NASA starts building faster-than-light warp engine

rt.com ^ | 7/24/13 | Rt.com

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

NASA starts building faster-than-light warp engine Get short URL Published time: July 23, 2013 19:06 Edited time: July 24, 2013 14:39

Researchers at NASA’s Texas-based Johnson Space Center are trying to prove that it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light, and hope to one day build an engine that resembles the fictional Starship Enterprise.

NASA physicist and engineer Dr. Harold G. White, 43, believes it is possible to bend the rules of time and space that Albert Einstein constructed when he postulated that it is impossible to exceed the speed of light.

White's research is based on the theories of Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, who in 1994 theorized that exceeding Einstein’s galactic speed limit was possible if scientists discovered a way to harness the expansion and contraction of space. And Harold and his team are trying to do just that.

[LyinLibs]

Obama put moslems in charge of NASA.

What could go wrong?

[FroggyTheGremlim]

Child's play.

Build a standard rocket engine, then ...

insert "expansion and contraction of space" harness mechanism somewhere between the inlet and outlet nozzles.

Woooosh, there you go.

[Hardraade]

The NASA standard is FTML

[Rashputin]

". . . they're going to "try to prove" something by building something?? "

Oh, Hell no. They know better than that but they also knows what wins grant money and gets funding requests approved.

[left that other site]

Good Gawd...I’ll never quote Scotty again on this site.

[Hot Tabasco]

If it is faster than light, how can they keep up with it to build it....

Good question but for what it's worth, they won't need headlights.......That'll save some bucks.

[Windflier]

We'll be long dead before these fun things come to pass.

True, but I want to see what the state of the art is in 2060. I should be pushing about 20 years old around then ;-)

[Windflier]

Does anybody really know what time it is?

It's an apparency only.

[Windflier]

Don’t forget, they will also need to invent artificial gravity and inertial dampeners too.

Not if we figure out how to keep an object in a static position, then move the space around it.

In the end, I think the solution to FTL travel will involve something like that.

[Overtaxed]

Does anybody really care?

[Windflier]

“Well the skunk works is usually 30-50 years ahead of what is publically released....”

A credible source once told me 100 years ahead...

Black triangles, anyone? I'm convinced that they're ours.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Send the Won on its first voyage, oh too bad the dilithium crystals cracked when he was in the vicinity of Vega....

[HiTech RedNeck]

If they can send even a drone on such a journey it will be a proof that it’s practical. I don’t know what the transition from subwarp to superwarp would be like. I’d think it would be impossible to keep the ship, such as it would be, intact.

[Stonewall Jackson]

Only way it’ll work is if they can talk Zefram Cochrane into heading the team. ;-)

[Windflier]

I don’t know what the transition from subwarp to superwarp would be like. I’d think it would be impossible to keep the ship, such as it would be, intact.

I'm far from an expert, but I've done a bit of curious reading about the theory behind faster than light travel via bending space over the years.

If what's being proposed by certain physicists can be accomplished, the ship and its occupants wouldn't feel a thing during such a trip. In fact, they wouldn't even have a sensation of movement.

[from occupied ga]

Well, smart guys said the speed of sound was a physical barrier, too.

Is that supposed to make some sort of point?

[CodeToad]

I can’t believe you didn’t get the point.

[from occupied ga]

I can’t believe you didn’t get the point.

Sorry I should have been more explicit. I realized what you were trying to say, but I didn't consider it to be valid.

Just because some people were proved wrong about something in the past in no way makes a valid analogy that einstein was wrong about the universal speed limit. I consider your analogy to be irrelevant.

[CodeToad]

Really? This direct analogy escapes you?

[from occupied ga]

Really? This direct analogy escapes you?

Your analogy doesn't escape me. I don't agree with it.