I just
what to make this clear from the very start, this isn't another rant about star
wars, this is in fact an article about faster than light travel. If you got the
badly phrased reference, well done you are obviously the pinnacle of human
evolution, if not well... better luck next time. So recently I found out that a
scientist called Harold White went in front of hundreds of other scientists and
said that he was going to prove that his design for a faster then light ship
was possible. The interesting thing about all this is that everyone looked at
the maths and it seemed to check out. So now he's going to NASA to try and
prove himself right.
So I want to let that soak
in. a scientist, a smart man by all accounts has in
his possession a theoretically sound way to make a ship that can
travel to other planets. I know I use this word a lot but this is simply
awesome, in the truest sense of the word.
Ok here are the details, he's
basing all his theory on what is called the Alcubierre Drive, which sounds
so sci fi that had had to check it several sites and even then I'm still a
little worried. The very basic jist of it is that this engine would for all
intents and purposes shrink the area of space time in front of the ship, and
expand it behind. This would do two things: one it would give you
forward momentum, and more importantly two, it would create a sort of
bubble which would allow the ship to reach faster than light speeds. The engine
could get to Alpha Centauri (our closest pit stop in
the galaxy) in two weeks. Alpha
Centauri is 4.3 light years away. Mr White though has refined one of the main
problems with the original design, that is, it uses much less fuel. The
original design needed so much energy that the energy would be the size
of Jupiter, obviously not practical. White though has made
adjustment to the field that allows the ship to only use a fraction of that,
less than a tonne in fact.
There are still
problems though, some quite huge, such as where the fuel is going to come from.
unlike any other space ship so far made this ship doesn't rely on strapping
yourself onto a huge amount of explosive liquid, instead it uses exotic matter,
namely exotic matter that has negative mass, and so create negative vacuum
energy. On a side note don't you just love scientists and the great names they
give things. Honestly if star trek gave the world anything it gave us
generations of scientist who had a thirst to discover new ideas, then give
badass names to them. this negative vacuum energy though has yet to be proven in
a lab, though the theory is apparently sound, and that is the first step in
White's plan.
The second problem
then is what happens to all that energy that the ship produces. as i said
before the ship warps timespace around it using the field produced by the
exotic matter, but what happens to the energy that is used to propel the ship.
to push a ship to faster then light speeds means that alot of energy is going
to be pushed backwards, enough to destroy whole solar systems according to some
estimates.
the next problem
is that once on course there would be no way to steer, the way you started is
the way you're going. this to me does not seem a huge problem though i imagine
driving into a star would be a bit embarrassing for
the captain. Another slightly more serious problem is whether the
ship would survive travelling that fast, even colliding with small particle of
matter would case huge explosions. Also the heat generated would be huge.
But despite these
problems I’m still ecstatic, after all a bunch of real, non crazy people are
still looking into this and are cautiously hopeful. its been years since i was
able to dream of visiting other planets without the boring rational part of me
(the one i try hard to not listen to) telling me that it could never happen.
Space travel has become interesting again, because lets face it the whole
taking photos of Mars is ok but the fact that we will probably never go there
makes it less interesting. This also comes at a perfect time, as there us a
real push to find other planets like ours, which has had great success. so now
we have destinations, all we need is for White to be proved right.
But what amazed me most about all this though, is how little most people
seem to care. I know it won’t affect many people for years to come even if
it is successful but even the possibility that we might one day be able to
cross our galaxy in just a couple of months should make people even a little
interested. But no, almost everyone I talked to about this either didn't care
or even more bizarrely wouldn't even want to go to another planet if they could.
to me this is mind boggling. How can anyone not want (to steal a phrase) boldly
go where no man has gone before? Has space travel become such a non entity for
modern day society that this didn't even make any news websites? Back forty
years ago the very notion that we might one day be able to actually explore
would have been a cause of excitement, not disinterest or dislike. To sum up then
modern attitudes to space are stupid. Soon the rest of the astronauts to walk
on the moon are going to die walking on another planet will just be a memory.
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