Long home to science fiction, traveling faster than the speed of light is quite commonplace as heroes and villains alike zip around their galaxy in an effort to engage each other.

It has become so popular, in fact, that you would be hard pressed to find anyone on Earth that didn’t know about the concept.  Now it seems that scientists could have accidentally brought the notion of faster than light travel out of the realm of science fiction and into real science.

The idea of traveling to other planets at speeds much faster than light has seemed impossible for a long time.  If only it were possible, planet to planet exploration would be almost instantaneous and open the galaxy up for man to explore.

However, much of the scientific community has long believed that traveling at speeds faster than light is physically impossible, no matter the material, and accelerating something to those types of speeds simply can’t happen.

But, there are those in the scientific community that do believe that faster than light travel is possible, and one team may have just accidentally stumbled onto faster than light travel.

A team of researchers at NASA unintentionally accelerated particles to faster than light speeds using the EmDrive resonance chamber.  If their findings turn out to be accurate, the team may have just discovered faster than light travel.

The EmDrive is a proposed method of interstellar propulsion and could even end up being the engine that propels starships through the galaxy in the future. 

There are many advantages to using this engine.  It’s electrically powered; it doesn’t have any moving part and doesn’t require any material fuel to move.  If it does work as planned, there is a good shot that this could be the first step in the design of a brand new engine.

NASA is currently studying the new technology for future use, but no one expected these types of results.  When the team of researchers fired lasers into the resonance chamber, the particles were accelerated to astronomical speeds, with some even exceeding the speed of light.

“…this signature (the interference pattern) on the EmDrive looks just like what a warp bubble looks like. And the math behind the warp bubble apparently matches the interference pattern found in the EmDrive.”

So what does this mean for space travel as we know it?

Well, it is possible that NASA accidentally created a warp bubble that could, in theory allow for fast travel between the planets of our solar system and beyond. While it sounds like something out of Star Trek, it is indeed now a part of real science.  If the EmDrive were able to create a stable warp bubble, traveling the stars will become easier than ever and could propel the human face to where no one has gone before.

Thanks to a NASA physicist, the notion of warp speed might just travel out of sci-fi and into the real world.

NASA’s Harold White has been working since 2010 to develop a warp drive that will allow spacecraft to travel at speeds faster than light — 186,000 miles per second.

White, who heads NASA’s Advanced Propulsion Team, spoke about his conceptual starship
at a conference last fall. But interest in his project reached a new level this week when he unveiled images of what the craft might look like.

Created by artist Mark Rademaker, who based them on White’s designs, the images show a technologically detailed spacecraft that wouldn’t look out of place in a “Star Trek” movie. Rademaker says creating them took more than 1,600 hours.

For now, warp speed is only possible in TV and movies, with both “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” referencing an idea that was completely speculative at the time. White has fittingly named the concept spacecraft IXS Enterprise, for the starship famously piloted by Captain James T. Kirk in the “Star Trek” TV series and movies.

At the SpaceVision 2013 Space Conference last November in Phoenix, White talked about his design, the concepts behind it and the progress that’s been made in warp-drive development over the decades. He discussed the idea of a “space warp,” a loophole in the theory of general relativity that would allow for massive distances to be traveled very quickly, reducing travel times from thousands of years to days.

In his speech, White described space warps as faraway galaxies that can bend light around them. They work on the principle of bending space both in front of and behind a spacecraft. This would essentially allow for the empty space behind the craft to expand, both pushing and pulling it forward at the same time. The concept is similar to that of an escalator or moving walkway.

“There’s no speed limit on the expansion and contraction of space,” White said at the conference. “You can actually find a way to get around what I like to call the 11th commandment: Thou shall not exceed the speed of light.”

It’s the idea of space warps that inspired physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994 to first theorize a mathematical model of a warp drive that would be able to bend space and time. While studying Alcubierre’s equations, White decided to design his own retooled version of the Alcubierre Drive. His recently unveiled design has much less empty space than the first concept model, increasing its efficiency.

The warp drive that White’s team has been working on would literally transcend space, shortening the distance between two points and allowing the craft to break the speed of light. This would be a spaceship with no speed limit.

Because travel into space has been extremely limited due to existing means of propulsion, such a technology could blow open the possibilities of space exploration. It could allow for study of the farthest reaches of space, parts that scientists once considered unimaginable.

Although the technology to create the spacecraft or the warp drive doesn’t yet exist, the artistic renderings Rademaker created could potentially be a model of what’s to come — the first spacecraft to break the speed-of-light barrier and journey beyond our solar system.

In his design, White says he drew from Matthew Jeffries’ 1965 sketches of the Enterprise from “Star Trek,” saying parts of that ship were mathematically correct. He worked with Rademaker and graphic designer Mike Okuda to update the math and produce what he believes to be a viable spacecraft.

According to NASA, there hasn’t been any proof that a warp drive can exist, but the agency is experimenting nonetheless. Although the concept doesn’t violate the laws of physics, that doesn’t guarantee that it will work.

“We’re starting to talk about what the next chapter for human space exploration going to be,” White said at SpaceVision.

We ARE the CHAMPIONS of the 3R’S : REDUCE, RECYCLE, AND REUSE. Our products are FROM 100% RECYCLED PAPER. WE ARE HEARTH FRIENDLY !!! ASK FOR OUR “PleatPak” for your NEXT BURGER.

 

Visitors: 64115