NASA Aeronautic Team Pursuing “Warp Drive”: New Calculations Project a Theoretically Obtainable Alcubierre Drive
A few months ago, Harold White was scoffed at by many scientists when he announced that his team has been looking into the production of a real-life Warp Drive (that’s a faster-than-life star ship for you non-geeks); his theory of choice? The Alcubierre Drive.
Although Einstein’s Relativity presents a roadblock for local objects from going faster than the speed of light, the Alcubierre Drive gets around this by creating a “bubble” that expands space-time behind it, while the space-craft inside the bubble is not violating General Relativity at a local level— space-time can expand and contract at any speed (discussed more in the article). An Alcubierre Drive allows travel to the nearest start system (Alpha Centauri) to be a two week trip (regardless of it being 4.3 light years away).
The Alcubierre Drive sounds like a great way around Einstein’s roadblock, but preliminary calculations suggest that the energy required to sustain an Alcubierre Drive for any duration would require the mass-energy parellel to the planet Jupiter.
Reinvigorated Hope
White asserts that his new calculations could theoretically create a sustainable warp drive; with a change in design geometry, the Alcubierre Drive could be created with the mass of Voyager 1— a profoundly dramatic mass-energy requirement, making a warp drive theoretically obtainable.
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