NASA: Alfa Centauri in two weeks?

While looking for material to support time travel in my thread "Einstein and time travel" at www.abovetopsecret.com... I found this article about NASA hiring physicist Harold White to work on the possibilities of really fast space travel using a "warp drive" first proposed by Miguel Alcubierre in his 1994 paper "The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity".

Why go to the mountain, when the mountain can come to you instead....

In terms of the engine's mechanics, a spheroid object would be placed between two regions of space-time (one expanding and one contracting). A "warp bubble" would then be generated that moves space-time around the object, effectively repositioning it — the end result being faster-than-light travel without the spheroid (or spacecraft) having to move with respect to its local frame of reference.

Source: io9.com...

reply to post by Utnapisjtim


Good luck NASA considering we still don't know the properties of the exotic matter required to a allow the Alcubierre drive to function never mind actually managing to produce the stuff. Maybe in the next 50-100 years.

reply to post by andy06shake


Hehe. Many great discoveries in science have come from accidents and lucky coincidences. Radio became the radar, and a melting a chocolate bar near one became the microwave oven....

Morning,

All in good time...let's see them tackle Mars or Luna first before we worry about interstellar anything. I'd hate to think we'd go all the way to another star only to set up more nukes.

-Peace-

reply to post by Utnapisjtim


What like element 115? Since its creation/discovery on February 2 2004 it exhibits none of the qualities Bob Lazar claimed.

Still you are quite correct humanity will always find a way sometimes, in point of fact most times by accident or trial and error aka science

en.wikipedia.org...

Wouldn't you need to create a connection between the two points for this to work? Well, maybe the Robbinsons and Dr. Smith from Lost in Space are on Alpha Centari to set up the other port by now with their robot on the Jupiter 2.

If we warp space from far away to come to us so we can get in it and release... What happens if we warp space from the middle of a civilization? Will it just bend, or be obliterated?

reply to post by Utnapisjtim


Suppose you look beyond what TPTB want to you think and consider for a brief moment that most UFO sightings ever made--that number would be in the tens of thousands--gave some evidence that the craft were not using air for lift or rocket/jet propulsion methods. What could be the answer? Perhaps the ETs have learned to sidestep the limits of natural physics with clever designs?

A simple explanation would be that they have eliminated the mass of their vehicles and can flit around at will, instantly and without strain performing stop/start, hovering silently, making right-angle turns at high velocities and, if inclined, moving easily into deep space.

Why is it that so many people, especially some threads on ATS seem to act like there are no alternatives to the natural limits of physics when it is easy to envision the simple concept of a massless vehicle? Could it be that not only must UFOs be denied but also the concepts of how they operate? Would not a massless drive be the best war weapon every devised and a greater development than the invention of the wheel?

reply to post by Utnapisjtim


oh look at that.

NASA suddenly invents new technology that the government has been using for the past 20 years in secret.

reply to post by andy06shake


Hehe, can't be lucky all the time Or what about the Higgs boson? Scientists with a multi-billion-dollar toy managed to smash together matter and mapped the bits and pieces flying off in all directions. Then they did the experiment again, and they managed to measure one piece moving in the same direction as one of the other bits in the former experiment, claiming they had discovered a new boson. Someone ought to tell the politicans who fund these experiments that these scientists are laughing all the way to the bank and home. One can compare the LHC experiments connected to the Higgs boson to watching golf where scientists watching two hole-in-one's in two different games-- coming to the conclusion that they have discovered a new kind of golf-ball.

reply to post by Utnapisjtim


This is the basis for the sci-fi novel "A Wrinkle in Time". It is fascinating to say the least.

In the book they describe it as:

Image an ant on a large sheet of paper... how long would it take for the ant to walk from one end to the other? Now imagine if you could bend the sheet of paper so that the two side are next to each other. How long would it take then traveling the same speed?

Brilliant concept.

Thanks for the post.

Also for humor, I made it to Alfa Centari in 8 years in my Civilization game yesterday (Cid Meyer Reference!)

lol - I couldn't help myself.

God Bless,

reply to post by Aliensun


When people observe a UFO seemingly accellerating from standstill to tens of thousands miles an hour in no time and then all of a sudden take a 90 degree turn and swosh it's gone. What if the craft warps space-time around it while the craft itself doesn't really move an inch? Like a hamster in a wheel, where the hamster is the UFO and the wheel is spacetime...

grey580
reply to post by Utnapisjtim

 

oh look at that.

NASA suddenly invents new technology that the government has been using for the past 20 years in secret.

Exactly! How do we know that NASA is not already going to Alpha Centauri in two weeks?

ElohimJD
reply to post by Utnapisjtim

 

...
Also for humor, I made it to Alfa Centari in 8 years in my Civilization game yesterday (Cid Meyer Reference!)

lol - I couldn't help myself.

LOL. Yes, imagination today, reality tomorrow. BTW. The ant on the paper sheet is a nice way to explain wormholes, while warping means to change the shape of space something like this:

I think I saw a movie that went something like that... Event Horizon, was the name. It didn't work out so well for the first crew to try the warp jump though... Not well at all.

I love the idea, but I do hope they have some working understanding of what they're doing. It's hard to forget the fact the Manhattan Project actually did have a scenario with a possibility ratio for the atmosphere having a fiery chain reaction to be 'all she wrote'. An exceptionally low chance...but, so was a disaster at Fukushima. 1:Million.

I believe I'd pass on being in the first group to try this one.

Eryiedes
Morning,

All in good time...let's see them tackle Mars or Luna first before we worry about interstellar anything. I'd hate to think we'd go all the way to another star only to set up more nukes.

-Peace-

edit on 5-12-2013 by Eryiedes because: Addition

I just want them first to tackle the 17:23 from London Bridge without it being delayed every day never mind working in some Alkaselzter drive.

Wrabbit2000
I think I saw a movie that went something like that... Event Horizon, was the name. It didn't work out so well for the first crew to try the warp jump though... Not well at all.

Remember I saw that movie and it scared the living daylights off me here and there. But philosophically it's a gem of sorts. Loved the film.

I love the idea, but I do hope they have some working understanding of what they're doing. It's hard to forget the fact the Manhattan Project actually did have a scenario with a possibility ratio for the atmosphere having a fiery chain reaction to be 'all she wrote'. An exceptionally low chance...but, so was a disaster at Fukushima. 1:Million.

Indeed. Something tells me they should already be in deep space if they intend to expand and squeeze space turning a square inch into the size of solar systems in an instance. But I am probably being a chicken here, but the concept sounds amazing to say the least.

I believe I'd pass on being in the first group to try this one.

Same here. Not sure what I'd be doing at Alfa Centauri anyway. Good fishing? Interstellar pike might make the day I suppose....

reply to post by Utnapisjtim

Same here. Not sure what I'd be doing at Alfa Centauri anyway. Good fishing? Interstellar pike might make the day I suppose....

With human luck? it would all go right after all, the Terran ship would "drop" out of warp right in the spot it's supposed to...just to see what very very big battleships the Alfans have to ...err...make cosmic dust out of our first friendly gesture from. I'm just saying, that really is how things seem to go for mankind. 2 steps forward and ..whammo to the starting line again.

Of course, our new friends would be curious to run our track backward and see where that pesky little toy came from...

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Skepticism is a good thing as long as it doesn't stop us from discovering new things. But yeah, man has a tendency to mess things up on a grand scale....

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Something about your post reminds me of this...



-Peace-