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Warp Engines In Development?
Toloran writes "Although a staple of Sci-Fi space travel, it is often deemed to be just that: Fiction. However, it seems that one is currently in development. "The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft. Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.""
I admit my science knowledge is somewhat lacking but what effects would a huge magnetic field have on the human body? Or would they be able to create some sort of shielding?
Because it costs money ?
The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine.
Wow, I just logged onto their "theoretical" website and bought me some "hypothetical" tickets. I'll be staying in the VaporWare Resorts located on the crater-rific Southern Highlands, where I'll play Duke Nukem Forever on my Cold-Fusion powered Phantom Game Console....
Sigh.
The engine is based on physical theory that doesn't exist, therefore, it's not based on anything.
There is no theory of gravity or electro-magnetism that ties these things together. If there were such a theory, it would be huge news indeed.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
The theoretical engine works by creating an intense dark energy field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft. Also, if a large enough dark energy field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.
And really, they might as well replace "magnetic" with "pork chop," for all the real science that's discussed here.
FTA: But this thing is not around the corner; we first have to prove the basic science is correct and there are quite a few physicists who have a different opinion.
Yeah. Like almost all of them. This, however, is the most reasonable statement made in the whole article.
I'm not normally on the "bash slashdot" bandwagon, but...come on. Since when are completely unsubstantiated claims that it might be possible someday to violate fundamental physical laws news? If they are, here's more news:
A method to cheaply and easily turn any given substance into gold has long been the goal of alchemy, and widely regarded as fantasy. However, it seems that one is currently in development. According to slashdot user Control Group: "the theoretical process works by imbuing heavy metals - such as lead - with the essence of the sun's emanatory spirit, resulting in the lead taking on a yellowish hue. Also, if enough essence is crammed into any given substance, the very nature of it is changed, allowing incredible transformations to be performed.
*eyeroll*
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
This is a paper on the subject. The only thing that differentiates this from crackpot science is that it is testable. The authors won an award from AIAA for suggesting a method for testing the theory. There is no reason to believe that the theory won't be falsified.
I think it says more about the science education of the high ranking military officers. Of course they have assistants, but who needs to listen to them? It's much more fun to say we're developing a warp drive than to ask someone who knows whether the theory behind it is crap.
I do think the way technology has followed the sci-fi writing is cool and all, but that doesn't mean that every idea in a sci-fi novel is worth spending tax money on.
In fact, they knew the cross section of lithium hydride so well that they managed to destroy most of the monitoring equipment when they were experimenting with the H-bomb....
From reading the New Scientist article the reason that people are taking the theory at least relatively seriously was because of its ability to very accurately predict the masses of various fundamental particles before current methods of doing so were developed iirc.
There are precidents. Remember what happened to the Curies?
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.
OK - so far, so good.
Um, what?! Granted I'm not a physicist or even a wanna-be, but if they had discovered (in the 50s!) the GUT/TOE that combines the gravitational force with the already unified electric, magnetic, and weak nuclear forces, I think I would have heard about it! Actually, I have heard of attempts, all of them recent and still in development (like string theory), and all of them lacking experimental verification.
If you're going to accept as 'so far, so good' the concept of a magnetically-induced gravitational field I don't see why you won't accept the multi-dimensional part.
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People are smart in various ways. The gentleman I was early referring to, for example, had memorized all the trig tables and could instantly tell you any of them, but often had trouble remembering where his car was parked. I've heard even better stories from people who knew Einstein. People make mistakes, and when you're talking about something with that many variables, energy output, gravity's affect on the atmosphere, inertia, etc., etc. I can see how people would disagree. I know I've been involved in projects where we performed an experiment simply because it was faster than checking and trying to resolve the differences between four different people's calculations, and that was just undergraduate stuff.
what do you mean by 'arbitrarily fast'? you get heavier and heavier, not faster when you approach C
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Even a casual look was enough to show the ideas were about interesting electromagnetic propulsion methods, which work for small models but just wont work for anything bigger. It amazed me that these papers got anywhere in the military and irritating that they had lasted for so long without someone adding a comment that it was totally unfeasible. Eh. Physical ignorance is timeless.
Depends on the physics. There was a bomber designed back in WWII that looked a lot like the B-2. However, it was very hard to control due to no vertical stabilizers. 50 years later and computer controls, we have one of the most impressive bombers ever built. The SCRAM Jet was SciFi until we got new materials, so were forward swept wings on a super sonic jet. Sometimes it's just a matter of letting practical science catch up with the theory. After all, if all it takes is more power, wait until you have a denser working power plant.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
It makes me think the editorial policy must have changed to read this article. Or maybe the editor is on holidays and they let the work experience intern handle this edition. Or maybe I blanked out for a few months and now it's April?
Anyhow, what bunk.
From several previous NS articles, we know that Magnetars have HUGE magnetic fields - they have the strongest known magnetic fields in nature. Yet they don't seem to be slipping into other dimensions and warping around the universe. But maybe we can only see the Magnetars who's magnetic fields are not strong enough to do that. That would make the field required for warp pretty damn strong. About, oh 100 to 1,000 trillion times the strongest field we can create in the lab today.
Well that should be easy to test then.
This is basic science at its finest.
Someone comes up with a theory that may permit FTL space travel. There isn't any known way to test the theory with the current techniques.
Sometime later someone comes up with a way to test the theory to see if it works or not (we are here).
If the theory works, the nature of human society changes forever as we become a true spacefaring race.
If the theory fails to hold up then we've disproven it and learned something new about the nature of the universe in the process (or possibly just confirmed a different conflicting theory).
By all means - bring on the experiments/tests!
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"Even monkeys fall from trees."
The purpose of antimatter is not energy production, it's high density energy storage.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I've seen some *really* whacky ideas based on science fiction rather than science fact move through the DOD that says more to me about the state of science education in the US than anything else.
The proper term is blue sky research projects. Only 1 out of 1,00 pays off, but when it does it is usually worth it.
Since when did antimatter become the ultimate in energy storage? Huge amounts of energy are wasted in its creation, and the subsequent annihilation of that antimatter to get energy back out is very small compared. It may still be a lot, but lead-acid batteries are FAR more efficient.
Okay, I googled a bit and found a paper that purports to calculate the effect.
It suggests that if you have two counter-rotating out-of-phase sinusoidally synchronous electromagnets with mu=100 and 60 amps through 10,000 turns of coils that you might see a fraction of a newton of force.
So the reasons you haven't seen this are:
a) The effect is small.
b) No one has ever thought to set up this experiment.
The theory this is based on has produced some remarkable results in predicting the existence, mass and half-life of various elementary particles, so perhaps it is worth the trouble of setting up the unusual conditions necessary to test for the predicted gravitational effect.
If you are clever enough, perhaps you could find a way to validate the theory with your big-ass magnet. Otherwise, you shall be left wallowing in the invariant gravitation well in which you find yourself trapped.
How could you possibly test such a theory? The fields required would destroy any computer or living being within. They already have problems doing MRIs, I can't imagine that much stronger of a field.
Excuse me? You actually believe that by the 70s we would have developed the technology to manufacture enough miniature atomic bombs for the ship to explode one every second as called for in the Orion design?
If I had to pick a fantasy I'd rather believe in this warp drive story.
Don't you think we would have heard about it at least in university science education if this was even remotely possible? A discovery that we could generate gravity fields as easily as that would be the biggest scientific and technological leap forward we could imagine. Just imagine the everyday consequences of being able to switch off/on gravity locally.
Apart from that - a sufficiently strong magnetic field will affect a person's body chemistry to say the least; my guess is that this would quickly be fatal.
If they're wrong, they'll be unable to find proof, and may spend lots of resources on trying and failing, but in the process odds are good they may find other interesting results. Being open minded about your results is well and good, but having a clear goal and believing in that goal is what keeps momentum up and drives work forwards.
A lot of improvements have come because some seeming crackpot have refused to accept failure and kept going and going and eventually solved a problem, even if it isn't always the problem they set out to solve, and even if what they wanted to achieve seemed to fly in the face of common sense or accepted science.
You need people who can believe just as much as you need sceptics to challenge them.