Warp Drive

[Genghis the Engineer]

This is from the February issue of Aerospace International.

I admit that I really don't have a good grasp of post-Newtonian physics, although I have watched more Star Trek than is probably good for me. Anyhow, there seems to be at-least one serious brain behind this and it could change the aerospace industry out of all recognition....

.... if it works!



Breakthrough in Warp Drive?

A paper published in the New Scientist journal has outlined a concept for a magnetic warp drive which could propel spacecraft to Mars in three hours.

The concept uses an intense magnetic field to create propulsion and could also warp the craft into a parallel dimension to exceed the speed of light allowing interplanetary travel. One of the papers authors, a former head of ESA Aerodynamics, was quoted as saying that a working prototype engine could be built in about five years.

My rational self tells me this is all stuff and nonsense. But by gum I'd love to be wrong.

G

[Tex37]

Are you sure you don't have an early copy of the April 1st edition?

Tex

[Genghis the Engineer]

'Fraid not, but I did check (twice)

G

[AirRabbit]

Hmmm... I would wonder why someone would postulate that the speed of light in a parallel dimension would be different than it is here? As far as I know either E=mc^2 or it does not.
The only way that what this article might be suggesting may have some validity is that in this parallel dimension the distance to Mars is less than it is in this dimension (and who is to say?? maybe over there it is closer...) and with only a "3-hour tour" (hmmm...set to music would remind me of a skipper, a millionaire and his wife, and a dude named Gilligan...) that distance would have to be pretty darn close. I wonder, does that article talk at all about these parallel dimensions getting off track at all? That could be seriously dangerous.

[OzExpat]

And if we assume that a craft could be propelled into a "parallel dimension" for such a journey, what guarantee is there that the craft will be able to escape back into "our" dimension in time to slow down and land gracefully?

If the craft doesn't return to "our" dimension, will it be lost forever?:uhoh:
If it escapes the parallel dimension, will it only be able to stop at the end of a deep smoking hole?:eek:

[ORAC]

Take a leap into Hyperspace (http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg18925331.200/). Burkhard Heim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkhard_Heim)

[Loose rivets]

You'll get no argument from me. My post on the topic 1st Feb was somewhat er, passionate.
I don't accept parallel universes as anything but an idea, but driving a vessel by latching it to the fabric of space is what I have been writing about for years.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=209145&page=2&highlight=hydrocarbons (8th post down.)

[vapilot2004]

I think we should fund the research, and if it looks promising, a suitable hull to marry such a drive would seem to be the next design challenge.

Even if hyperdrive speeds prove to be beyond our traveling abilities, perhaps we could throttle the thing into propelling winged aluminum tubes throughout the skies in a comparatively sedate manner.

The possibilities , in a word , G .............. 'Fascinating'


:}

[maxrpm]

Als Mars is just 7 to 20 Light Minutes away from earth (depending on relative position of the two planets) it looks to me that the speed of light is considerable slower in that parallel Dimension. :hmm:

[Genghis the Engineer]

Still a huge improvement on the usual 9 months there and 18 months back it always came out at when I was studying interplanetary navigation.

On a more technical point, it'll presumably have to accelerate and decelerate - an Mars is only a short hop, you may get much better average speeds to, say, Alpha Centauri. But nonetheless, the acceleration is going to smart a bit!

G

[ORAC]

Depends, if it is like gravity, would it act on every atom inside the field and feel, to the occupants, like free fall?

[Charles Darwin]

They have "outlined the concept"...
Tells me that they have done...just that. :ok:

[ORAC]

Who was it said, once you´ve got the maths, everything else is just engineering.... :}

[PhilM]

With warp drive though, you do not technically exceed the speed of light, your velocity isn't that quick, your apparent velocity is (because you just did X distance in Y time).

I once heard on some Discovery programme that warp drive can be thought like this;

Take a sheet of A4 paper, at one end put a dot and label it A, at the other end, put a dot and label it B. Now, to get from A to B in a very short time, you would need to traditionally go very fast....ie if Earth was A, and Mars was B, and you wanted to do it in a day, it'd be very fast indeed!

However, if you were to fold the sheet of paper in half (warping space), A would suddenly be much closer to B, so you hop a few millimeters accross from A-B, then unfold the sheet of paper. Your actual velocity and distance traveled was slow and not very far, however, your percieved velocity/distance is great, as you have just gone from A to B very quickly.......this is how the warp drive concept was explained when I heard it.


I have often wondered, not to do with warp drive, but, due to the lack of hydrocarbon fuel in the future, if one could get an aircraft up into the air, and then freeze its position in freespace (gyros maybe), then the earth would rotate normally, and the aircraft would thus appear to travel around the earth (although it has not moved in freespace)...just a thought!

[cwatters]

I believe all this recent talk of hyperdrive etc is based on this recent research which got a mention in New Scientist back in January...

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200.html

Quote:

EVERY year, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics awards prizes for the best papers presented at its annual conference. Last year's winner in the nuclear and future flight category went to a paper calling for experimental tests of an astonishing new type of engine. According to the paper, this hyperdrive motor would propel a craft through another dimension at enormous speeds. It could leave Earth at lunchtime and get to the moon in time for dinner. There's just one catch: the idea relies on an obscure and largely unrecognised kind of physics.

Article continues...

[cwatters]

I have often wondered, not to do with warp drive, but, due to the lack of hydrocarbon fuel in the future, if one could get an aircraft up into the air, and then freeze its position in freespace (gyros maybe), then the earth would rotate normally, and the aircraft would thus appear to travel around the earth (although it has not moved in freespace)...just a thought!

Unfortunately gyros cannot produce linear forces only rotational ones. This fact has even confused a lot of people who try to make reactionless engines using gyros.

[Cardinal]

I have often wondered, not to do with warp drive, but, due to the lack of hydrocarbon fuel in the future, if one could get an aircraft up into the air, and then freeze its position in freespace (gyros maybe), then the earth would rotate normally, and the aircraft would thus appear to travel around the earth (although it has not moved in freespace)...just a thought!

Isn't this the essence of suborbital flight, Mercury program-style?

[Confabulous]

One thing - if you're travelling 99% of the speed of light in space, with no friction and neglegible gravity, how do you stop?

[L Peacock]

Always fascinating stuff this; mind blowing.
I've always wondered, if it ever becomes possible to distort space/time in this way, how could the precise destination be chosen?

In any case, I suspect the technology is centuries away.

[InSoMnIaC]

Imagine the impact it will have on pilot Salaries once the technology is incorporated on the next boeing or Airbus. london to Sydney.. block time = 0.00006 of sec X Hourly flight time rate = S@#t all

however sector pay will be a different story :D

[chornedsnorkack]

Basically, I do not feel you need FTL for interplanetary travel. Interstellar is another matter.

Warp drive would, however, be interesting as a kind of reactionless drive.

Stopping at 0,99c is essentially the reverse of accelerating - if you can accelerate, you have the way, in principle, to stop.

If you have FTL, you get into problems with speed relative to ether...


What would you do as aerospace engineer with a reactionless drive?

[antic81]

Well I have a theory that'll blow all your minds!
I believe that the speed of Dark is faster than the speed of light!
Why you may ask?
Well quite simply no matter how fast light travels there's always darkness ahead of it isn't there?? :E

On a serious note though, I'm no Engineer but I do find this all deeply fascinating.

[L Peacock]

chornedsnorkack

and at 0.99c, you're racing forward in time as well.

It's hard enough to undertstand when it's explained over and over again so how did Einstein imagine it in the first place?

Awesome.

[Slasher]

PhilM your refering to a hyperspace 'wormhole', an offshoot theory from Black Hole studies. Warp theory is the compression of space ahead of the spacecraft and expansion of space behind it, maintaining a speed less than C relative to the local space in which the craft is moving, but measured greater than C by an observer outside it. Both Wormhole and Warp math is there and both workable but we are trapped engineeringly in the 21st century just as Galileo was trapped in the 15th with his aviation designs and didnt have a Lycoming.

Even if Warp Speed in real time could be achieved the next major engineering difficulty would be old man Newton's Law of Inertia - accelerating to 1/2C (relative to local space) in seconds would crush the occupants to a pulp as well as the craft structure. I think the Star Trek writers dreamed up on-board "inertial dampers" to conveniantly exclude Newt and his annoying physics.

As for Mars in 3 hours Id have to see the numbers first.

[AirRabbit]

chornedsnorkack
and at 0.99c, you're racing forward in time as well.
It's hard enough to undertstand when it's explained over and over again so how did Einstein imagine it in the first place?
Awesome.
Actually, I think Dr."E" was saying that as you accelerate, you have no sensation of "time" being any different anywhere along your path of acceleration. However, to someone else, you may seem to be moving more slowly or more quickly. It is only the "relative" positions of these observers that allows consideration of a differentiation of this thing called "time."
And, regarding the hypothesis of "warping" the universe to place an intended destination physically more close to you, thereby decreasing the "distance" to that point ... Here is my 2 cents ...
I'm sure many, if not most, of you know, reaching the speed of light is nigh-on to being impossible if I understand physics correctly. As I understand Dr."E's" equation, as you accelerate something toward the speed of light, the mass of that something grows exponentially, toward infinity. This would necessitate a growth in the force necessary to act on that growing mass to continue the acceleration, and would require a growing energy function; likely at a rate greater than the increasing mass. Certainly there is little doubt that an infinitely powerful force would be needed to move an infintely large mass, let alone accelerate it to light speed -- so it is likely that one would need a force greater than an infinitely large one to achieve the necessary force to do this. Sorry folks. This is where I get off. I don't know how to multiply an infinite number -- what could the anser be? What is 6 times infinity? Infinity? Wait! I just multiplied that number by 6, what happened? And so the argument goes.
All of this is to say that I would think it would be a lot easier to generate enough "umph" (energy) to travel at close to the speed of light (let alone exceed it) than it would be generate the force, let alone the control, that would be necessary to "bend the known universe" (with all of its mass and space and distance) in such a way as to bring two distinct points in that universe (which as you also know are also moving away from each other at a pretty good clip themselves) into close proximity to one another so as to allow sub-light speeds to be sufficient to get from one to the other in anything that approaches a "reasonable" length of time (no pun intended).:ugh:

[cwatters]

You folks might find this interesting. The paper comes from a mainstream source part funded by the ESA..

http://www.arxiv.org/ftp/gr-qc/papers/0603/0603033.pdf

The interesting bit...

If confirmed, a gravitomagnetic field of measurable magnitude was produced for the first time in a laboratory environment.

[Slasher]

AirRabbit, its only if you try to accelerate to C locally, ie relative to the local space around you. Imagine you standing still on a travellater (your local space) which is moving at 10km/hr. Relatively your speed is zero. Walk along it at 7km/hr and your speed relative to an outside observer is 17km/hr.

If you travel at say .9C relative to the local space your in (which is what Bert E meant) whilst simultaneusly compressing the space ahead and expanding it behind, it "appears" (in terms of spacetime) to be faster than C from an outside observer.

Indeed Nature has proved that quasars at the remote outer edge of the observable Universe actualy move faster than light relative to us. Relative to its own space, a quasar moves sublight, just as Earth relative to its own is moving sublight. But relative to each other it is C+ because the space between the bodys is continually expanding and the rate of space expansion increases the nearer to the edge of the Universe. For the tech-minded some outer quasars have been measured as infinitely red-shifted.

[Diesel8]

Well, something is up:)

WRT. the speed of light, researchers have found, that subatomics particles, in certain pairs, even when seperated by considerable distances, can each instantly know, what the other is doing. In 1997 physicist sent photons seven miles in opposite directions and demonstrated that interferring with one provoked an instantenous repsonse in the other.

Secondly, in the world of atoms, scientist are starting to get away from the theory of electrons spinning around the atom, but instead it appears and disappears only to show up at another location without actually passing through the space in between. IOW being everywhere and nowhere at once.

It appears that on the subatomic level, the laws of physics, well at least as we understand them, does not apply.

[Willy Miller]

Hang on, if I arrive before I left will I OWE the company flight pay?
wait 'till ryanair hear about this..........:O