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RWJ":2qf05tdi said:Perhaps someday it will be possible to create a device similar to warp drive.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ScAHXN_kAY[/youtube]
RWJ":8griomqz said:Perhaps someday it will be possible to create a device similar to warp drive.
StarRider1701":12xbdhwd said:RWJ":12xbdhwd said:Perhaps someday it will be possible to create a device similar to warp drive.
The Human Race needs to hope so!!! Without Warp (or some kind of FTL) Drive we will be pretty much prisoners of this one little Solar System. As MeteorWayne loves to point out (ad Nausium) if we are forced to stick with below light speeds, tremendous energy will be required for any ship to attain even a significant percentage of C.
Not to mention the supreme level of effort and energy required to send out the few and far between Generation Ships.
Without Warp (FTL) Drive I fear for the future of the Human Race.
BTW, thanks for the video stars, yes it was fun to watch.
dryson":olbe6cum said:I believe that Warp Drive is possible.
SteveCNC":e4gmhiro said:Wow , you know dryson sometimes you really crack me up . You understanding of gravity is rather unique to say the least . To think that it requires speed to function is in itself pretty funny .
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
A "warp drive" built using metamaterials could reach a quarter of light speed.
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Metamaterials are substances in which their ability to support electric and magnetic fields can be changed. Fiddle with these properties in just the right way and you can steer electromagnetic waves in all kinds of strange and exotic ways.
The highest profile use of this idea is to build invisibility cloaks but there's another more fascinating application. It turns out there is a formal mathematical analogy between the way metamaterials bend light and the way gravity does it. Inside metamaterials, electromagnetic space becomes distorted in exactly the same way as spacetime in general relatively.
That means physicists can use metamaterials to simulate the universe itself and all the weird phenomenon of general relativity. We've looked at various attempts to recreate black holes, the Big Bang and even multiverses.
But there's another thing that general relativity appears to allow: faster than light travel. In 1994, the Mexican physicist, Michael Alcubierre, realised that while relativity prevents faster-than-light travel relative to the fabric of spacetime, it places no restriction on the speed at which regions of spacetime can move relative to each other.
That suggests a way of building a warp drive. Alcubierre imagined a small volume of flat spacetime in which a spacecraft sits, surrounded by a bubble of spacetime that shrinks in the direction of travel, bringing your destination nearer, and stretches behind you. He showed that this shrinking and stretching could enable the bubble--and the spaceship it contained--to move at superluminal speeds.
Today, Igor Smolyaninov at the University of Maryland, points out that if these kinds of bubbles are possible in spacetime, then it ought to be possible to simulate them inside a metamaterial.
His analysis makes for interesting reading. It turns out that faster than light travel travel is not possible inside any physically-realisable metamaterial. That agrees with various analyses of Alcubierre's ideas suggesting that his bubble would be highly unstable and that superluminal travel would be impossible. We looked at one here.
However, Smolyaninov says that subluminal travel is still possible using this method and shows how it ought to be possible to reach speeds of up to a quarter of the speed of light by distorting space in front of and behind the traveller.
That's not quite warp speed, nowhere near it actually. But it's a fair rate of knots by anybody's standards.
It only remains for somebody to actually build a metamaterial capable of this trick. And judging by the rate at which this stuff is being developed, we shouldn't have too long to wait.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1009.5663: Metamaterial-Based Model Of The Alcubierre Warp Drive
I agree, unless a way around the light speed barrier is found mankind will most likely cease to exist when our star dies. That is if we don't wipe ourselves out much sooner. As our star approaches old age and if we are still here I presume a great effort to build ark ships will be made and they will be sent in the direction of every nearby star system known to have planets. But I would guess the chances of any of them actually surviving the voyage is somewhere between slim and none.StarRider1701":11i7qxq4 said:RWJ":11i7qxq4 said:Perhaps someday it will be possible to create a device similar to warp drive.
The Human Race needs to hope so!!! Without Warp (or some kind of FTL) Drive we will be pretty much prisoners of this one little Solar System. As MeteorWayne loves to point out (ad Nausium) if we are forced to stick with below light speeds, tremendous energy will be required for any ship to attain even a significant percentage of C.
Not to mention the supreme level of effort and energy required to send out the few and far between Generation Ships.
Without Warp (FTL) Drive I fear for the future of the Human Race.
BTW, thanks for the video stars, yes it was fun to watch.
...Oct 30th, 2010
by Steve Nerlich
It's sixteen years since Miguel Alcubierre suggested that faster-than-light travel might be achieved by generating a warp bubble that contracts space-time ahead of the spaceship and expands it behind. Now a metamaterial test laboratory is available to see if this idea really could work. Image sourced from: andersoninstitute.com
The Alcubierre drive is one of the better known warp drive on paper models – where a possible method of warp drive seems to work mathematically as long as you don’t get too hung up on real world physics and some pesky boundary issues.
Recently the Alcubierre drive concept has been tested within mathematically modeled metamaterial – which can provide a rough analogy of space-time. Interestingly, in turns out that under these conditions the Alcubierre drive is unable to break the light barrier – but quite capable of doing 25% of light speed, which is not what you would call slow.
OK, so two conceptual issues to grapple with here. What the heck is an Alcubierre drive – and what the heck is metamaterial?
The Alcubierre drive is a kind of mathematical thought experiment where you imagine your spacecraft has a drive mechanism capable of warping a bubble of space-time such that the component of bubble in front of you contracts bringing points ahead of you closer – while the bubble behind you expands, moving what’s behind you further away.
This warped geometry moves the spacecraft forward, like a surfer on a wave of space-time. Maintaining this warp dynamically and continuously as the ship moves forward could result in faster-than-light velocities from the point of view of an observer outside the bubble – while the ship hardly moves at all relative to the local space-time within the bubble. Indeed throughout the journey the crew experience free fall conditions and are not troubled by G forces.
Standard images used to describe the Alcubierre drive. Left: Want to make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs? No problem - just compress the Kessel run into 12 parsecs. Right: The Alcubierre concept can be thought of as a spaceship surfing on a wave of space-time. Images sourced from daviddarling.info.
It turns out that the material parameters of even so-called ‘perfect’ metamaterial will not allow the Alcubierre drive to break light speed, but will allow it to achieve 25% light speed – being around 75,000 kilometres a second. This gets you to the Alpha Centauri system in about seventeen years, assuming acceleration and deceleration are only small components of the journey.
Whether the limitations imposed by metamaterial in this test are an indication that it cannot adequately emulate the warping of space-time – which the Alcubierre drive needs to break light speed – or whether the Alcubierre drive just can’t do it, remains an open question. What’s surprising and encouraging is that the drive could actually work… a bit.
EarthlingX":o1i418dm said:http://www.universetoday.com : Astronomy Without A Telescope – Warp Drive On Paper
It turns out that the material parameters of even so-called ‘perfect’ metamaterial will not allow the Alcubierre drive to break light speed, but will allow it to achieve 25% light speed – being around 75,000 kilometres a second. This gets you to the Alpha Centauri system in about seventeen years, assuming acceleration and deceleration are only small components of the journey.
Whether the limitations imposed by metamaterial in this test are an indication that it cannot adequately emulate the warping of space-time – which the Alcubierre drive needs to break light speed – or whether the Alcubierre drive just can’t do it, remains an open question. What’s surprising and encouraging is that the drive could actually work… a bit.