Scientists FINALLY Discover a New Way To Travel 10 Times Faster Than Light.
Ever since the sound barrier was broken, the attention of achieving the next breakthrough
was therefore turned towards breaking the light-speed barrier.
But physics seems reluctant to allow humans to travel as fast as light.
Even though it might be impossible, if we think outside the box, instead of trying to
comply with rules of physics, perhaps there’s a way to bend time and space to our will.
Creating a vehicle that would allow traveling at speeds greater than that of light, by equipping
it with a superluminal spacecraft propulsion system seems more conceivable.
You’ve heard of it before if you’ve ever seen a sci-fi space flick.
It’s called warp drive.
While the concept has been quite popular more in science fiction, the seemingly fictional
idea may not be as unrealistic as scientists once thought.
In this video, you’ll learn the details of how us Earthlings are on the verge of traveling
10 times the speed of light.
Welcome back to Space Infinity.
Be sure to follow the protocol as we blast off into the depths of space.
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The Cosmic Speed Limit The cosmic speed limit, otherwise known as
the speed of light, postulates that nothing can travel faster than it.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity states that energy and mass are interchangeable,
and speed of light travel is impossible for material objects that have a non-zero rest
mass.
This implies that objects traveling at light speed requires an infinite amount of kinetic
energy in order to travel at exactly the speed of light.
However, theoretically, the dilemma can be solved by warping space around the object
to move it, instead of increasing the boost needed to match the kinetic energy to achieve
light speed.
A warp drive system just may be the device to make it happen.
The general concept of “warp drive” was introduced by author John W. Campbell in his
1957 novel “Islands of Space”, a book that is largely credited with introducing
the warp drive and hyperspace to science fiction.
It was however, in the universe of the much loved TV and Film series Star Trek, that these
and many more concepts of technological advancement became more mainstream.
In Star Trek, humanity ventures out into the galaxy on April 5th, 2063, by utilizing the
first ever journey on a ship that is capable of faster-than-light travel.
This newly-invented “Star Trek warp drive” not only allowed humans to explore other cosmos,
but brought about countless journeys further into the final frontier of space, “where
no man has gone before”.
The Speed of Light Speed The speed of light is a universal physical
constant that is approximately 300,000 kilometers per second.
To provide some reference, in the science fiction world of Star Trek, the Starship Enterprise
could achieve maximum warp velocity of nine thousand times past the speed of light.
Comparing this to humanity’s current achievements, consider the Juno Probe which orbited Jupiter
from 1995 to 2003.
It traveled space at a maximum speed of 74 kilometers per second, amounting to just 0.0002
times the speed of light.
Another example is Voyager 1, which has travelled farthest from Earth of any spacecraft in history.
It is now over 21 billion kilometers from Earth.
It took Voyager 1 nearly 35 years to leave the Solar System, and despite currently traveling
further with speeds of over 56,000 kilometers per hour, it’s still traveling at 0.00005
times the speed of light and will take nearly 40,000 more years before reaching the nearest
star, Proxima Centauri, which lies approximately 4.2 light-years from Earth.
Another reference is the Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo 11 spacecraft into space.
It traveled at 40,000 kilometers per hour.
If you were only able to travel at the speed of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, it would take
113,000 years to even get close to Proxima Centauri.
And even if humans were able to create a fast moving starship that could travel near or
at the speed of light, our potential destinations would still be limited.
The universe, as we all know, is unimaginably large.
The Unconceivable Distances of Space A light year is used to describe the distance
between objects, referring to how long it takes for light to arrive here on Earth.
One light year is approximately 9 trillion kilometers away.
Even when travelling at the speed of light, it would take 8.3 minutes to reach the Sun,
and 2.5 Million light years to reach our closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, which would
mean that we would need tremendously faster means than the speed of light as reference
if we ever hope of being the inter-stellar society we see in science fiction.
While the rate of our current technological progress may seem unfeasible for humanity
to develop the means for inter-stellar travel, theoretical physicists, scientists and engineers
continue to work on finding the solutions needed to develop the technology, possibly
even within our lifetime.
While the concepts of warp drive systems may seem highly theoretical inspired only by science
fiction, the concept is based on some real physics.
And here they are.
Alcubierre Warp Drive In more modern times, the concept of faster
than light travel arose with the first scientific theory of warp drive that came in 1994.
Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre used Einstein’s theory of General Relativity
during his PhD study at the University of Wales, Cardiff, to develop a framework that
would allow traveling faster than the speed of light within the confines of the laws of
physics.
The Theory of Relativity states that as objects travel faster and faster, they get heavier
and heavier.
The heavier these objects get, the harder it is to achieve acceleration, thus never
achieving the speed of light.
Only things with no mass, such as photons, can travel at those tremendous speeds.
Theoretical Physicist Miguel Alcubierre developed a theoretical workaround, which is now known
as the “Alcubierre Drive”.
Alcubierre wrote in his paper’s abstract, “By a purely local expansion of spacetime
behind the spaceship and an opposite contraction in front of it, motion faster than the speed
of light as seen by observers outside the disturbed region is possible”.
For a better understanding, basically, an Alcubierre drive would be able to expend a
tremendous amount of energy to contract and twist space-time in front of it and create
a bubble.
This bubble would be the inertial reference frame where explorers would feel no proper
acceleration.
The rules of physics would still apply within the bubble, but the ship would be traveling
with great speeds in the vastness of space.
A simple depiction of this reference would be the classic “tablecloth and dishes party
trick”, where the spaceship would sit atop the tablecloth of spacetime, as the warp drive
pulls the fabric around it, and the ship would be situated in a new place relative to the
fabric.
To add to this, according to the theory of relativity, the Universe is a flat sheet of
space-time, which is warped by any object with mass.
Much like a bowling ball on a trampoline that dips the trampoline down.
This is what mass does to space-time.
This distortion of space-time is what we experience as gravity.
The Alcubierre drive uses the same concept, with the drive’s bubble surrounding the
ship making an area of space-time that is compressed in front of the ship and expanded
behind it.
Inside this bubble, space-time is completely flat, this means that those travelling space
wouldn’t notice the strange, relativistic effects of traveling at light speed.
This would result in the bubble of space-time being hurled across the universe, while everyone
inside would be able to comfortably sit inside the ship, allowing for no different experience
to normal travel.
This travelling spaceship would be traveling space while inside a warp bubble surrounded
by a ring of negative mass, enabling travelers to shrink space-time in front of the spaceship
and stretch space-time behind it.
This procedure would enable the ship to travel through space at ten times the speed of light.
This theory set by Alcubierre, proposes a way of going around the fact that beating
the speed of light may never be physically possible, and instead, pushes for warping
space-time itself, much like the way it is represented in Star Trek and the myriad of
our other favorite sci-fi flicks.
The Vitals for Warp Drive One major issue from Alcubierre’s proposal
is that it would need an enormous mass of energy to make the warp drive work.
To propel the spaceship beyond light speed would need the mass equivalent of planet Jupiter.
That is quite a preposterous amount of energy needed to power the warp drive.
In addition, the requirements needed to enable spacetime to expand on one side of the ship
and contract on the other requires an enormous amount of exotic matter that is in this case,
referred to as negative energy.
Currently, a NASA mechanical engineer and physicist named Dr. Harold Sonny White, is
trying to solve this negative energy requirement based on the foundations of the Alcubierre
Drive.
Dr. White believes that finding loopholes in the physics may be the key to solving the
mass energy requirement of the Alcubierre theory.
Dr. White suggests that we might even be able to change the shape of the ring of negative
mass to achieve a mass requirement much lower at 700 kilograms.
This amount of mass energy still represents way more energy than the most powerful atomic
bomb explosion, however.
Though the concept of Space Travel utilizing faster than light technologies such as the
Warp drive continues to inspire our imagination towards the great beyond, extensive future
research is still essential to resolve many conflicting obstacles.
Evidence may lead to the prevalence of the negative mass needed to power the Alcubierre
drive, but we still have no definite science to prove its existence.
These issues are not impossible to overcome, and scientists are dead-set on unlocking the
mysteries for true warp drive, as well as other methods of traveling faster than the
speed of light.
Is warp drive possible?
Do you think there’s a way to manipulate our atoms into photons to reach light speeds?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section.
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