Posted on 09/17/2012 10:28:10 AM PDT by justlurking
A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.
A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A 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.
Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially bringing the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.
"There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Um, sure. I'm guessing that that "exotic matter" would be along the lines of unicorns that have been ground up and put through an atomic accelerator or some such. It has been a long time since I read any science fiction.
What about the effects on the human body during acceleration/deceleration?
If it is imaginable then it is entirely possible. People once used to scoff at all sorts of things that we now take for granted so I’m not going to be so quick to dismiss this. If the particles needed have not been encountered, but have been postulated, then at least we now know what we’re looking for.
Space, science, sci-fi pings?
Intriguing, thanks for posting.
Just use Unobtainium!
You don't have any unobtainium in your garage?
Seriously, the "original" Alcubierre drive also relies on exotic matter. The "breakthrough" that is claimed in this article is that modification of the geometry of the warp bubble reduces the energy requirement from "astronomical" to merely "large".
So to alleviate the device's requiring prohibitive amounts of energy to operate, it just needs to be made out of particles that haven't even been encountered.We've known that all along.
Dilithium Crystals 
As the key element in all Federation warp engine designs, the dilithium crystal mediates the reaction between the matter and anti-matter in a starship's main engine core.
Dilithium is the only material known to be non-reactive with antimatter when subjected to a high frequency electromagnetic (EM) field, rendering it "porous" to antihydrogen.
Dilithium permits antimatter to pass directly through it's crystalline structure without actually coming into contact with it, due to a field dynamo effect.
Once found only in nature, the technology of the 24th Century antieutectics enables the formation of pure, synthesized dilithium and dilithium matrix re-crystallization through the use of high energy photon injection.
Should be zero. You are “in” the bubble. The bubble is what is in motion. Your local bubbble-space/time reference wouldn’t change.
But does it run on “Green” energy?
If not, it won’t get Obama support. /s
There isn't any. You're warping spacetime, not moving through it. From the perspective of the central pod, you're not moving.
This has to be an established concept/theory. Or just a massive coincidence that shows like Star Trek have been using “Ringships” for 30+ years now.
The spaceship isn't traveling near the speed of light. It's traveling a normal spaceship speed. It's just warping space in front of it. So that instead of going A-B-C-D-E. It's just going A-E.
It's like bending the earth so that New York City is suddenly next to Nashville. You can go from Music Row to Broadway and Back in an hour, without ever going over 60.
Just as you feel acceleration in a car, or the Astronauts felt lifting off of the Moon.
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