Engineers came up with the first model for physically possible distortion training



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The idea of ​​a warp drive taking us across large areas of space faster than the speed of light has long fascinated scientists and science fiction fans. While we’re still a long way from breaking universal speed limits, that doesn’t mean we’ll never ride the waves of warped space-time.

Now a group of physicists have come up with the first proposal for physical distortion control, based on a concept devised in the ’90s. And they say it shouldn’t break any of the laws of physics.

Theoretically, warp drives bend and change the shape of spacetime to exaggerate differences in time and distance which, under certain circumstances, might see travelers moving faster than the speed of light. .

One of these circumstances was described more than a quarter of a century ago by the Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre. His idea, proposed in 1994, was that a spacecraft powered by something called an “alcubierre drive” could make this journey faster than light. The problem is, it requires a lot of negative energy in one place, which is just not possible according to existing physics.

But the new study has a workaround. According to researchers at the independent New York-based research group Applied Physics, it’s possible to let go of the negative energy fiction and still create distortion training, even if it may be a little slower than we would like to.

“We went in a different direction than NASA and others and our research has shown that there are actually several other classes of distortions in general relativity,” says astrophysicist Alexey Bobrick of the University of Lund in Sweden.

“In particular, we have formulated new classes of chain drive solutions that do not require negative energy and, therefore, become physical.”

Why is negative energy so important? The need for negative energy helps get around some of the general relativity issues of faster-than-light travel, allowing space to expand and contract faster than light, while still keeping everything in its warp. within universal speed limits.

Unfortunately, this introduces more problems in itself – mainly that the negative energy that we would need only exists in fluctuations on the quantum scale. Until we can find a way to pick up a mass the size of a sun, this type of training just isn’t possible.

The new research works around this – according to the article, negative energy wouldn’t be necessary, but an extremely strong gravitational field would. Gravity would do the heavy lifting of folding spacetime, so the passage of time inside and outside the chain drive machine would be significantly different.

However, you won’t be able to book tickets yet – the amount of mass required to produce a noticeable gravitational effect on space-time would be at least the size of a planet, and there are still many questions to be answered.

“If we take the mass of the entire planet Earth and compress it into a shell with a size of 10 meters, then the correction for the speed of time inside is still very small, roughly an additional hour in l ‘year “, Bobrick Told New scientist.

Another interesting finding from the research concerns the shape of the chain drive: a wider, taller vessel will need less power than a long, thin vessel. Think of a vertically held plate thrown at a wall face first, and you get a feel for the optimal shape of the chain drive.

Even though the reality of travel to distant stars and planets is still a long way off, the new study is the latest addition to a growing body of research that suggests the principles of warp training are sound in scientific terms.

The researchers admit they’re still not sure exactly how to put together the technology they described in their article, but at least more numbers are adding up now. They are convinced that well into the future warp training will become a reality.

“While we still can’t break the speed of light, we don’t need it to become an interstellar species,” says Gianni Martire, one of the scientists in the applied physics group behind the new study. “Our research on warp drives has the potential to unite us all.”

The research was published in Classical and quantum gravity.

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