© iStockphoto/Heidi KristensenCould traveling at warp speed to distant star systems ever become a reality?
Two Baylor University physicists believe they have an idea that can turn traveling at the speed of light from science fiction to science, and their idea does not break any laws of physics.
Dr. Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Dr. Richard Obousy, a Baylor post-doctoral student, theorize that by manipulating the space-time dimensions around the spaceship with a massive amount of energy, it would create a "bubble" that could push the ship faster than the speed of light. To create this bubble, the Baylor physicists believe manipulating the 11-dimension would create dark energy. Cleaver said positive dark energy is responsible for speeding up the universe as time moves on, just like it did after the Big Bang, when the universe expanded faster than the speed of light.
"Think of it like a surfer riding a wave," said Cleaver, who co-authored the paper with Obousy about the new method. "The ship would be pushed by the bubble and the bubble would be traveling faster than the speed of light."
The method is based on the Alcubierre drive, which proposes expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship would not actually move, rather the ship would sit in between the expanding and shrinking space-time dimensions. Since space would move around the ship, the theory does not violate Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which states that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object faster than the speed of light.
String theory suggests the universe is made up of multiple dimensions. Height, width and length are three dimensions, and time is the fourth dimension. Scientists believe that there are a total of 10 dimensions, with six other dimensions that we can not yet identify. A new theory, called M-theory, takes string theory one step farther and states that the "strings" actually vibrate in an 11-dimensional space. It is this 11th dimension that the Baylor researchers believe could help propel a ship faster than the speed of light.
The Baylor physicists estimate that the amount of energy needed to influence the extra dimensions is equivalent to the entire mass of Jupiter being converted into energy.
"That is an enormous amount of energy," Cleaver said. "We are still a very long ways off before we could create something to harness that type of energy."
The paper appeared recently in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
Journal reference:
1. Richard K. Obousy and Gerald Cleaver. Warp Drive: A New Approach. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, September 2008 [link]
I found this press release on the web [Link]. Looks like we're far closer to warp drive being real than these guys ever dreamed!
(I-Newswire) - On Sunday, May 24, at 1:PM in the Hyatt Regency Morrow Room [Link], the MarCon science fiction convention [Link]will present research and devleopment engineer Marshall Barnes giving a presentation entitled Engineering Spacetime: From Teleportation To Warp Drive And Time Travel that will feature a video taped demonstration of propoulsion created by the folding of space using his own STDTS prototype. The STDTS [Link]has been covered in some media before, mostly online [Link]and radio, but has also gotten the attention of the son of Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, who has allowed his supportive comments to be filmed for a documentary.
Marshall will also discuss the physics of warp drives which are not those that have gotten much of the media attention while remaining highly theoretical. In addition, he will present the results of his analysis of the Air Force's 2004 Teleportation Phyiscs Study [Link]which is the first and only such analysis of that report. His analysis [Link]was part of a commercial effort to look at the Study to see if there was a viable research and development effort that could be derived from it.
Marshall will close his presentation with a discussion on how both technologies relate to time travel physics and what that means for the future. Of particular interest is the fact that his STDTS appears to be able to be modified to be able to cause the same type of spacetime curvature as predicted by the time machine patent design of University of Connecticut physics professor Ronald Mallett [Link]. Mallett has gotten worldwide attention for his efforts [Link]but needs some where near to $250,000 [Link]to even begin a preliminary test. Marshall is expected to announce at the conference his attention to race the professor to see who gets to prove time travel possible first.
The presentation will be recorded for an upcoming audio documentary to serve as the companion for a book proposal that is being represented for Marshall by the Jeff Herman Agency.