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Thoughts on warp drive

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Tue, 2012-09-18 23:16

rfmcdonald rfmcdonald's picture

Thoughts on warp drive

Today, my RSS feed has been filled with discussions about the possibilities of a FTL warp drive. http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-starts-development-of-real-life-star-tre... http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/daydreaming-beyond-the-solar-system-wi... http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=24665 Gizmodo's description is as thorough as any.

Quote:
Dr. [Harold] 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." The energy problem, solved 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.

Physics-minded people, does this sound at all plausible? In the Eclipse Phase setting, I suppose this would be the functional equivalent of the Factors' reactionless drive. Perhaps it's their stardrive--who knows?

Wed, 2012-09-19 10:43

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

From a physics standpoint,

From a physics standpoint, the little that I know, "warp bubble" has been a theory that has been tossed around. From a technology standpoint, if the math adds up, its entirely doable. If a microscale prototype can be fashioned in a lab its only a matter of time before a macroscale project is drafted and thrown on the assembly line. Then it's only a matter of fine-tuning and modification. Still, it seems far too good to be true. Might end up like something from Event Horizon, or just not work at all like it was thought to. Edit: What I would like to know is exactly how this bubble is created. Energy emissions? mechanical oscillation? Chemical reaction? If there is no typical reaction mass and no acceleration involved, I have no idea how it might work.

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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Wed, 2012-09-19 14:16

Extrasolar Angel Extrasolar Angel's picture

I am really doubtful it can

I am really doubtful it can be made. It requires "exotic matter", so probably isn't possible. Amusingly some say that such a warp drive would result in cosmic scale catastrophe, potentially killing the target destination. http://io9.com/5889628/warp-drives-may-come-with-a-killer-downside http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/scifi/trouble-warp-drive.html

Quote:
That big, black void between planets actually is full of radiation and tiny particles which their research suggests would be “swept up” in the warp bubble and then focused into areas in front of and behind the ship. This wouldn’t actually be a danger for anyone inside the warp bubble but for anyone hanging out at the ship’s destination it would spell certain doom. They explain, “Any people at the destination would be gamma ray and high energy particle blasted into oblivion due to the extreme blueshifts for [forward] region particles.”

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[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]

Wed, 2012-09-19 15:26

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Yeah but you still get there

Yeah but you still get there quick right? Isn't that what matters?

—

"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Wed, 2012-09-19 18:10

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Prophet710 wrote:From a

Prophet710 wrote:
From a physics standpoint, the little that I know, "warp bubble" has been a theory that has been tossed around. From a technology standpoint, if the math adds up, its entirely doable. If a microscale prototype can be fashioned in a lab its only a matter of time before a macroscale project is drafted and thrown on the assembly line.

Hmm, you mean like how we now routinely transmute mercury into gold? The problem is that some things do not scale well. Even if the math works out it doesn't mean you can do it: the resource demands might be too extreme, or there is no known path to manipulate that kind of thing. Classical example is plasma in fusion reactors, which has proven very unruly despite a clean theoretical understanding of what should be happening. And even more annoyingly, some things work on the "real" scale but do not easily economize into assembly line products - we *do* have jetpacks, laser projected AR for your glasses and space travel, you just can't buy them for a reasonable price.

Quote:
What I would like to know is exactly how this bubble is created. Energy emissions? mechanical oscillation? Chemical reaction? If there is no typical reaction mass and no acceleration involved, I have no idea how it might work.

The theoretical papers just plug in negative energy densities where needed, corresponding to "some sort of exotic matter we do not have". The closest thing is the Casimir vacuum, which can actually be made but is very short range. The warp drive metric has a big flaw in that it doesn't describe the formation and disappearance of the warp bubble (since that would be very messy and hard to describe in the right way: general relativity is not an easy theory to use). I suspect - based on a loose intuition about some theorems in general relativity I once heard about - that if they were included a flaw would become apparent. Looking at White's paper http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936_2011016... it seems he is trying with some electromagnetic fields. I doubt this works, since you need to violate all three energy conditions to get a warp metric, and as far as I know, EM fields are always positive energy densities. There is something I don't get, and the fact that White seems to elude the negative energy issue while talking a lot about mission design makes me suspicious.

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Thu, 2012-09-20 10:34

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Makes you suspicious of?

—

"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Thu, 2012-09-20 11:16

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Prophet710 wrote:Makes you

Prophet710 wrote:
Makes you suspicious of?

Motivated cognition: if you really want something to be true, you will find plenty of evidence in favour, downplay evidence against, and believe in the barest possibilities.

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Sat, 2012-09-22 13:00

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

This doesn't pass the smell

This doesn't pass the smell test for me. The reason is this would let you pull unlimited energy out of your ass for free. I'm always suspicious when a hypothesis results in a perpetual motion machine.

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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Sat, 2012-09-22 20:43

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

NewtonPulsifer wrote:I'm

NewtonPulsifer wrote:
I'm always suspicious when a hypothesis results in a perpetual motion machine.

Yes, that is usually a very bad sign. In the case of the warp drive things are not obvious: first, it is not clear how energy would be lost or gained, and second, energy conservation is local and not global in GR. So I can't directly see how you build a perpetual motion machine from it. But warp drives are very likely to mess up things bigtime: you can use them to escape black holes, for example, and I suspect that this would allow you to play merry hell with both energy and thermodynamics (*beside* the time travel stuff). (I often declare to my group when we start a new game setting whether the law of conservation of energy and the second law of thermodynamics will be obeyed or not. In the most hardcore settings - like EP - we keep track of momentum too. Ah, the joys of roleplaying celestial mechanics!)

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Sun, 2012-09-23 07:34

#10

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Arenamontanus wrote:we keep

Arenamontanus wrote:
we keep track of momentum too. Ah, the joys of roleplaying celestial mechanics!)

To what degree of precision?

Sun, 2012-09-23 07:52

#11

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

nezumi.hebereke wrote

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Arenamontanus wrote:
we keep track of momentum too. Ah, the joys of roleplaying celestial mechanics!)
To what degree of precision?

About one significiant digit - I have done porkchop plots and solved differential equations for the game, but usually just to get things roughly right. Right order of magnitude and a bit more data. At one memorable session we solved an orbit problem together on a whiteboard (it was a very odd orbit, since it involved teleporting at regular intervals!) The important thing is to get the feel right. Space is unforgiving, and things happen too fast or too slow by normal human standards. I do a lot of the calcs to get both verisimilitude and to ensure my players do not think in terms of Star Wars when making plans.

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Sun, 2012-09-23 12:10

#12

Unity

Arenamontanus wrote:nezumi

Arenamontanus wrote:
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Arenamontanus wrote:
we keep track of momentum too. Ah, the joys of roleplaying celestial mechanics!)
To what degree of precision?
About one significiant digit - I have done porkchop plots and solved differential equations for the game, but usually just to get things roughly right. Right order of magnitude and a bit more data. At one memorable session we solved an orbit problem together on a whiteboard (it was a very odd orbit, since it involved teleporting at regular intervals!) The important thing is to get the feel right. Space is unforgiving, and things happen too fast or too slow by normal human standards. I do a lot of the calcs to get both verisimilitude and to ensure my players do not think in terms of Star Wars when making plans.

I just wish I was good enough at math to do that.

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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/info_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/immort_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/mesh_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/exh_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.o

Mon, 2012-10-01 15:47

#13

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Practice, practice. It helps

Practice, practice. It helps if you enjoy it. And of course, it's not everyone's cup of tea. (I've actually met people who say I'm not playing right because I enjoy the number-crunching of making Shadowrun characters.)

Sun, 2012-10-14 00:32

#14

Caretaker

Dodging the energy burst

Warp drive could be a doomsday weapon: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/5395/warp-speed-visitors-make-unwelco... Could be a nice X-threat? - An hypercorp experimenting with warp drive. - A Pandora gate expedition finds an alien spaceship and use it to jump back to the solar system. It's not so clear from the article what could be the "destructive high-energy beam" radius/burst.

Wed, 2012-10-17 11:21

#15

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Caretaker wrote:It's not so

Caretaker wrote:
It's not so clear from the article what could be the "destructive high-energy beam" radius/burst.

I have been trying to estimate it from the original paper, but it is likely seriously nasty. I love the idea of a lost spacecraft that seems perfectly usable. Except that the aliens building it were always *very* careful to point it to the side of their solar systems. "Sir! We have deciphered those signs." "Excellent. We will be arriving in the solar system in an hour, and it would drive me mad if I could not tell the people at home why this ship is nearly covered with that message." "Yes sir. It says 'Never point the ship directly at destination'."

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Thu, 2012-11-01 04:21

#16

Ronin Lore Ronin Lore's picture

Here's An Idea

Some twenty years ago I started work on a theory that would allow interstellar travel at a much reduced travel time. I tried to find somebody that would help me with it, but with no luck, (two thirds ignored my request, the remaining third responded with insults and ridicule.) The discovery of the Higgs Boson seems to have put a final nail in its coffin. That said, this idea still could be used for interstellar flight in a “Rocketpunk” style environment like Eclipse Phase. Here’s The Meat and Potatoes of It As a particle in a collider is accelerated, it gains mass. The faster the particle is accelerated the more mass it gains. The source of the increase in mass is the energy added to the particle as it was accelerated. After all, according to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, mass, and energy are interchangeable. The particle is accelerated by the collider through a transfer of energy through the exchange of virtual particles. Because the particle is in motion, while the collider is stationary, the two have separate frames of reference. This has no bearing on the exchange of energy, until the particle reached relativistic speeds. Once at relativistic speeds, the particle would experience time dilation. Its ability to exchange virtual particles would slow, and become out of phase with the virtual particles from the collider. The collider could continue to accelerate the particle. By increasing the energy output, the collider would increase the number of virtual particles produced. More virtual particles would be in phase with those of the particle, but the additional energy expended would not result in the same amount of acceleration as before. As the particle’s speed reached a velocity that was almost that of light, the temporal phase shift would be so great that the collider would only be able to produce enough virtual particles to maintain the speed. Now if we replace the particle, and collider with a spacecraft that has its own propulsion system, the conditions of the experiment change. As the spacecraft reached relativistic speeds, there would be no problem with virtual particles being out of phase. This is because both the spacecraft and its propulsion system have the same frame of reference. This means that any craft capable of 1G of acceleration at 0.09% the speed of light, would be capable of 1G of acceleration at 99.99% the speed of light. The vehicle should be able to accelerate up to the speed of light. This would still require an astronomical amount of energy, but a finite amount. If the above is correct, then we now have a spacecraft traveling at the speed of light. Acceleration would have stopped once light speed was reached. This is due to the fact that time dilation becomes infinite at the speed of light, and time stops. The spacecraft also has infinite mass. That is infinite mass in a finite area, to my mind; this is one possible definition of a singularity. There would appear to be a problem with infinite gravity, at first glance, that seems to be the fatal flaw for the theory. That is until you factor in the time dilation. For the vehicle, time has stopped. Yes, it has infinite gravity, but there is no time for the body to collapse. The matter the ship is made of would have to be travelling at faster than the speed of light in order for the ship to collapse. Even things inside the vehicle cannot be affected because there is no time for things to be destroyed. The following is a list of results if the above theory is correct. Traveling at 1G of acceleration, (9.8 meters per second/ per second,) it would take a spacecraft 354 days, 7 hours, 24 minutes, and 5 seconds to reach the speed of light. A wormhole wound form once the spacecraft reached the speed of light, the vehicle pass through it briefly dropping out of the universe, reentering at another point in the universe. I will admit that the wormhole is a S.W.A.G. (Scientific Wild Ass Guess.) I figured there would have to be some mechanism to prevent relativistic bullets with enough power to destroy even the super black holes at the heart of galaxies, from flying around the universe. The direction of the wormhole would be that of the vehicle’s momentum. The length of the wormhole would be related to the vehicle’s mass. The vehicles speed, upon exiting the wormhole, would be absolute stop, even in relation to the explanation of the universe. The vehicle having no velocity after exiting the wormhole is a logical deduction. To form the wormhole, every gram of matter that will ever travel though it must be accounted for. For a vehicle traveling at the speed of light, the only thing it has is its momentum, so it needs the momentum from everything in vehicle. The wormhole is formed when two areas in the space-time are dragged together. It is not in fact a tunnel. It has no length, and travel through it is instantaneous. What All That Gobbledygook Means For The Game As I see it, most spacecraft in Eclipse Phase generate thrust by pumping the reaction mass, (in most cases that is water,) through the ships reactor where it is boiled, and discharged to the rear of the vessel. Given enough reaction mass, the vessel could reach the speed of light. The game Eclipse Phase has an advantage when it comes to travel like this. Because one’s ego can be separated from one’s morph, the two could be transported separately. The ego could be loaded into the ship’s computer, and remain conscious during the voyage, while the morph is stored in a manner that would allow it to survive multiple G’s of acceleration for an extended period of time. This would allow the ship to travel at higher G rates, and shorten the travel time. How the mass of the ship relates to the length of the worm hole it forms is unimportant to play. Most ships will be designed with a specific destination in mind. If a vessel needs to go to another destination, it will need to go to a secondary destination to refuel. It would not matter if this other destination is closer to the point of origin, the vessel can only travel one specific distance. This point will have to be equidistant from both the point of origin, and the final destination. This could be a brown dwarf, or rogue planet in interstellar space. An Adventure Involving Starships On page 44 of the “Gatecrashing” source book, under the tile “Memo To All Proxies Regarding “Lost Colonies,”” there is a reference to a Pathfinder colony that was cut off after an autonomist revolt. This adventure involves an Autonomist Alliance attempt to resupply this colony. After failing to reach this colony through an extrasolar gate, the Alliance has decided to send a ship. After ascertaining the colony’s position in physical space, it was determined that a vessel that could make the jump could not carry enough cargo to do more than improve moral. A larger vessel capable of carrying more cargo for a double jump trip would be necessary. A vessel capable of a sustained 6 G acceleration was outfitted and christened “The Conestoga.” The 6 Gs would allow the Conestoga to reach light speed in about a year of acceleration, and the entire mission, including refueling at a brown dwarf, would take about two years to reach the colony. For those on board, the trip would seem to take about six months. Once the voyage was underway, it was discovered that there was a Pathfinder saboteur on board. The first part of the adventure is the player characters must identify and stop the saboteur. Arriving at the colony, they find that the Pathfinders have begun a military operation to retake the colony, good thing the characters remembered their weapons. In closing, may I suggest using the following web site; http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php I know that some of you already know about this site, but for those of you that don’t, it covers real world science about space travel. On one point, a vehicle that can sustain 6Gs is considered a “Torch Ship,” which Nyrath covers on this site.

Tue, 2012-11-13 14:48

#17

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

I'm not the smart guy on the

I'm not the smart guy on the forum, but I do notice one issue with your calculations. If I'm reading correctly, you're saying .9999c is the speed of light, which of course, it is not. It's certainly close enough to c for government work, so for the purpose of an EP story it works. The other issue is the increasing mass, as well as the stretching and squishing effects. Sure, we can throw a science fiction explanation to protect the morph, but at some point it just doesn't matter any more. Nothing will survive the gravitational pull of a neutron star. Both the morph and the computer running the ego would be turned to fine plasma mist. (The possible exception here would be the creation of plasma-based life, which MAY be more tolerant of such conditions.) But again, if we cap our speed at say .7c, which is still *REALLY REALLY* fast, then we can handwave this issue. Next issue is the astronomical fuel use you brought up. I don't have any recommendations for that. That's complicated by the fact that the value of the colony is probably less than the cost of the space ship. Final issue is you list the mission taking two years (I assume you mean by Earth clocks). Two years at c puts us at two light years away. The closest star is more than 4 light years away. And there just aren't that many stars in the four to fifteen light-year range. So most likely this habitat (if we're choosing the one in the book) is at MINIMUM, twenty light years away, i.e., twenty years travel time. For the PCs this isn't an issue, because, as you pointed out, time dilation squishes that nicely. But it's basically a one-way trip. I'm not saying don't run with this idea! It's a cool idea, and missions while stuck on a starship like that would be awesome. But there are some issues with it. If your group is okay with some lighter sci-fi (and I've yet to play with one that isn't), the easiest fix is to replace your ship with a colony ship. This justifies the high expense of making the ship run. If this is a second or third wave, there are already colonists out there, and you can be in quantum communicator contact and egocasting with them.