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Introducing the Warpship
astroengine writes "Dr. Richard Obousy, a guy who has put modern science into the warp drive, has designed his very own warpship. Now, for the first time, he's shared it with the world. It might not be the sleek Starship Enterprise, but its structure has been optimized to harness local 'dark energy,' generating a warp bubble so faster-than-light velocities are possible." Now, the only question is: will the ship achieve faster-than-light travel ... or will the company hit those speeds once it has enough money from investors?
How about we figure out how to warp time first and then figure out a ship to utilize that science for the sake of travel?
The physics behind the warpship is purely theoretical, however. 'Dark energy' needs to be understood and harnessed, plus vast amounts of energy needs to be generated, meaning the warpship is a technology that could only be conceived in the far future. That said, Dr. Obousy's warpship design uses our current knowledge of spacetime and superstring theory to arrive at this futuristic concept.
Translation: We have a theory based on a lack of theory.
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This article bothers me primarily because it simply recovers old ground on a theory of the possibility of warp travel. The idea of utilizing dark energy to create waves in space-time is hardly new or original and so what we end up seeing in front of us is a series of explanations about possible "space time bubbles" that we have no idea how to create, or even if they're technically feasible, supplemented by a few minor CAD renderings and a wonderful representation of a planar mesh. Pardon me if I'm not entirely enthused. There seems to be no real mention of any progress since this topic was last covered in the scientific press. In short, while a nice idea, it's an old theory and less than stellar (if you'll pardon the pun). This is more science fiction than science, in my opinion.
I like losing arguments, it just means that I can take your point and make it my own.
but this fully speculative article will only confuse people.
I can already hear my non-scientific-inclined friends assuring that it has been demonstrated by Dr. Blah that faster-than-light travel is absolutely possible and we even have the ship ready.
When Jules Verne wrote his masterpieces he made it clear that it was scientific fiction, and people thrilled shuffling the pages. He was later called a visionary, but he did not pretend to be a scientist, merely a very intelligent writer.
It bothers me when plausibly smart people make interesting points but place them in the wrong category - nothing wrong with being smart, creative, and wild but, please, let us distinguish science from speculation.
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