US military to use warp drive for space travel

[Vendetta]

There was someone hypothesising about Trek style warp travel once. The only trouble was that actually making it work would, like most FTL solutions, require more than the total energy content of the universe.

[Base Delta Zero]

Well... I somehow doubt that FTL will be coming around in just a few years, let alone that the government would tell anyone... unless they've had it for a while... </Tinfoil Hat>. You'll have to wait a while longer...

On the other hand... the article reeks of a joke. They managed to use both 'Warp' and 'Hyperdrive' to describe it, whereas the people that actually research such things use long technobable terms like (Example) "Space/Time Contraction For Alteration of Velocity and Superluminal Navigation" to disguise the fact that they really mean 'FTL' because people are leery of funding that...

Damn... that tinfoil hat managed to creep back onto my head... I'll have to leave before I start posting about people being abducted by demonic aliens that work for the Illuminati...

[McC]

Cross-posting the links that spikenigma posted in SLAM.

New Scientist article (paid subscription required to view full article)

Scotsman.com Article (mentioning potential prototype in 5 years)

Source paper (at least, apparently)

I'm most particularly interested in what our resident physics officionados think about the paper, which is pretty technical. Granted, the Sun is never to be trusted, but New Scientist too? The AIAA handing these guys "Paper of the Year" award for this paper? There appears to be more here than just tabloid tripe...

[Winston Blake]

A Mars mission, under the same assumptions as a flight to the moon, would need an acceleration phase of 414 hours. The final velocity would be v= gt = 1.49×106 m/s. The total flight time to Mars with acceleration and deceleration is 34 days. Entering parallel space, a transition is possible at a speed of some 3×104 m/s that will be reached after approximately 1 hour at a constant acceleration of 1g. In parallel space the velocity increases to 0.4 c, reducing total flight time to some 2.5 hours. For an interstellar mission see (Dröscher and Hauser, 2004).

As far as i can tell (I'm no physicist), the idea is that you get a v<<c reactionless propulsion which can be boosted by "phase two of the field propulsion" involving entering a "parallel-space" which still gives v<c but can reach 0.4c. The "may eventually be superluminal" bit seems to be somewhat pie-in-the-sky. So it's not meant to be an FTL drive, it's supposed to be a relativistic reactionless drive. Still, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and i'll wait if mainstream physicists to get excited before i allow a torrent of rabid fanboyishness to burst forth.

[Raw Shark]

Still, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and i'll wait if mainstream physicists to get excited before i allow a torrent of rabid fanboyishness to burst forth.

Let's imagine it was real for a sec and the torrent of rabid fanboyishness was bursting forth all over. Magic Carpet Ride playing everywhere! C'mon, you know you want it.

[spikenigma]

I think the real question is - where's kuroneko?

[Molyneux]

Oh, I hope...
I have nothing close to the physics background necessary to understand this - but I'm really hoping they're not talking out of their asses.

[Prozac the Robert]

Well, the linked paper matches the title you get from web of knowledge, so I suspect it's a real paper. I'll give it a read, but no promises on my ability to understand it.

[edit]Nope, don't understand most of it. Some of it seems pretty dodgy, but I can't say for sure since it might make sense when combined with the rest of it, and I don't really want to quote out of context so I'll let the rest of you have a look for yourselves.[/edit]

[jegs2]

Man will never break the light barrier with space vessels - mark it. Then there's the whole mess with time slowing down the closer to the speed of light you get and all that.

If I end up being wrong, feel free to dig up my post and rub it in my face.

[Ghost Rider]

Man will never break the light barrier with space vessels - mark it. Then there's the whole mess with time slowing down the closer to the speed of light you get and all that.

If I end up being wrong, feel free to dig up my post and rub it in my face.

If you end up being wrong, I'll take my time machine and show you the future.

As for this thing, truly wishful thinking at it's fucking finest.

[Ender]

As for this thing, truly wishful thinking at it's fucking finest.

The part about the space drive, or the part about us wanting to get with the page 3 girl?

[McC]

As for this thing, truly wishful thinking at it's fucking finest.

Um...why? Is their math wrong? I'm less referring to the FTL part (which is exciting, but much more 'down the road') than the potential for actually hitting on a working grand unified theory. That would be a tremendous breakthrough in its own right.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Cross-posting the links that spikenigma posted in SLAM.

New Scientist article (paid subscription required to view full article)

Scotsman.com Article (mentioning potential prototype in 5 years)

Source paper (at least, apparently)

I'm most particularly interested in what our resident physics officionados think about the paper, which is pretty technical. Granted, the Sun is never to be trusted, but New Scientist too? The AIAA handing these guys "Paper of the Year" award for this paper? There appears to be more here than just tabloid tripe...

The whole New Scientist article can be found here.

(This was linked to from an article in The Register)

It is possible, evidently, to verify the theoretical results experimentally. All one needs is:

...a huge rotating ring placed above a superconducting coil to create an intense magnetic field. With a large enough current in the coil, and a large enough magnetic field, Dröscher claims the electromagnetic force can reduce the gravitational pull on the ring to the point where it floats free.

However, most engineers are quick to point out that the coil is not feasible given existing materials and technology. Physicists find Heim's theory moslty incomprehensible, even before adding in the extension that would make this anti-gravity force possible. It seems to be generally agreed that the theory is probably incomplete and could use a lot of introduction and clarification. Really, about the only thing working in the theory's favor is its apparent ability to accurately predict the masses of elementary particles, so it's a fair bit more credible than the usual hyperdrive woo-woo nonsense.

[Drooling Iguana]

From the second page of the source paper:

Furthermore,the spontaneous order that has bee observed i the universe is opposite to the laws of thermodynamics, predicting the increase of disorder or greater entropy (Strogatz 2003).Everywhere highly evolved structures ca be seen, which is a enigma for the science of today.

Make of that what you will.

[Dooey Jo]

...a huge rotating ring placed above a superconducting coil to create an intense magnetic field. With a large enough current in the coil, and a large enough magnetic field, Dröscher claims the electromagnetic force can reduce the gravitational pull on the ring to the point where it floats free.

That sounds reminiscent of Podkletnov's supposed anti-gravity device. But that one was a rotating super-conducting disc placed above normal coils, I think.

Still, is a hugely powerful magnetic field all it takes to affect gravity according to the theory? Shouldn't magnetars, or even normal neutron stars then be expected to exhibit some anti-gravitational properties?

[Winston Blake]

Still, is a hugely powerful magnetic field all it takes to affect gravity according to the theory? Shouldn't magnetars, or even normal neutron stars then be expected to exhibit some anti-gravitational properties?

The best lies include an element of truth. The Gravity Probe B stuff looked for gravitomagnetic frame-dragging (not a gravity-magnetism connection, but analogous to charge vs magnetism) around the earth as predicted by general relativity. I'm pretty sure black holes and neutron stars actually are supposed to have a big wacky gravitational effect as a result of so much mass spinning so fast.

IIRC there was some asian-female-physicist-led team trying to use superconducting whateverism to get a small mass (ions in a disk) spinning up to some ungodly speed to get the same effect.

I think the real question is - where's kuroneko? :Confused:

That's what i was thinking. I need him to ruthlessly crush my irrational hopes of superphysics and a galactic empire by my 100th birthday. Bring on humanity's first star-war!

[Durandal]

I'm most particularly interested in what our resident physics officionados think about the paper, which is pretty technical. Granted, the Sun is never to be trusted, but New Scientist too? The AIAA handing these guys "Paper of the Year" award for this paper? There appears to be more here than just tabloid tripe...

I skimmed the beginning of the paper. From what I can tell, whoever wrote it is proposing a mechanism based on explanations for what are purely theoretical concepts and interactions, such as dark energy. (New research might show that dark energy isn't even required to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe, which would kind of throw a wrench in this whole "fundamental interaction with dark matter" thing.)

Put simply, I'll believe it when I see it.

[Durandal]

From the second page of the source paper:

Furthermore,the spontaneous order that has bee observed i the universe is opposite to the laws of thermodynamics, predicting the increase of disorder or greater entropy (Strogatz 2003).Everywhere highly evolved structures ca be seen, which is a enigma for the science of today.

Make of that what you will.

That reeks of bullshit. What's a "highly-evolved structure"? A planet? A star? As far as I know, the only exceptions to the second law of thermodynamics occur at the quantum level. Macroscopic and relativistic entities are consistent in following it.

It's not hard to couch a bullshit conclusion in a bunch of math. Trust me. But here's the thing about bullshit papers. The error is not in the math. The math is simply there to form a vague connection to legitimacy. If your bullshit detector is spiking, the first thing you should do is ignore math and concentrate on statements like the one above. Seemingly innocuous ones that kind of make you scratch your head. Your first instinct will be "But how could someone who understands all this complicated math make a mistake like that? I must be wrong."

Don't succumb! The math is there for the express purpose of making you throw in the intellectual towel!