Warp Drive is Real! (Or is it?)

[tomBitonti]

A curious article on Washinton Post, and some followup links.

This looks like junk science, but, the pedegree looks real, so I'm pausing to get some better opinions.

My gut says its junk science and the post should be ashamed. Or, the idea that something like the Woodward effect could be a practical drive is junk. Anyways, the CGI for the space ship is pretty cool.

If my gut is correct and this is junk, then I am dismayed: What hope is there for us to obtain good information? Bad information seems to so easily displace good information.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-style-space-ship-the-ixs-enterprise/?hpid=z7

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20110023492

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodward_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_plasma_thruster

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Thx!

TomB

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

A curious article on Washinton Post, and some followup links.

This looks like junk science, but, the pedegree looks real, so I'm pausing to get some better opinions.

My gut says its junk science and the post should be ashamed. Or, the idea that something like the Woodward effect could be a practical drive is junk. Anyways, the CGI for the space ship is pretty cool.

If my gut is correct and this is junk, then I am dismayed: What hope is there for us to obtain good information? Bad information seems to so easily displace good information.

But do you think it's junk science?

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-style-space-ship-the-ixs-enterprise/?hpid=z7

“We wanted to have a decent image of a theory conforming Warp ship to motivate young people to pursue a STEM career,” Rademaker said in an e-mail interview.

It also appears to be a way to scam young people.

 

[GMMichael]

Bad information seems to so easily displace good information.

This is the driving force behind TV news, everything Fox, political debates, and psy-ops.

Ironically, you might have solved the mystery. Why not power a faster-than-light vehicle by placing bad information behind it, and good information in front?

 

[WayneLigon]

My gut says its junk science and the post should be ashamed. Or, the idea that something like the Woodward effect could be a practical drive is junk. Anyways, the CGI for the space ship is pretty cool.

It looks like they are following the path you should for the Effect: test, test and test again to eliminate influences that might be skewing the numbers and making you think there is something there when there is not, and involve other parties to see if they can replicate the effects.

 

[Umbran]

I haven't read over their work in detail, but my understanding is that the math is real enough. The idea isn't even particularly new - it floated by while I was in grad school, if I recall correctly. There were some more recent work that made it look like it might be easier - maybe even practical.

Time will tell.

 

[Hand of Evil]

The thing about it for me, I just think we are close to that next "big thing" in history. You know, that thing that just creates a spark that changes the world. Things like the wheel, roads, the new world, steam engine, electricity, flight, etc. This could be it, I kind of want it to be it.

It is a step and if they can get the math behind it to work....make it so!

 

[tomBitonti]

Hey, I'm all behind advancing our understanding of quantum mechanics and gravity.

But the idea sounds on par with making a worm-hold out of a ring / rotating singularity. There are maths that imply that something might work (but mostly have been shown that the result would be highly unstable and possibly emitting a huge quantity of radiation), and are not taken seriously as a kind of practical application of the physics.

In the papers that I found (the links that I posted), the force that was achieved was minute, with some indication that alternate effects could account for it. About on par with cold fusion producing tiny energy amounts, which have been attributed to errors in the experiment design.

Then, there is a real theory, but no demonstration of it as of yet, and since the maths are still incomplete, very probably the physical theory is either incomplete or wrong, but in either case nothing yet to place any expectation of a practical result.

Attaching a design and calling it "NASA's design for a spacecraft" gives the idea a reality which it doesn't have. Attaching the idea to NASA and putting it in the front page (online) of the Washington Post really is promoting it too strongly.

How many folks will have looked at the article and now think that NASA actually has plans to build the depicted spacecraft (or anything even close)?

What hope have we to help folks cope with real issues (climate change/global warming; disease control; genetics; environmental hazards; and more) if this gets such a misleading presentation?

Thx!

TomB

 

[trappedslider]

H

What hope have we to help folks cope with real issues (climate change/global warming; disease control; genetics; environmental hazards; and more) if this gets such a misleading presentation?

Considering we can't even get folks to agree on what the real issues are or how they are even issues to begin iwth..i fail to see an actual problem

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I haven't read over their work in detail, but my understanding is that the math is real enough. The idea isn't even particularly new - it floated by while I was in grad school, if I recall correctly. There were some more recent work that made it look like it might be easier - maybe even practical.

Time will tell.

The alcubierre drive seems theoretically possible, the biggest requirements were a large amount of negative mass (or energy, whatever?) to create the desired shape of spacetime (eg. contracing space in front, expanding behind you). I believe it was the Nasa scientists that leads the current project that found a solution that required less negative mass (e.g. the orignal was something in the area of Jupiter's mass, the new one around the mass of the Voyager probe).

I found a neat analogy for it:
The original theory required A million unicorns to propel a sled to FTL, the new one only requires one. That sounds a bit more feasible. Problem of courseis getting that unicorn.
The difference would be that unicorns very likely do not exist, for negative mass, we really don't know yet and it could go either way.
The current efforts seem to revolve around the Casimir effect that basically creates something that could be considered negative mass/energy.


I also remember that negative energy/mass was also a "thing" to do to create wormholes that could be stable. (Beware I am just a layman with an interest, Umbran probably knows more about this than me. I rely on lies for children, students and readers-of-popular-science-books.)




But overall, considering how much this story floated on the web this week, I think this is basically advertisement for NASA and its research projects. Maybe to get more people interested in pursuing a science career, maybe to justify funding. I am okay with that. I just hope no one expects he'll be able to book a flight to Eta Eridani in a few years to visit Spock's grand-grand parents or something like that.

ut the idea sounds on par with making a worm-hold out of a ring / rotating singularity. There are maths that imply that something might work (but mostly have been shown that the result would be highly unstable and possibly emitting a huge quantity of radiation), and are not taken seriously as a kind of practical application of the physics.

​

Funny, I also remember a story about how the Alcubierre drive would also cause huge amounts of radiations due to all the particles collected during the FTL travel. Stopping the engine would release a giant, destructive wavefront.

It's interesting how the two basic FTL theories seem to have 2 common elements.
- Require negative energy/mass
- Cause huge radiation.


​

 

[freyar]

Well, this is probably less a waste of money than when the DoD had psychics hunting for bin Laden. But maybe not by much.

I think Mustrum's unicorn analogy is pretty good. With the caveat that I didn't read anything technical on NASA's new work (and after a reasonable search, haven't found anything technical Harold White wrote in normal scientific channels after 2006), I don't see anything particularly or obviously wrong. However, some of the non-technical "white paper" kind of documents linked in some of the sources tomB found contain a lot of irrelevant blather that make me suspicious of whether the purported calculations are correct. And, even if they are, I'd say we are at best a very very long way from using any similar kind of technology. And it's still completely speculative at the moment.