A NASA scientist claims to be on the verge of faster-than-light travel: is he for real?
Posted 04.01.2013 at 11:03 am
46 Comments
Warp Travel: Jack Thompson
A breakthrough in propulsion could spell a new age at JSC and NASA, and to a degree that age is already upon us. Dawn, a probe launched in 2007, is exploring the asteroid belt using ion thrusters. In 2010, a Japanese team deployed Ikaros, the first interplanetary craft driven by a solar sail, another type of experimental propulsion. And in 2016, scientists plan to test VASIMR, a plasma-based system designed for high-thrust propulsion, on the ISS. While those systems might one day carry astronauts to Mars, they still will not be able to send astronauts beyond the solar system. To do that, White says NASA will need to embrace riskier projects.
Warp drive is perhaps the most far-fetched of all NASA’s propulsion efforts. The greater scientific community says White cannot create it. Experts say he’s working against the laws of nature and physics. Nonetheless, NASA is behind it. “He’s not funded at a very high level in terms of what he’s trying to accomplish,” Applewhite says. “I think there’s very much interest within the directorate to continue growing his work. These are the kinds of theoretical concepts that, if they come to fruition, would be game changers.”
In January, White packed up his warp interferometer and moved it to a new facility. Eagleworks had outgrown its first home. The new lab is larger and, he says enthusiastically, “It’s seismically isolated,” meaning it is shielded from vibrations. But perhaps the best thing about the new lab is also the most telling. NASA assigned White to a facility that was built for the Apollo program, the same one that put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.
Konstantin Kakaes is a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation.
This article appeared in the April 2013 issue of Popular Science Magazine.
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The real reason Sonny White can't get into why the capacitor ring generates negative or exotic matter is that he would have to give credit to a non-NASA scientist by the name of Jim Woodward to do so. Woodward has been working on developing the "Mach Effect", which seeks to use the ability of capacitors to vary their mass based on their charge to exploit a loophole in the law of inertia, aka Mach's Principle. The capacitor ring was actually designed by Woodward, but White can't give credit to the creator of the actual test article, because he's trying to create his own theory for why it works, so he can steal the idea and stamp his own name on it.
Mike:
The capacitor ring used in White's Warp-field interferometer experiment does not rely on Woodward's Mach-Effect (M-E) mass fluctuations for its function. In fact it is currently being driven by high voltage dc, which just creates a steady-state E-field based torodial energy distribution in the cap-ring capaitor's high-K dielectric. This torodial energy concentraion in turn creates a VERY SMALL spherical spacetime distorion field around the cap ring that Dr. White hopes to measure using his red laser interferometer. As to who designed and built this cap-ring for this experiment, it was Paul March who works for Dr. White in the NASA/JSC Eagleworks Lab.
As I was reading this article I realized this was the April issue. The more I read, the more I had trouble putting the thought out of my mind that this was a clever attempt at an April Fools' hoax.
Go back to magnets and gravity, when you understand this your answer may come about
APRIL 1st 2013, 11:11am
The four above comments are posted prior to today article posting. AMAZING!
Wow, sorry Anylcon, I just reported your comment because I read Reply to this comment XD I guess I'm a little more sick than I thought 0_o But yeah, I saw that too. I guess they're from the future and used a warp drive and got threw back in time by accident...
My above comment did not mean to indicate anything really negative to the article, since this article speaks about warm speed and time travel. The above 4 comments with the article in mind was rather funny! I suppose a person did not like my observation of the 4 prior comments, lol, oh well. Excuse me for reading the article and paying attention to the comments.
Note to all:
I thoroughly enjoy that paulmarch66 explains that the builder and designer of White's project is Paul March. I do not believe this to be a coincidence. If true, nice work, Paul! We are rooting for you!
Oh please say it ain't so! I was getting my hopes up. :(
“The nation that controls magnetism will control the universe”
Of course the real problem is that, ever since science offered up itself for money, a lot of science, popular or not, is a joke.
Ummm Popsci could you offer some clarification if you are kidding us? Seriously it is April 1 so i am somewhat skeptical. If you aren't kidding us, thats awesome. If you are... happy April Fools!
anyone else notice that paulmarch66 addressed mlorrey as "Mike"? Just a thought. I would probably have to say they are all PopSci employees or people involved in making the article, how else would they be able to post something before it was released online. I've also noticed that the few times I've also been told about some magazine content before that didn't make online until about 2-3 weeks later. the article being the one on the Italian physicist who claims to have achieved cold fusion
Why are there nondisclosure issues with taxpayer-supported NASA science? Military applications?
And FYI, for those wondering if this is an April 1 joke, I was reading about this guy some weeks ago about his work on the Alcubierre drive. Probably a Google search will come up with previous articles.
check this out on mike lorrey
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/spacedrives/message/604
sorry it's a reply to mike lorrey's email to some andrew, still interesting though
OK, here's an article from 11/26/12:
http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive
As weird as this sounds and the fact that it was posted 4/1 it actually is a real project at NASA.
Look at the "Faster-Than-Light Drive" article on PopSci. It has the same occurrence of before April posts. Actually all 9 of the posts as of right now were posted before today and all but one were posted by the same guy.
So he hasn`t even tested anything, his idea depend on many unknowns yet he claims to be on the verge of faster then light travel. NASA can`t even launch astronauts anymore. The US has lost the race in particle physics to Europe with CERN yet the claims and paper projects at NASA are becoming ever bigger while budgets are getting cut. And i have seen to many NASA projects fail overtime. From a return to the moon to a manned mission to Mars under Bush to many replacement over the years for the Space Shuttle. They all failed and were abandoned.
Faster then light travel is such an extreme project and would require so many physical breakthroughs let alone centuries of development. They have been working on Fusion energy for a hundred years yet the best project the ITER Fusion reactor in France is still 15 years away from coming online. CERN is the biggest producer of antimatter and the biggest researcher on antimatter and they don`t have anything that could get large scale production. Now if you want to power a faster then light spacecraft you would certainly also need huge amounts of energy. THIS in itself would require massive advancements in Fusion or matter antimatter energy sources to make it work and then downsize it considerable.
Again; That is assuming you can get all the physics right in the first place. Let alone needing artificial gravity to keep passenger having a healthy trip. Engineering wise it would cost hundreds of times the cost of a human mars mission and we can not even get that of the ground after 50 years of trying.
So please just keep working on getting the physics right and go from there. CERN has 10.000+ physicists and a massive research budget. Yet this man knows more without any tests!!! Let alone actual peer reviewed papers (and certainly noble prizes)! Please Stop making outlandish claims because i will not see faster then light travel in my lifetime. Unless perhaps i take the Eric Cartman route and i freeze myself and they can unfreeze me in the future.
Funny article with a hint of truth to confuse the readers of it being a real\serious article, and an April FOOLS joke and having 4 comments prior to April 1st via time travel, funny funny!
To all those who laugh and say its impossible I would watch my words carefully. Many times in the past when the majority said something was impossible they were wrong. Yes this seems far fetched but so did space flight less than a hundred years ago. They even thought the sound barrier could not be broken. I'm a firm believer that superluminal flight is possible, will it be challenging most definitely, All I'm saying is the science of the present is not set in stone. It always confused me why so many would almost get angry at the thought that it could be possible as if they want it to be impossible. We need more dreamers, people with child like imaginations not a bunch of stubborn old thinkiers so afraid of failure that they stay stagnent in their ways. Could this man be wrong, yes but he's brave enough to try the impossible. Where would we be without people like that, people crazy enough to think they can change the world. I don't know about you guys but I'm rooting for him, I hope he rattles the very foundation of modern physics.
" I think therefore I am"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/18/nasa_eagleworks_warp_drive/
note the date of the article September 18th, 2012 I doubt this is an april fools joke 7 months in the making...
" I think therefore I am"
Interesting thoughts, warp speed. Makes me think about how this might relate to the age of the universe. Perhaps our universe is not even close to the largeness of age we give it. Maybe this gives some clues about how the universe was spread out in its beginning, and this whether we can ever make it work for ourselves.
i prefer people like E.Musk whos working at 200% for near term "impossible" accomplishments
---
No facts, No response...
What a shameful waste of time and money. Shut this nonsense down now and start doing real work.
HAHAHAHA Look up Bob Lazar u idiots .... see the truth.
If you think Rose`s story is incredible,, won weak-ago my friends sister basically got $6080 putting in a ninteen hour week at home and there friend's step-aunt`s neighbour has been doing this for nine months and actually earned over $6080 part time from a pc. use the instructions from this site, -- Buzz80.ℂOM
Comment 30. Made you look, lol.
“We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects, and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity. Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do.”
Ben Rich Lockheed Skunk Works director
I can think of two ways to artificially create space-time curvature; A quantum superfluid circulating at near light speed velocities would create Lense-Thirring frame dragging. It would have to be magnetically confined but the numbers are consistent with GRT. The other is to construct a gravitational traveling wave amplifier. Rapidly contra rotating disks of relativistically dense matter would create a modulated gravitational beam which would also distort space. If quantum fluctuation is indeed being tapped then there would more than enough energy available to power either one of these devices.
A warp drive can become technologically implementable with phased standing waves. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgAwyr5Udzw
If deep down within your whole being you do not believe that people can do this you are much different than I am. Our destiny is to explore and investigate the boundaries of our imaginations in a way that is immensely rewarding to our lives. It is not our nature to be afraid and enslaved by doubt. I for one will stand back and be reasonably patient of anyone as promising as this man and applaud if what he says is true. We Dont have anything to lose and everything to gain. Our own social, religious, political government systems and the rather predictable human condition have and probably will continue to control and hold us back. Could we have been wrong all along? That doesn't make sense. I am Not religious but even the Christian bible says to go forth and have dominion over the planet and there isn't anything written there about waiting for anyone to tell us it is okay to explore other earth like planets. Just the opposite. There are more references in all ancient texts that suggest that it is our compulsion or destiny to explore beyond earth.
This is suspiciously close to what was suggested in the Philadelphia Experiment, and Back to the Future... polarity reversal of the EM Fields with the proper use of magnets and capacitors resulting in a time warp in the field, and something that I thought about some 30 years ago while taking physics in college long before either of those... maybe there is something to it after all.
Wow! Shall I assume that the 'warp bubble' will insulate me from all effects of the normal world? Like the eye of a storm or the womb of a mother!!!
Else,
1. Assuming uniform acceleration to the halfway point, the travelers would experience a continuous G-force of ONLY 5675 G's. Not sure how they will handle that. Imagine some REAL INTENSE training or serious feats of bio-engineering.
2. Further, I will assume that the bubble being a space-time distortion field will tunnel through this universe, so all obstacles like quasers, pulsars, black holes, simple suns like ours and planets would be momentarily displaced/moved aside as the distortion wave passes.
What am i missing here? Mind you, I am a simple 9-5 office guy with high school science knowledge.
Would appreciate any insight here :)
Perhaps I should loan Dr. White my wife. She comes with enough negative energy to propel the Enterprise to the Andromeda galaxy.
It is a damned shame that an entire month's worth of "science" articles has to be round-filed just because this magazines editorial staff never matured past the age of kindergarten, with their inane "April Fools" BS. What is even worse is that one can never be certain they are doing it each year. So the only recourse is to trash anything published in the month of April every single year.
To my knowledge there are only two who have discovered things faster than light;
CERN and myself
I love that "on the verge" comment. Although I salute NASA for building a few impressive rockets, their real claim to fame is the developing the famous theory of relative money where Money = Productive result * speed of light squared. How else can you blow a BBBBBBillion dollars on a single launch of the shuttle. Wow, $100,000/pound to put something into space. It's easy when it's other people's money. I'll take any bet that if and when warp drive is discovered, it won't be by a bureaucracy.
@realguy32, mass inside the warp bubble does not accelerate, the contracts, then expands.
@ PSCIZ; Sony White is a real person and really does work for NASA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Sonny_White_%28NASA_Scientist%29
However, the head line of this story should be "A NASA scientist claims to be on the verge of a SEMI-PLAUSIBLE THEORY OF faster-than-light travel".
If they could use the inherent gravity/attraction of matter as a means, amplification of those forces would be something which might allow a much superior propulsion system to what we currently have? Negative energy seems to be a red herring from what I have read and understand? Though I do believe that we need to continue to experiment with new ways and theories which may possibly yield breakthroughs which would allow advanced technologies to be developed for potential faster than light travel? Even if some of these 'theories' seem fantastic, we still need to explore them, even if only to rule them out? After all Einstein defined insanity as doing something the same way over and over and yet expecting different results?
This is either a 1st of April joke or a charlatan's baloney.
There will not be any cosmic flying around in the future.
....So in order not to not be affected by the laws of gravity you would need to somehow be super statically charged to enter a nook or crevice to zip through!??! Does anybody remember the movies 'Clocktstoppers' or 'Honey, I blew up the kid' where after being in this state, all their particles couldn't stop accelerating!?!?
Well... even if this proves to be impossible, proving that would be learning something. Maybe something else useful will come from it along the way. And if... (I'm not hopeful here but) if this ends up working then that would be awesome!
@realguy32
Nope. No G's here. None at all. What you are missing is that with this kind of propulsion the ship does not actually move. Space moves (stretches) around it. Yeah, it's kind of hard to wrap your mind around but theoretically it is possible. Now possible in a practical way... that is the current debate.
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