The NASA team under the direction of Harold white has started development of the engine deformation space, able to move objects faster than the speed of light. With it, scientists intend to overcome the 4.3 light years between us and alpha Centauri, two weeks. The project was called “Speed”.
A few months ago, physicist Harold white stunned the world cosmonautics, declaring that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of the engine deformation space, able to move objects faster than the speed of light.
The proposed concept was a witty reimagining of drive Alcubierre, and ultimately can lead to a motor that will transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a few weeks – without violating the laws of physics.
The idea for the engine came up white, when he analyzed the remarkable equation formulated by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. In his work of 1994 titled “Basis of Drive: high speed travel in General relativity”, Alcubierre suggested a mechanism by which space-time could be “warped” both in front and behind a spacecraft. In fact, if an empty space behind a starship would be to expand rapidly, and is found to be compressed, it will push the ship in the forward direction. Passengers would perceive it as movement despite the complete lack of acceleration.
The warp drive compresses space in front of the ship and expands behind that ensures the movement of the ship.
From the point of view of the mechanics of the engine, the object in the form of the spheroid will be located between two regions of spacetime with different properties. Provided that nothing locally exceeds the speed of light, but space can expand and contract at any speed.
However, space-time is quite rigid, so the effects of expansion and compression will require much energy to overcome interstellar distances in reasonable time periods. White’s idea is to change the geometry of the warp drive — it adjusted the shape of Alcubierre ring which surrounded the spheroid, making it thicker and more tortuous.
The new approach can significantly reduce the required amount of exotic matter. White says that the warp drive could be powered while smaller mass than the spacecraft “Voyager-1”.
The base engine will be a modified interferometer Michelson-Morley experiment, which allows us to measure microscopic perturbations in space-time.
White and his colleagues attempt to simulate the optimal Alcubierre drive in miniature, using lasers to perturbation of space-time with a frequency of 10 million Hertz.
Initially the test device is implementing a ring of large potential energy — through the use of a ring of ceramic capacitors charged to voltage in tens of thousands of volts.
White indicates that physical forces arising from a quantized field, may represent a viable approach and after these experiments NASA will be able to move from theoretical problems to practical.
