Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say

:: Not to worry. You got it wrong, so you're safe with your wife. My
:: head knew the 'Original Series' system, which is based on cubes, as
:: you said, but it's not C that gets raised to a power. That would
:: make even Warp 2 preposterously fast.

Really? Hm. C is 1 lightyear per year, so
C squared is 1 lightlightyearyear per yearyear.
Doesn't sound all that fast to me.

David Spain ) writes:
A quote from the article and a comment...

/quote
Warping space-time

An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft
attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of
exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship,
creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space
behind.

Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat
space-time that wasn't being warped at all.

"Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light,"
explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit
group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar
spaceflight. "But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of
space, is not limited by the speed of light."

With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective
speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the
cosmic speed limit.

The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would
require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the
planet Jupiter.

But recently White calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring
encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as
opposed to a flat ring. He found in that case, the warp drive could be
powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1
probe NASA launched in 1977.
/end-quote

Are we just re-inventing the flying saucer?

Re-inventing?

--John Park

---------------------------
Janus, a novel
http://chizinepub.com/books/janus.php

Wayne Throop ) writes:
:: Not to worry. You got it wrong, so you're safe with your wife. My
:: head knew the 'Original Series' system, which is based on cubes, as
:: you said, but it's not C that gets raised to a power. That would
:: make even Warp 2 preposterously fast.

Really? Hm. C is 1 lightyear per year, so
C squared is 1 lightlightyearyear per yearyear.
Doesn't sound all that fast to me.

Or c ~ 0.3 parsec / year

c^2 ~ 0.1 parsec^2 / year^2. Positively sluggish.

--John Park

---------------------------
Janus, a novel
http://chizinepub.com/books/janus.php

On 9/27/2012 1:34 AM, John Park wrote:
David Spain ) writes:

Are we just re-inventing the flying saucer?

Re-inventing?

--John Park

---------------------------
Janus, a novel
http://chizinepub.com/books/janus.php


:-)