Scientists say "warp drive" spaceships could be feasible

A ring-shaped warp drive device could transport a football-shape starship (center) to effective speeds faster than light. The concept was first proposed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre. / Harold White

(SPACE.com) 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.

Warping space-time

An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind. [Star Trek's Warp Drive: Are We There Yet? | Video]

Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn't being warped at all.

"Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light," explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar spaceflight. "But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light."

With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the cosmic speed limit.

The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.

But recently White calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring. He found in that case, the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.

Furthermore, if the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more, White found.

"The findings I presented today change it from impractical to plausible and worth further investigation," White told SPACE.com. "The additional energy reduction realized by oscillating the bubble intensity is an interesting conjecture that we will enjoy looking at in the lab."

Laboratory tests

White and his colleagues have begun experimenting with a mini version of the warp drive in their laboratory.

They set up what they call the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer at the Johnson Space Center, essentially creating a laser interferometer that instigates micro versions of space-time warps.

"We're trying to see if we can generate a very tiny instance of this in a tabletop experiment, to try to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million," White said.

He called the project a "humble experiment" compared to what would be needed for a real warp drive, but said it represents a promising first step.

And other scientists stressed that even outlandish-sounding ideas, such as the warp drive, need to be considered if humanity is serious about traveling to other stars.

"If we're ever going to become a true spacefaring civilization, we're going to have to think outside the box a little bit, were going to have to be a little bit audacious," Obousy said.

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[AnSalls]

The real problem here is that the drive requires exotic particles with a negative mass, which aren't believed to exist. They might, but it's not likely.

[Akbar_87]

Dark Energy has repulsive property just like negative mass.

[cannuc]

A thought experiment that is yet to be confirmed.

Mr. Einstein is famous for his theories and thought experiment, one of those thought experiments led to the Theory of relativity and special theory of relativity.

Some where along the lines don't know where or how it's said that Einstein reasoned that NOTHING can go faster than light. 186,282.3959 miles per second.

Recently there was a news item that a humongous star is traveling across the vastness of space to the speed of 1/3 the speed of light. What forces or event flung that star or caused it to move at such an incredible speed?

So what happens to Mr. Newton's law of Motion and inertial mass when said object is moving at 99.99% of the speed of light?

Here's the thing, If you are traveling on a spaceship that is moving at the slow speed of 100,000 miles per second and fire off a regular gun powder bullet in the direction of travel, Will the bullet's speed be 100,000 miles/second + the 1,350 ft/second? Logic says yes...The regular gun powder bullet will indeed travel faster than the spaceship's speed.

Let's look at it another way, That same spaceship has now increased its speed to 150,000 Miles/Sec

Now instead of firing a gunpowder projectile in the direction of travel, we let lose a 500 GW 2 second laser blast. Questions that this hypothetical experiment raises are interesting. Will the laser's stream of photons simply refuse to leave the laser nozzle?

[AnSalls]

No, the beam would shoot out of the gun at the speed of light like a laser would on earth. The equations your referring treat every inertial frame as though it was stationary, and everything else is moving relative to it. This means that the laser will appear no different than if it was fired while the ship was stopped. The light doesn't 'know' that the ship is moving.

Also, when it comes to light, speeds are not added like they are in Newtonian mechanics. For example, suppose there were two people headed towards each other, person A is traveling at 80% of the speed of light, and person B is traveling at 90% the speed of light.
If you were person B, would it appear that person A was coming at you at 1.6 times the speed of light? in normal Newtonian mechanics, yes. But special relativity doesn't work like that. It's much more complicated. I'll spare you the math, but for person B it would appear that person A was heading towards them at 98.8% of the speed of light.
In other words those hypothetical questions have been answered, and they don't pose any problems

[bnprime]

A podcast where some physicists explain to a regular person how warp drives work!

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2012/02/20/episode-9-warp-drives-with-zach-weinersmith/

[rwsmith29456]

Good science fiction comes not only from fantasizing possibilities but from extending feasible ideas based on sound science into the future. Do that and you come up with landmark stories '2001: A Space Odyssey' is another prime example in addition to 'Star Trek'. Communicators? Look at cell phones. Computers? The one that I have in my lap right now is mind boggling now, much less to someone in the 1960s. We still don't have floating cars, though.

[ToolMangler1]

'2001: A Space Odyssey' is the penultimate SciFi film. It can only be exceeded by the 'real thing' doing it yourself!!!!!

[jybrick]

Apparently, Gene Roddenberry was an extraterrestrial.

[Scimajor]

This is one of many examples of where science fiction is perfectly possible given current physics models. The limiting factors usually are massive amounts of power and the heath of the astronauts.

In the case of warp drive you'd need orders of magnitude more power than the output of the Sun. Possible yes. Feasible not so much.

[DayXero]

Magnitudes of power were addressed in the interview that was done. If you check around the web, you'll find more of the actual interview posted.

They state that the power needs are less than first calculated. Given the fact that they have "streamlined" the idea so far, I'd say that the biology problem,as well as the additional power issues will be dealt with quickly.

[Scimajor]

The power issues are a matter of physics. You can't get around the amount of energy required to warp space-time. You can streamline to make your system use power more efficiently but the required power to bend space and time can't be lessened.

[jwmeritt]

Physically, Star flight is doable. It is just (!) an engineering or biological problem.