Star Trek - The Real Story

Courtesy Of The Smithsonian Channel

NASA Starts Work On Real Star Trek Warp Drive

"Perhaps a Star Trek experience within our lifetime is not such a remote possibility." These are the words of Dr. Harold "Sonny" White, the Advanced Propulsion Theme Lead for the NASA Engineering Directorate. Dr. White and his colleagues don't just believe a real life warp drive is theoretically possible; they've already started the work to create one.

Searching For Warp Bubbles

The answer lies precisely in those laws of physics. Dr. White and other physicists have found loopholes in some mathematical equations—loopholes that indicate that warping the space-time fabric is indeed possible.

Working at NASA Eagleworks—a skunkworks operation deep at NASA's Johnson Space Center—Dr. White's team is trying to find proof of those loopholes. They have "initiated an interferometer test bed that will try to generate and detect a microscopic instance of a little warp bubble" using an instrument called the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer.

It may sound like a small thing now, but the implications of the research huge. In his own words:

Although this is just a tiny instance of the phenomena, it will be existence proof for the idea of perturbing space time-a "Chicago pile" moment, as it were. Recall that December of 1942 saw the first demonstration of a controlled nuclear reaction that generated a whopping half watt. This existence proof was followed by the activation of a ~ four megawatt reactor in November of 1943. Existence proof for the practical application of a scientific idea can be a tipping point for technology development.

By creating one of these warp bubbles, the spaceship's engine will compress the space ahead and expand the space behind, moving it to another place without actually moving, and carrying none of the adverse effects of other travel methods. According to Dr. White, "by harnessing the physics of cosmic inflation, future spaceships crafted to satisfy the laws of these mathematical equations may actually be able to get somewhere unthinkably fast—and without adverse effects."

He says that, if everything is confirmed in these practical experiments, we would be able to create an engine that will get us to Alpha Centauri "in two weeks as measured by clocks here on Earth." The time will be the same in the spaceship and on Earth, he claims, and there will not be "tidal forces inside the bubble, no undue issues, and the proper acceleration is zero. When you turn the field on, everybody doesn't go slamming against the bulkhead, which would be a very short and sad trip."

There was only one problem with all this: where does the energy come from? While we knew that warp drives were theoretically possible, physicists have always argued that they would require a ball of exotic matter the size of Jupiter to power it. Clearly, that was not practical. But thankfully, Dr. White has found a solution that changes the game completely.

The Eagleworks team has discovered that the energy requirements are much lower than previously thought. If they optimize the warp bubble thickness and "oscillate its intensity to reduce the stiffness of space time," they would be able to reduce the amount of fuel to manageable amount: instead of a Jupiter-sized ball of exotic matter, you will only need 500 kilograms to "send a 10-meter bubble (32.8 feet) at an effective velocity of 10c."

Ten c! That's ten times the speed of light, people (remember, the ship itself would not go faster than the speed of light. But effectively it will seem like it does).

That means that we would be able to visit Gliese 581g—a planet similar to Earth 20 light years away from our planet—in two years. Two years is nothing. It took Magellan three years to circumnavigate around our home planet—from August 1519 to September 1522. A four year roundtrip to see a planet like Earth is completely doable. And there are even closer destinations where we can send robots or astronauts.

The important thing is that there is now a door open to a different kind of exploration. That, like Dr. White says, "perhaps a Star Trek experience within our lifetime is not such a remote possibility." We may be witnessing the very beginning of a new age of space exploration, one that would finally take us from our pale blue dot back to where we belong.

Via: "Gizmodo"

A Dialogue Between The Soul and The Body

Image from: Star Trek, Lazarus battles anti-matter self.

SOUL

O who shall, from this dungeon, raise

A soul enslav'd so many ways?

With bolts of bones, that fetter'd stands

In feet, and manacled in hands;

Here blinded with an eye, and there

Deaf with the drumming of an ear;

A soul hung up, as 'twere, in chains

Of nerves, and arteries, and veins;

Tortur'd, besides each other part,

In a vain head, and double heart.

BODY

O who shall me deliver whole

From bonds of this tyrannic soul?

Which, stretch'd upright, impales me so

That mine own precipice I go;

And warms and moves this needless frame,

(A fever could but do the same)

And, wanting where its spite to try,

Has made me live to let me die.

A body that could never rest,

Since this ill spirit it possest.

SOUL

What magic could me thus confine

Within another's grief to pine?

Where whatsoever it complain,

I feel, that cannot feel, the pain;

And all my care itself employs;

That to preserve which me destroys;

Constrain'd not only to endure

Diseases, but, what's worse, the cure;

And ready oft the port to gain,

Am shipwreck'd into health again.

BODY

But physic yet could never reach

The maladies thou me dost teach;

Whom first the cramp of hope does tear,

And then the palsy shakes of fear;

The pestilence of love does heat,

Or hatred's hidden ulcer eat;

Joy's cheerful madness does perplex,

Or sorrow's other madness vex;

Which knowledge forces me to know,

And memory will not forego.

What but a soul could have the wit

To build me up for sin so fit?

So architects do square and hew

Green trees that in the forest grew.

Poem by Andrew Marvell

(1621 - 1678)