[ad_1]
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Spaceships that zip at the speed of light or faster are a sci-fi staple. Think of the Millennium Falcon in the “Star Wars” movies and the Enterprise spaceship in “Star Trek”. Such a trip sounds like fanciful speculation. But is it true?
A new research paper authored by an American physicist offers a potential plan for supra-luminal travel – faster than the speed of light – using conventional physics rather than a construction based on hypothetical particles and states of the material with exotic physical properties.
The article, published this week in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, takes the question of superluminal travel a step away from theoretical research and one toward an engineering challenge, according to physicist Erik Lentz, who performed work at the University of Göttingen. in Germany.
A huge hurdle remains, Lentz said, to finding a way to drastically reduce the immense amount of energy required to power a notional “warp drive” motor before any hope of building a prototype.
“A ‘warp drive’ technology is primarily being considered to accelerate deep space transport,” Lentz said. “It can be used to bolster current ambitions for interplanetary and interstellar travel by dramatically shortening travel times and expanding mission windows.”
The closest star beyond our solar system is Proxima Centauri, located 4.25 light years away – the distance it takes for light to travel in a year. Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second (300,000 km per second) and 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km) in a year.
Using traditional rocket fuel, it would take around 50,000 to 70,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri, and nuclear propulsion with the proposed technology would get there in around 100 years, Lentz said. A journey at the speed of light would take four years and three months.
Lentz’s plan envisions a trip at the speed of light, which “holds the potential for one-way, round-trip interstellar travel in a human lifetime.”
“If we are limited to traveling at a slower speed of light, then multigenerational spacecraft must be used for destinations beyond the nearest stars, which is essentially a glorified burial coffin for at least the first generation of people. almost as inspiring, ”Lentz said.
His paper describes the theoretical construction of a class of soliton – a compact self-sustaining wave moving at constant speed in space – capable of supra-luminal motion. These solitons are often referred to as “warp bubbles” and they would provide the basis for a propulsion system.
“Currently, the amount of energy required for this new type of space propulsion is still immense,” Lentz said. For a spacecraft about 200 meters in diameter to exceed the speed of light, that could possibly mean the energy equivalent of hundreds of times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system – an amount absurd.
A lot of work would be needed to make this happen. For this to be practical, Lentz said, the power requirements at the range of modern nuclear fission reactors would have to be drastically reduced. A way to create and speed up solitons also needs to be devised, Lentz added.
Lentz sees the task as difficult, but not impossible. He said the next phase of theoretical research and development could take place over the next few years, with a fully functional prototype possible within the next decade.
“The first truly superluminal readers might come a few decades later,” Lentz said. “I would like to see this technology used in my life.”
(Report by Will Dunham, edited by Rosalba O’Brien)
[ad_2]
Source link