Dr. White believes that advances he and others have made render warp speed less implausible.
Beyond the security gate at the Johnson Space Center’s 1960s-era campus here, inside a two-story glass and concrete building with winding corridors, there is a floating laboratory.
Harold G. White, a physicist and advanced propulsion engineer at NASA, beckoned toward a table full of equipment there on a recent afternoon: a laser, a camera, some small mirrors, a ring made of ceramic capacitors and a few other objects.
He and other NASA engineers have been designing and redesigning these instruments, with the goal of using them to slightly warp the trajectory of a photon, changing the distance it travels in a certain area, and then observing the change with a device called an interferometer. So sensitive is their measuring equipment that it was picking up myriad earthly vibrations, including people walking nearby. So they recently moved into this lab, which floats atop a system of underground pneumatic piers, freeing it from seismic disturbances.
The team is trying to determine whether faster-than-light travel — warp drive — might someday be possible.
Warp drive. Like on “Star Trek.”
“Space has been expanding since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago,” said Dr. White, 43, who runs the research project. “And we know that when you look at some of the cosmology models, there were early periods of the universe where there was explosive inflation, where two points would’ve went receding away from each other at very rapid speeds.”
“Nature can do it,” he said. “So the question is, can we do it?”
Einstein famously postulated that, as Dr. White put it, “thou shalt not exceed the speed of light,” essentially setting a galactic speed limit. But in 1994, a Mexican physicist, Miguel Alcubierre, theorized that faster-than-light speeds were possible in a way that did not contradict Einstein, though Dr. Alcubierre did not suggest anyone could actually construct the engine that could accomplish that.
His theory involved harnessing the expansion and contraction of space itself. Under Dr.Alcubierre’s hypothesis, a ship still couldn’t exceed light speed in a local region of space. But a theoretical propulsion system he sketched out manipulated space-time by generating a so-called “warp bubble” that would expand space on one side of a spacecraft and contract it on another.
“In this way, the spaceship will be pushed away from the Earth and pulled towards a distant star by space-time itself,” Dr. Alcubierre wrote. Dr. White has likened it to stepping onto a moving walkway at an airport.
But Dr. Alcubierre’s paper was purely theoretical, and suggested insurmountable hurdles. Among other things, it depended on large amounts of a little understood or observed type of “exotic matter” that violates typical physical laws.
Dr. White believes that advances he and others have made render warp speed less implausible. Among other things, he has redesigned the theoretical warp-traveling spacecraft — and in particular a ring around it that is key to its propulsion system — in a way that he believes will greatly reduce the energy requirements.
He is quick to offer up his own caveats, however, saying his warp research is akin to a university science project that is just trying to prove that a microscopic warp bubble can be detected in a lab. ”We’re not bolting this to a spacecraft,” he said of the warp technology.
The Latest Bing News on:
Faster than the speed of light
- Older Adults Are Sharing What They Wish Young People Did Differently, And As A Gen Z'er Myself, Some Of These Points Are 100% Validon April 26, 2024 at 8:36 pm
"I work with people in their 20s and 30s who message me using the same kind of language my 12-year-old stepdaughter uses when she texts me. If you want to be taken seriously, make the effort to sound ...
- New Age, New E-ra: Formula E Gen 3 EVO is here, Set to Hit The Track soon (see VIDEO)on April 26, 2024 at 5:41 pm
T hursday afternoon, Formula E announced its newest project with the official release of its brand-new Gen 3 EVO car that will debut in Season 11 for the series, 2024. The car, which is evolution of ...
- Why Lenovo’s latest Pro laptop absolutely blew me awayon April 26, 2024 at 2:23 pm
The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 is a very strong entry in the 16-inch laptop class, with surprisingly good performance and a very nice mini-LED display.
- A really scary breed of men are emerging: Jana Hockingon April 26, 2024 at 1:21 pm
There’s a type of man growing in numbers that are exhibiting some “really scary” behaviour, says Jana Hocking.
- 'Fast. Loud. Dangerous.' Without a local police department, residents of Route 43 in Hancock worry about sport bikes and speederson April 26, 2024 at 9:00 am
Without a local police department, Hancock relies on state police in Cheshire as its primary law enforcement agency. Meanwhile, neighbors are afraid to walk their road and worried about what ...
- Two Creators Filmed The Speed Of Light At 10 Trillion Frames Per Secondon April 26, 2024 at 4:30 am
James is a published author with four pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.
- Dying Light 2's Nightmare Mode Explainedon April 25, 2024 at 9:30 am
Dying Light 2's latest update adds a horrifying new difficulty setting called "Nightmare Mode," and it certainly isn't for the faint of heart.
- 2025 Audi S3 Sedan First Drive: More of the Same, Only Betteron April 24, 2024 at 11:21 am
Visually, the 2025 S3 is distinguished by a new front fascia that features a wider and flatter execution of the single-frame grille with body-coloured trim underneath and strut-like structures ...
- NEC Expands AI Offerings with Advanced LLMs for Faster Response Timeson April 24, 2024 at 10:22 am
NEC Corporation has expanded its "NEC cotomi" generative AI services with the development of "NEC cotomi Pro" and "NEC cotomi ...
- Scientists Get Serious in the Search for a Working Warp Driveon April 20, 2024 at 5:00 am
This toolkit was created by Applied Physics, an international group of scientists, which hopes to also provide a "reality check" on warp drive concepts that rely on exotic physics. The galaxy—let ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Faster than the speed of light
[google_news title=”” keyword=”faster than the speed of light” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
The Latest Bing News on:
Warp Drive
- 5 Absolute Civilization Changes – Complements Of A.I.on April 26, 2024 at 8:04 pm
Let’s face it. Everything we do – everything – will be changed by AI. From the major things that make life on this planet what it is to the trivial things that make living on this planet what it is, ...
- NGA's 2024 spring meet finals resultson April 26, 2024 at 7:16 am
Senior 1 Stake Final Race 1 FF Pittsburgh 5 2 1-3 1-3 1-5 29.93 Full Command WW Rocket City (A-27) 4 4 2 2 2-5 30.28 Fine Try Loyal Ark Altman 1 1 3 3 3-6 30.35 Rail Bid JS Barbie Dreams 2 3 4 4 4-15 ...
- Where Is Everybody in Our Universe?on April 25, 2024 at 9:02 am
In Exoplanets, astronomer Michael Summers and physicist James Trefil explore remarkable recent discoveries: planets revolving around pulsars, planets made of diamond, planets that are mostly water, ...
- Tesla Model 3 Performance is here. Here are 5 things that make it great, and 3 drawbacks.on April 24, 2024 at 5:00 am
The original Model 3 Performance looked exactly the same as the other Model 3 versions, save for a carbon fibre spoiler on the back. The new version, however, should be a head turner, with 20-inch ...
- Former NASA Engineer Says He's Invented a Thruster That Doesn't Require Propellanton April 22, 2024 at 11:35 am
Space startup Exodus Propulsion Technologies claims to have achieved a breakthrough, stumbling upon an entirely new force of nature that could help us develop propellantless rockets. As The Debrief ...
- Scientists Are Getting Closer to a Real, Working Warp Driveon April 20, 2024 at 5:00 am
While a fully working warp drives has many hurdles to overcome, it’s a technology worth taking seriously. Because if humans have any hope of one day exploring distant stars, it’ll need the help of ...
- Southwest Florida teens head to world championships with robot WARPon April 19, 2024 at 7:09 am
The robot's name is WARP. And the Southwest Florida teens who built it hope the boxy machine speeds to a world-championship victory.
- Astronauts and entrepreneurs, warp drive and wormholes: Edison Awards honor innovationon April 19, 2024 at 7:05 am
Downtown Fort Myers swarmed with science this week, as the Edison Awards brought innovators from around the globe to mingle with locally grown tech wizards and up-and-coming inventors. The annual ...
- Software tool sheds light on warp drive designon April 18, 2024 at 6:18 am
“Physicists can now generate and refine an array of warp drive designs with just a few clicks, allowing us to advance science at warp speed," said Gianni Martire, CEO of Applied Physics. “Warp Factory ...
- Why Warp Drives Are About To Get Betteron April 16, 2024 at 1:30 pm
The mathematics of warp drives is fiendishly difficult. Now a specialist software package is set to change the way physicists model Star Trek-like travel.
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Warp Drive
[google_news title=”” keyword=”warp drive” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]