Warp Drive
November 29, 2000
Since the question of how extraterrestrial spacecraft
could travel the immense light-year distances from their home world to
Earth without taking several human lifetimes to reach their
destination I would like to suggest that such alien scientists
probably considered both theoretical solutions and experimented with a
number of ideas just as Marc Millis is pursuing for NASA.
Marc has been with NASA's Glenn Research Center since
1982 after earning a degree in Physics from Georgia Tech. In addition
to Marc's more conventional assignments that have spanned engineering
zero-gravity facilities, electric propulsion test facilities, ion
engines, rocket control and monitoring systems, and cryogenic
propellant delivery systems, Marc is now the Project Manager for
NASA's "Breakthrough Propulsion Physics" (BPP) Project. The goal of
this project is to conduct credible research toward the incredible
possibilities of the "space drive" and the "warp drive" -- ideas which
today are just science fiction. In his free time he builds,
photographs and writes articles on scale models, including science
fiction models made from scrap plastic.
Here are some quotes from Marc Millis concerning "warp
drive": (Notice the revelance to UFO studies)
The ideal interstellar propulsion system would be one
that could get you to other stars as quickly and comfortably as
envisioned in science fiction. Before this can become a reality, three
scientific breakthroughs are needed: discovery of a means to exceed
light speed, discovery of a means to propel a vehicle without
propellant, and discovery of a means to power such devices.
The most obvious challenge to practical interstellar
travel is speed. Our nearest neighboring star is 4.3 Light Years away.
Trip times to reach our nearest neighboring star at conventional
speeds would be prohibitively long. At 55 miles-per-hour for example,
it would take over 50 million years to get there! I don't think even
the twinkies in
the glove box would survive that long. At a more typical spacecraft
speed, for example the 3-day trip time that it took the Apollo
spacecraft to reach the moon, it would still take over 900 thousand
years. I still don't think the twinkies will make it. And even if we
consider the staggering speed of 37-thousand miles-per-hour, which was
the speed of the NASA Voyager spacecraft as it left our solar system
years ago, the trip would still take 80,000 years. Maybe the twinkies
would make it, but there would be nothing left on board to eat them.
In conclusion, if we want to cruise to other stars within comfortable
and fundable time spans (say, less than a term in Congress), we have
to figure out a way to go faster than light.
If you could control gravity or inertial forces, you
would have a propulsion breakthrough (thrusting without rockets), a
means to create synthetic gravity environments for space crews, a
means to create zero-gravity environment on Earth - hey that could be
fun - and a whole host of other things.
Like "Warp Drives", this subject is also at the level of
speculation, with some facets edging into the realm of science. We are
at the point where we know what we do know and know what we don't, and
there is a lot that we don't know. The better news is that there is no
science that says that gravity control is impossible.
First, we do know that gravity and electromagnetism are
linked phenomena. We are quite adept at controlling electromagnetic
phenomena, so one can presume that such a connection might eventually
lead to using our control of electromagnetism to control gravity.
General Relativity, another one of Einstein's doings, is one way to
describe such connections. Another way is through new theories from
quantum mechanics that link gravity and inertia to something called
"vacuum fluctuations."
Is this subject being studied?
Historically, gravity has been studied in the general
sense, but not very much from the point of view of seeking propulsion
breakthroughs. With the newly formed NASA Breakthrough Propulsion
Physics program, that situation is changing.
"Warp Drives", "Hyperspace Drives", or any other term
for faster-than-light travel is at the level of speculation, with some
facets edging into the realm of science. We are at the point where we
know what we do know and know what we don't, but do not know for sure
if faster than light travel is possible.
The bad news is that the bulk of scientific knowledge
that we have accumulated to date concludes that faster than light
travel is impossible. This is an artifact of Einstein's Special Theory
of Relativity. Yes, there are some other perspectives; tachyons,
wormholes, inflationary universe, spacetime warping, quantum
paradoxes...ideas that are in credible scientific literature, but it
is still too soon to know if such ideas are viable. One of the issues
that is evoked by any faster-than-light transport is time paradoxes:
causality violations and implications of time travel. As if the faster
than light issue wasn't tough enough, it is possible to construct
elaborate scenarios where faster-than-light travel
results in time travel. Time travel is considered far more impossible
than light travel.
Here's the premise behind the Alcubierre "warp drive":
Although Special Relativity forbids objects to move faster than light
within spacetime, it is unknown how fast spacetime itself can move. To
use an analogy, imagine you are on one of those moving sidewalks that
can be found in some airports. The Alcubierre warp drive is like one
of those moving sidewalks. Although there may be a limit to how fast
one can
walk across the floor (analogous to the light speed limit), what about
if you are on a moving section of floor that moves faster than you can
walk (analogous to a moving section of spacetime)? In the case of the
Alcubierre warp drive, this moving section of spacetime is created by
expanding spacetime behind the ship (analogous to where the sidewalk
emerges from underneath the floor), and by contracting spacetime in
front of the ship (analogous to where the sidewalk goes back into the
floor). The idea of expanding spacetime is not new. Using the
"Inflationary Universe" perspective, for example, it is thought that
spacetime expanded faster than the speed of light during the early
moments of the Big Bang. So if spacetime can expand faster than the
speed of light during the Big Bang, why not for our warp drive? These
theories are too new to have either been discounted or proven viable.
Bill Hamilton
by Bill Hamilton - skywatcher22@earthlink.net
Executive Director
Skywatch International Inc.
http://home.earthlink.net/~skywatcher22