The downside of warp drives: Annihilating whole star systems when you arrive. The dream of faster-than-light travel has been on the mind of humanity for generations.
Until recently, though, it was restricted to the realm of pure science fiction. Theoretical mechanisms for warp drives have been posited by science, some of which actually jive quite nicely with what we know of physics. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re actually going to work, though. NASA researchers recently revisited the Alcubierre warp drive and concluded that its power requirements were not as impossible as once thought. Interstellar Starship Meeting Warps Into Houston This Week. Scientists, visionaries, entertainers and the public will gather in Houston this week for the 100-Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss space travel to another star.
Interstellar travel is significantly more difficult than spaceflight within our solar system, because the distances involved are vast. For example, at its farthest, Mars is about 20 light-minutes away from Earth, and even Pluto is only about 4 light-hours distant. Interstellar Space Travel & Warp Drive. Shooting for the stars will first require a lot of down-to-Earth elbow grease, as NASA's new 100-Year Starship project illustrates.
The effort, to journey between stars in the 2100s, began with a workshop and now is in the study phase. NASA's Ames Research Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are collaborating on the $1 million 100-Year Starship Study, an effort to take the first step in the next era of space exploration. The study will scrutinize the business model needed to develop and mature technologies needed to enable long-haul human space treks a century from now. Kick-started by a strategic planning workshop in January, the project has brought together more than two dozen farsighted futurists, NASA specialists, science fiction writers, foundation aficionados and educators. But for the moment, put aside all those Vulcan mind melds and get a grip. The Warp Drive Could Become Science Fact. Star Trek's Warp Drive: Not Impossible. The warp drive, one of Star Trek's hallmark inventions, could someday become science instead of science fiction.
Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen. The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's General Relativity. Luckily for us, this speed limit only applies within space-time (the continuum of three dimensions of space plus one of time that we live in). "The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. Already happened? Ship Could Fly Faster Than Light. Travel by bubble might seem more appropriate for witches in Oz, but two physicists suggest that a future spaceship could fold a space-time bubble around itself to travel faster than the speed of light.
We're talking about the very distant future, of course. Why We Need to Travel to Other Stars. HOUSTON — Launching a mission to another star could teach us not just about space, but about Earth as well, experts argued here today at the 100 Year Starship Symposium.
"I believe space exploration is a human imperative," said Mae Jemison, the first female African American astronaut. "It didn’t begin in 1957 with Sputnik, it's been a part of us" all along. Jemison is heading the 100 Year Starship initiative, which aims to mount a mission to another star within 100 years. Toward that end, scientists and thinkers from a variety of disciplines gathered for a public symposium here from Sept. 13 to 16 to discuss the motivations, challenges and possible solutions for pursuing interstellar spaceflight.
"I'm excited for the opportunity we have to pioneer tomorrow's technology and to reimagine our future," former President Bill Clinton, who is the symposium's honorary chair, said via a video address today (Sept. 14). Warp Drive More Possible Than Thought, Scientists Say. HOUSTON — A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.
A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre; however, subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy. Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially bringing the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science. "There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight. Star Trek's Warp Drive: Are We There Yet? Warp Drives & Wormholes. Alcubierre drive. Two-dimensional visualization of the Alcubierre drive, showing the opposing regions of expanding and contracting spacetime that displace the central region.
The Alcubierre drive or Alcubierre metric (referring to metric tensor) is a speculative idea based on a solution of Einstein's field equations in general relativity as proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, by which a spacecraft could achieve faster-than-light travel if a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (i.e. negative mass) could be created. Rather than exceeding the speed of light within its local frame of reference, a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel. History[edit] Alcubierre metric[edit] Ideas Based On What We’d Like To Achieve. Warp Drive, When?
The following section has a brief description of some ideas that have been suggested over the years for interstellar travel, ideas based on the sciences that do exist today. Worm Hole transportation Just when you thought it was confusing enough, those physicist had to come up with wormholes. Visualization of the Warp Drive. This video visualizes a spaceship equipped with a warp drive according to Alcubierre, cf.
Sect. 9.4 of the thesis. Scientists ponder interstellar travel at Nasa-backed space summit. In one room, scientists debated whether the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer will help find a way to bend the space-time continuum and make interstellar travel feasible within a lifetime. In another, they estimated how many pairs of underpants an astronaut would need to pack for the trip. Later, a paper was presented on Space Propulsion Under the Changing Density Field Model, and Lt Uhura sang the theme from Star Trek. Otherworldly in more ways than one, this was the 100 Year Starship symposium, a conference backed by Nasa and the Pentagon at the weekend that landed an eclectic mix of the eminent, the famous and the curious in Texas. It launched a mission that is nothing less than spaceflight's holy grail: make it possible for humans to travel to another star system within a century.
Not that anyone was able to proclaim, after four days of discussions and dozens of presentations on every conceivable related angle, that "Houston, we have a solution". "The science exists. 100YSS® 2012 Public Symposium. NASA: Warp drive is 'plausible and worth further investigation' S1.E13 ...My Soul to Keep S1.E12 There's No More Room In Hell S1.E11 The Feast S1.E10 The Pain Connection S1.E9 Post-Apocalypse Now S1.E8 Two Graves S1.E7 Whistle Past the Graveyard S1.E6 We Need To Talk About Abigail S1.E5 Whatever Happened to Maggie Rennie. Icarus Interstellar. Daydreaming Beyond the Solar System with Warp Field Mechanics. This article was authored by Harold “Sonny” White and Catherine Ragin Williams Sure and is a submission of the Exotic Research Group of Icarus Interstellar. Sure, the Red Planet or an asteroid are enticing destinations, but what if one day we wanted to go really, really far out?
With the technology we have today, it’s not in the realm of possibility. But it could be … and the Eagleworks Laboratories at Johnson Space Center are doing the mathematics and physics required to find the answers that defy traditional Newtonian laws. NASA Starts Work on Real Life Star Trek Warp Drive. Why We Need to Reach the Stars (and We Will) Travelling Faster Than the Speed of Light Is Harder Than It Looks. Now that we’ve been to the moon, built the International Space Station, and landed a multi-billion dollar robot on Mars, space geeks are getting restless.
Where are we going next? Well, going to Venus is probably boring, and we’d have to fly through the asteroid belt if we wanted to get to Saturn. Our next best option? Warp drive may actually be possible, NASA scientists says. SALT LAKE CITY — The coolest part of much science fiction, especially space operas like Star Wars and Star Trek, is the fact that they have hyperdrives and (the much nerdier) warp drives. They can blast through space faster than the universal speed limit. Well, real-life warp drives may be a lot more feasible than we initially thought. Scientists are already preparing for experiments. The Warp Drive.