Posted on 05/10/2006 7:53:09 PM PDT by KevinDavis
What: A spacecraft that travels at faster-than-light speeds by distorting, or “warping,” the fabric of spacetime. Instead of trying to move through space, the warp drive moves space itself. The ship sits inside a bubble of spacetime bound by a negative energy field that races across the cosmos.
Why: Chemical and nuclear propulsion, solar sails and ion thrusters all are too slow to reach the nearest star systems within a human life span. At faster-than-light speed (more than 186,000 miles per second), a warp-drive ship would travel 4.5 light-years to Alpha Centauri, the closest sun to our own, in about four years.
Who: This warp-bubble model is based on thought experiments conducted by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, theoretical physicist Chris Van Den Broeck of Cardiff University in Wales and, most recently, by mathematician José Natário of the Higher Institute of Technology in Lisbon, Portugal.
Where: For now, warp drive exists only in science fiction.
When: Figure on some point between the distant future and never. Theoretical research continues to advance, but there’s no launch date in sight.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
The physicists have been watching too much Star Trek lately..
What's next? Replicators and transporters?
(Actually, they are plasuble in theory, as it does not violate any rule of physics to "Replicate" items out of existing matter. Transporting also does not violate rules of physics as you are not creating or destroying matter, you are only changing it's state)
pinger.
I prefer the hyperspace travel in Stargate and Battlestar Galactica...
A Heim model for a hyperdrive stated that such a hyperdrive could travel eleven lightyears in around eighty days.
Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Portugal are hardly cutting-edge space technologist countries.
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Naaah... It Will be called warp drive as a dedication to Star Trek, and because the process "Warps" space...
Maby they will call it the Roddenberry drive....
So the question is... Is a person who has been transported the same person who left, or a copy?
And what happens when a transporter duplicates someone? One soul or two?
And I've seen references to the fact that a replicator uses "stock" to recreate its stuff... Is that what happens to all the waste?
If so... our dumps would become "prime" real estate if they ever do get a replicator working. Lots of raw materials there.
I think replicators are going to be plausible within our lifetimes, we call them nano-assemblers.
I don't think the Star Trek variety transporters are remotely possible, it would take unfathomable power to do what is done on TV. However a small,controllable wormhole could accomplish the same thing as a transporter. But the technology to control space-time at will is still a bit beyond us. :)
Thanks.
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