphs indicate many squared meters of energy concentrations of 1 - 10 * 10^39 joules.
The entire energy output of the Sun, in a year, is around 10^34 joules. 6.6 * 10^39 joules is apparently the estimated total mass energy of the Moon, if you basically perfectly E = mc^2 transformed it into pure energy.
In 2010 the estimated total energy consumption of humans on Earth was 5 * 10^20 joules.
So we just need something around ten billion * ten billion more joules than that, presumably generated by something i dont know, naval frigate sized?
Yeah. Faaaaaar off indeed.
46So if we could completely annihilate a mass equivalent to the Moon with an equal mass of antimatter and capture all of the energy with no losses to heat and without ripping the device apart, that would work?
No problem, we'll have it done next week.
6
Nobody can be excited for anything. Whether or not it's possible in even the next century or two, I still think it's awesome that there are dreamers out there trying to make at least a solid theoretical plan on how to accomplish stuff like this. I also think people are discounting the exponential rate of knowledge we accumulate every generation. It might be awhile, but unless society collapses, I wouldn't be surprised if we have interstellar propulsion like this in the next couple centuries. Hell, I expect to see a thriving commercial space industry in the next 50-some-odd years within our solar system.
25This article is crap. Repeats everything 3 times and explains nothing.
At least they linked the study but since
The solution involves combining a stable matter shell with a shift vector distribution that closely matches well-known warp drive solutions such as the Alcubierre metric.
doesn't mention How they do this, i guess this is a purely mathematic experiment?
13Well...yeah. No warp drive is possible with current tech, so it's all theoretical. We have no capabilities at all ever mentioned in these articles, but it's still interesting.
6What i meant: physics has a lot of mathematic nuts. Some take it a bit too far and think, just because you can make a formula that works out, it proves anything, instead of mathe describing the logic. As an example: some thesis at ETH Zurich "proved" the existence of god by having some set parameters and assumtions (which were a classical logical fallacy). I think this might be similiar.
For the alcubiere warp drive, the logical explanation is: it warps space before the ship and back behind it, so it basically makes the distance for the ship shorter. I expected a similiar explanation for this. But it looks more like people played mathematics here.
7
Do we have any plan for how to avoid colliding with asteroids or other things while traveling so fast?
12Most of space is empty, analysis of the path beforehand and a structure that can withstand the smaller objects is really all that's necessary. But those are just as theoretical as this engine.
12Problem is that asteroids are very hard to see, as they are both cold and dark, meaning they don't stand out against space very much at all. And even a micrometeoroid poses a risk even when traveling at low velocities (e.g. someone orbiting earth, the meteoroid itself has a relatively high velocity). Getting hit by a 1cm meteoroid at warp 1 would be devastating.
16
Simple, the galaxy is pretty much flat so go up, turn 90°, travel until you're over your destination, go down, same as an helicopter!
8This sounds dumb but honestly is it really a bad plan? I say we go forth on project hyperspeed helicopter
5
Just a thought. If you just have a preliminary motion and your travel velocity is due to warping of space, wouldn't objects caught in your warp field just move with you till they exit?
7We can't even travel that fast to even start theorizing how that would work 🤣
From previous reading on the subject, I believe the main issue with this style of transport would be slowing down so as not to cause a massive explosion of forward moving energy at the barrier of the warp bubble which would build up during travel.
2Deflector dish like in Star Trek?
1
I'm almost 50 years old and I've been hearing about this for almost 50 years.
11Curse that Gene Roddenberry!
8The fact that you can even be indignant about not having the technology to travel to another solar system developed within a single lifetime is pretty amazing considering it took us billions of years to get here.
-3
I doubt we'll survive long enough to make a real go at it. And somehow if we do, the rich will just ruin it for everyone anyway.
4We’ll just use it to make warp drive missiles and torpedos to kill each other quicker with.
2
Yeah but haven’t we already mastered constant-velocity subliminal travel?
1