Posted on 04/24/2015 10:35:10 PM PDT by Dallas59
“Star Trek” introduced the world outside of rocket science circles to the concept of warp drive – the propulsion system that allowed the starship Enterprise to travel faster than the speed of light. Warp speed is the holy grail that would let us explore the universe safely surrounded and protected by a space-distorting warp field. After watching the SpaceX rocket recently just try to land on a platform, you’d think this ability is years if not decades away. Yet the buzz on space websites is that NASA may have accidentally discovered a way to create a warp field. Wait, what?
To get around the theory of relativity, physicist Miguel Alcubierre came up with the concept of a bubble of spacetime which travels faster than the speed of light while the ship inside of it is stationary. The bubble contracts spacetime in front of the ship and expands it behind it. The warp drive would look like a football inside a flat ring. The tremendous amount of energy it would need made this idea prohibitive until Harold “Sonny” White of NASA’s Johnson Space Center calculated that making the ring into a donut shape would significant reduce the energy needs.
Beam me up, Scotty!
Bridge, this is the Captain speaking. Prepare for shock.
If that’s not a turboencabulated magneto-flux quasi capacitive Faraday reactance inductor, well then, by golly, I’ve never seen one. Scientist say it will be ready for mass production in about ten years.
Now to weaponize it.
Done.
Don’t know why but this had me thinking of the SyFy show 12 Monkeys. The time travel machine had many failures before it worked.
Sounds like an accident waiting to happen. Switch it on and u might end up at UrAnus.
Whatever that thing is, it’s no warp drive. Note the nylon gears in front of the narrow section.
How can they have warp if they haven’t invented impulse yet?
Ok, NASA:
“Let’s do
the Time Warp
again!”
How did they manage this without Dilithium crystals?
Apparently everyone in congress, and on the SC is functionally illiterate as none of them seem to comprehend "pass no laws respecting a religion".
Coffee.
Need deflectors too.
Hit a grain of spacedust while doing a relatively slow warp 1, and you’re nothing but a grease stain on Orion’s belt.
Looks like a commercial food mixer.
I don’t understand one dam word I’m reading in that article. I’m going back to watching the twilight zone. Darren from Bewitched is in this episode
Sounds like funding time is coming up soon...
Didn't they get those from Harcourt Fenton Mudd, or maybe it was from those miners on that distant planet, who were looking for wives?
I used to also think that.
However if you create a warp bubble, it might push matter outside the bubble out of the way.
I wouldn’t want to be on the first experimental ship however.
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