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janewilliams20http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2222794/scientists-claim-warp-drive
It's a beautifully simple concept. You can't move a ship relative to space at speeds greater than light, so you create a distortion in space-time, put the ship inside that, and move the distortion. Easy. The only slight problem is the energy cost of creating the distortion, but even that is dropping. They used to think it was slightly greater than the entire energy of the known universe, but it turns out that if you take some trivial little thing like, say, Jupiter, and use full e=mc^2 conversion on it, that would shift a ship "of volume 1000m3".
No problem, then. Planets as non-renewable energy resource to power your private transport. I'm sure the Americans will be on to it in no time.
It's a beautifully simple concept. You can't move a ship relative to space at speeds greater than light, so you create a distortion in space-time, put the ship inside that, and move the distortion. Easy. The only slight problem is the energy cost of creating the distortion, but even that is dropping. They used to think it was slightly greater than the entire energy of the known universe, but it turns out that if you take some trivial little thing like, say, Jupiter, and use full e=mc^2 conversion on it, that would shift a ship "of volume 1000m3".
No problem, then. Planets as non-renewable energy resource to power your private transport. I'm sure the Americans will be on to it in no time.
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Date: 2008-07-30 01:14 pm (UTC)Apparently, so the story goes, NASA retains a bunch of clever 'blue sky' thinking people, just to see what they can come up with. After not hearing from one such person for a few months, his bosses went to see him at home where they found him surrounded by empty pizza boxes and unwashed.
"What are you doing?" They asked.
"I've just worked out a theoretical framework for a warp drive engine", he replied.
The idea is to expand space behind you and contract it infront of you, both pushing and pulling you along at relativistic speeds *without time dilation effects*. I have no idea how true this is, or even if it's possible.
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Date: 2008-07-30 01:21 pm (UTC)