Posted on 06/12/2014 5:59:24 PM PDT by Para-Ord.45
Looking like something out of Ender’s Game, this illustration comes courtesy NASA physicist Harold White, who collaborated with an artist to reveal what a warp drive ship might actually look like. Back in 2012, White revealed that he and a team were designing a faster-than-light ship. This is the first hint at its appearance.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
“Didn’t Einstein theorize that when something approaches light speed it gets larger until it reaches infinite mass?”
Well, it’s probably more sensible to look at it the other way round. The relativistic mass increases as it approaches light speed, as it takes more and more force applied to accelerate the object, as if it were getting heavier. The actual (rest) mass of the object isn’t changing, only the apparent mass to an observer changes. So, the result is that, to accelerate the object to actually reach light speed would require an infinite force. Since there are no infinite forces, nothing massive can be accelerated to light speed, so nothing ever actually reaches an infinite relativistic mass.
The theory behind the warp drive gets around this by not actually accelerating the ship that much in order to travel. The idea is to generate a “warp field”, which is basically just a theoretical kind of gravity field, in order to warp spacetime and thereby shrink the distance between the ship and the destination. Imagine, instead of a mouse crawling across the table to get some cheese, the mouse pulls the tablecloth to himself, until the distance between the cheese and himself is zero.
it seems like infinite mass would be required to bend space/time and, thereby, allow travel across light years worth of distance in light second worth of time.
Some ‘light reading’ and well worth the buy
http://www.amazon.com/Hyperspace-Scientific-Odyssey-Parallel-Universes/dp/0385477058
Well, that’s true, but you still have the fundamental problem that we have to make some theoretical breakthroughs to make any of this work, and we don’t know if those breakthroughs can be made until we make them. I don’t think a computer, or even a quantum computer will help us much there. The human brain is still what we have to rely to make the necessary creative leaps. So, until we get the next Einstein we’ll probably just keep wondering if it is possible.
Indeed. He believes the mass of an automobile per light year traveled is feasible.
I look at it in a Runsfeldian way. the whole “things we know we dont know” ect.
The computing will only allow us to test the theories ect. BUT, we can get through the theories quicker, whatever they may be. And that increased rate of discovery/rejection will save much time...ergo faster development leading to another development ect.
Of what? I dont know. But whatever we learn, we learn massively faster.
I was looking for an animated gif of a star ship and that popped up on image search.
I just sorta hadda post it.
White is actually far more humble about the results of his experiments than many other scientists who speak about it.
I saw a segment about his experiments on Futurescape narrated by James Woods this winter. Seems that he was able to achieve more of a warp by pulsing the energy at a certain frequency.
Two hundred and fifty years ago so much of what we have now wasn’t scientifically feasible for the time. It wasn’t even imagined. Consider atomic energy, radiation, radio, lasers, airplanes, electricity, quantum mechanics. The list is virtually endless. One may argue that the scientific principles were there to be found and that is true. I would argue that the scientific principles for faster than light travel and many other great achievements are waiting to be found. And found they will be. When they are they will become scientific principles rather than dreams or fantasy. The ship shown in the article is just an artists conception. Pretty but just a dream. The reality will be shall we say more down to earth? At least that is my bet.
In the 5th grade, I used to draw pictures of space ships. Maybe I should post some of those.
“Very cool. A beautiful visions.”
Probably a $100,000 visual aid .... courtesy of your tax dollars.
There ya go. A new discovery that varying the frequency seems to enhance the effect. Thanks for that information. I was not aware. Bet no one was just ten years ago. Few of the folks that make breakthroughs have the support of their peers.
I’ll take two of the blonds and four Grace.
Send the bill to NASA
Well, all it needs is some “unobtanium”.
they can’t even get a guy to the iss, but they think they can build this.
nasa - not a space agency
i think it’s sad and often dangerous for the rest of us when actual science folks confuse science fiction with reality.
So that's what infinite a** looks like! Oh, mass… never mind...
There are a lot of scientists trying to figure out what dark matter is. Some theorize that we'll soon be able to create new elements in the periodic table that will be stable and will mimic dark matter. This may be the key to unlock the secrets of creating our own gravity fields, as well as unleashing massive amounts of energy required for traveling in space. We're close to creating heavy elements that would only require a couple grams to create a nuclear bomb (currently requiring a pound and a half or so of a lighter element such as plutonium or uranium). We may have our hoverboards soon.
OK. I want one.
if we had the technology to exceed the speed of light, the shape of the vehicle would be irrelevant
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