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Warp Drive Might Be Less Impossible Than Previously Thought
runner_one writes "Harold 'Sonny' White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium that warp drive might be easier to achieve than earlier thought. The first concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy, studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter. But recent calculations showed that if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring the warp drive could be powered by the energy of a mass as small as 500 kg. Furthermore, if the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more."
If this thing truly "warps" space (no idea if it does) you could travel at effectively faster than light speed through a vacuum while never actually accelerating past the speed of light doing it...
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
It's funny how Sci-Fi becomes reality on a relatively short time scale. Think about the stuff on Star Trek that is reality today, granted not exactly like ST, but damnably close. The MRI is in my opinion the preeminent scanning technology now. And cell phones and hand held radios - they're all essentially SDR's now. My little Yaesu VX-7r is a quad band radio, and I remember back in 1992 my Kenwood TH-28 was only a dual band and didn't have a general coverage receiver on it like my little Yaesu.
I would happily throw 90% of the human race under a bus for a working warp drive.
Excuse me as I re-post what I already asked elsewhere in this article:
I don't see how FTL traveling implicates time travel. "Apparent" time travel i understand. But don't really see how it affects causality.
Let's say my sun explodes and I go to a nearby system 2 light years away at twice c. Once there I will warn everybody that the closest star is going nova in a year. Now let's say you want to prevent me from delivering these news. You look up to the sky and see my planet. Obviously it is still there isn't it? So you take my warp ship and try to go to my planet. By the time you get there you are only going to find a 2 years old cloud of hot gas.
If you travel at 4 c you will find a 1.5 years old gas cloud. Travel at 8 c to find a 1.25 years old gas cloud. Travel there at 16 c to find a 1.175 years old cloud.
Travel as fast as you want. You shouldn't ever get earlier than a year after my departure let alone prevent it. Now, it could be that someone find out about this and tries to intercept you by going there at twice your speed. They'll get there before you and it will surely take you by surprise but that's still not time travel from your point of view.
But... the future refused to change.