Traveling to other galaxies in a matter of hours / days / months could become a reality within some of our lifetimes. NASA announced yesterday that “there is ‘hope’ we can achieve faster-than-light travel, after physicists found a theoretical possibility for warp speed travel.” Continue reading for two videos and more information.
Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre’s theories are the most practical, mooting a ring around a sphere-shaped spaceship, which would contract space in front of the ship, and expand space behind it. This would allow faster-than-light travel – if astrophysicists could harness planet-sized energy or sip power from a supernova. But according to Space.com, Harold ‘Sonny’ White, from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a gathering of scientists, writers and philosophers in Houston, that new theories could allow Man to reach such speeds with less energy.
He told his audience that, instead of enclosing a space-ship in a space time-bubble, a craft could sit within a ‘doughnut’ shape – which means the warp drive could be powered by a mass the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe – the equivalent size of a small car. White and his team are experimenting with a mini-version of a warp drive in their laboratory, using laser to try to warp space and time in miniature. He said his ‘humble experiment’ was ‘trying to see if we can generate a very tiny instance of this in a tabletop experiment, to try to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million.’
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