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International Thinktank Applied Physics (AP) has released its “Warp Factory” simulator and toolkit to help scientists and engineers move closer to building a real-world Star Trek-style warp drive. Having already established itself in the nascent field of warp mechanics with the previous release of its “physical warp drive” design in 2021, AP is now offering its expertise to the broader community to advance the development of existing and future warp drive concepts. The Public Benefit Corporation is also putting its money where its mouth is by offering warp field theorists a chance at $500,000 worth of grant money, a commitment...

Discovering a machine that could somehow produce thrust without releasing propellant would be a game-changer for human space travel. There’s just one problem—such a device would defy the laws of physics.

If you've been following my channel for a really long time, you might remember that some years ago I made a video about whether faster-than-light travel is possible. I was trying to explain why the arguments saying it's impossible are inconclusive and we shouldn't throw out the possibility too quickly, but I'm afraid I didn't make my case very well. This video is a second attempt. Hopefully this time it'll come across more clearly!I Think Faster Than Light Travel is Possible. Here's Why. | 23:46Sabine Hossenfelder | 943K subscribers | 1,569,919 views | April 8, 2023

Ever since astronomers found that Earth and the Solar System are not unique in the cosmos, humanity has dreamed of the day when we might explore nearby stars and settle extrasolar planets. Unfortunately, the laws of physics impose strict limitations on how fast things can travel in our Universe, otherwise known as Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Per this theory, the speed of light is constant and absolute, and objects approaching it will experience an increase in their inertial mass (thereby requiring more mass to accelerate further). While no object can ever reach or exceed the speed of light, there...

Warp Drive remained in the world of fiction until 1994 when Mexican Mathematician Miguel Alcubierre presented a mathematical model under which a human-piloted craft could theoretically exceed the speed of light. A decade passed, but quietly in the background, NASA brought in scientist Dr. Harold G. “Sonny” White in the mid-2000s to continue developing the Warp Drive. White made refinements to the original model, and in 2003 and 2011, significant leaps were made in Warp Drive theory, seemingly making the impossible a little more possible. Even more revisions have been, and today, the leading model for faster-than-light travel is dubbed...

The quantum world is notoriously weird. Single particles can be in two places at once, for example. Only by making an observation do we force it to 'choose'. Before an observation we can only assign probabilities to the likely outcomes. Such a picture cannot be reconciled with a smooth, continuous fabric of space-time. According to Einstein, space-time is warped by matter and energy, but quantum physics says matter and energy exist in multiple states simultaneously — they can be both here and over there. According to Einstein, space-time is like a stage that remains in place whether actors are treading...

Sailing through the smooth waters of vacuum, a photon of light moves at around 300 thousand kilometers (186 thousand miles) a second. This sets a firm limit on how quickly a whisper of information can travel anywhere in the Universe. While this law isn't likely to ever be broken, there are features of light which don't play by the same rules. Manipulating them won't hasten our ability to travel to the stars, but they could help us clear the way to a whole new class of laser technology. Physicists have been playing hard and fast with the speed limit of...

Faster than light travel is the only way humans could ever get to other stars in a reasonable amount of time. Credit: NASA The closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri. It is about 4.25 light-years away, or about 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km). The fastest ever spacecraft, the now-in-space Parker Solar Probe will reach a top speed of 450,000 mph. It would take just 20 seconds to go from Los Angeles to New York City at that speed, but it would take the solar probe about 6,633 years to reach Earth’s nearest neighboring solar system. If humanity ever...

The thorny thought experiment has been turned into a real experiment — one that physicists use to probe the physics of information ============================================================= It took physicists 115 years to tame Maxwell’s Demon. The universe bets on disorder. Imagine, for example, dropping a thimbleful of red dye into a swimming pool. All of those dye molecules are going to slowly spread throughout the water. Physicists quantify this tendency to spread by counting the number of possible ways the dye molecules can be arranged. There’s one possible state where the molecules are crowded into the thimble. There’s another where, say, the molecules...

Scientists at the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark have achieved quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time. The team managed to send information from one chip to another instantly without them being physically or electronically connected, in a feat that opens the door for quantum computers and quantum internet. This kind of teleportation is made possible by a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where two particles become so entwined with each other that they can “communicate” over long distances. Changing the properties of one particle will cause the other to instantly change too, no...

Spacecraft already navigate our solar system using gravity wells as slingshots. The same basic principles operate in the intense gravity wells around black holes, which bend not only the paths of solid objects, but light itself. If a photon, or a light particle, enters a particular region in the vicinity of a black hole, it will do one partial circuit around the black hole and get flung back in exactly the same direction. Physicists call those regions "gravitational mirrors" and the photons they fling back "boomerang photons." Boomerang photons already move at the speed of light, so they don't pick...

February 22, 2019 |   Salvatore Cezar Pais is a US Navy researcher. Salvatore has three amazing patents that would be incredible breakthroughs in physics if they are true. The least extreme is a patent for Piezoelectricity-Induced Room Temperature Superconductor. The other two patents are gravity wave generator and inertial mass reduction.If these could be realized as technologies then we are talking Star Trek level spaceships. The gravitational wave generator could be used for propellentless propulsion to near the speed of light. Being able to reduce inertia would also mean capabilities which currently seem beyond known physics.The more likely situation...

The concept of time travel has always captured the imagination of physicists and laypersons alike. But is it really possible? Of course it is. We're doing it right now, aren't we? We are all traveling into the future one second at a time. But that was not what you were thinking. Can we travel much further into the future? Absolutely. If we could travel close to the speed of light, or in the proximity of a black hole, time would slow down enabling us to travel arbitrarily far into the future. The really interesting question is whether we can travel...

It’s a staple of science fiction.... the idea of sending out spaceships with colonists and transplanting the seed of humanity among the stars. Between discovering new worlds, becoming an interstellar species, and maybe even finding extra-terrestrial civilizations, the dream of spreading beyond the Solar System is one that can’t become reality soon enough! For decades, scientists have contemplated how humanity might one-day reach achieve this lofty goal. And the range of concepts they have come up with present a whole lot of pros and cons. These pros and cons were raised in a recent study by Martin Braddock, a member...

So... it could still get us to Mars in 70 days? Physicists have just published a new paper that suggests the controversial EM drive - or electromagnetic drive - could actually work, and doesn't defy Newton's third law after all. In case you've missed the hype, here's a quick catch-up: a lot of space lovers are freaking out about the EM drive because of claims it could get humans to Mars in just 10 weeks, but just as many are sick of hearing about it, because, on paper at least, it doesn't work within the laws of physics. Despite that...

Figure 9 from “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight”Guest essay by Eric WorrallAn American scientist has made a remarkable conceptual breakthrough, a design for a non nuclear relativistic launcher, capable of accelerating thousands of deep space probes per year to 0.25C; fast enough to reach the nearest stars in 15 years. The system is extremely scalable – you could start with a small, low cost proof of concept launcher, and work up to bigger devices, capable of launching substantial probes into interstellar space. The system also has a practical alternative use – the full size version is powerful enough to deflect...

'The most widespread source of gravitation is the inertial mass, which produces permanent gravitational fields. 'At the opposite, electromagnetic fields could be used to generate artificial, or human-made, gravitational fields, that could be switched on or off at will, depending whether their electromagnetic progenitors are present or not.' The experiment would require major resources, but if successful, it would give humans the power to control the 'last of four fundamental forces,' not within our grips. Current research, the scientist argues, observes and aims to understand gravitational fields, but makes no attempts to change them. 'Somehow, studying gravity is a contemplative...

Photonic devices, which use light to transport large amounts of information quickly, have the potential to enhance or even replace the electronic devices that are ubiquitous in our lives today. But before such optical connections can be integrated into telecommunication systems and computers, researchers need to make it easier to manipulate light at the nanoscale. A new on-chip zero-index metamaterial makes this possible, opening the door for technological innovation and research. This new metamaterial was developed in the lab of Eric Mazur at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and is described in the...

Device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an “extra special dimension”Ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel, physicists have crafted a wormhole that tunnels a magnetic field through space. "This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible," said study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. "From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension."...

NASA developing faster-than-light space travel technology Concept could revolutionize travel [Video]