Warp Drive

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here is an article on recent thoughts about warp drives.  They're not impossible.  Humans just don't know how to make them yet.

Comments

[sixbeforelunch]

I've always thought the idea that we're trapped by the speed of light to be a little sad, so I love seeing realistic possibilities for finding a way around it.

[jtthomas]

Oh, hey, finally there's open acknowledgement of the negative energy conundrum. I had that in calculations back when I was fourteen, but mainstream science has tried to avoid the discussion for a very long time now. (From what I can tell, it ties into the weak nuclear mess.)

[heron61]

Nifty - I'd previously heard of the non-FTL solution (which would still be useful if it could hit relativistic velocities, since getting up to relativistic velocities with reaction drives is seriously hard), and had not known there was a solution that permitted FTL but didn't require negative energy. Of course, the one downside of the idea that FTL is possible is that it removes the most likely solution to the Fermi paradox that still permits our galaxy to have multiple intelligent species (if FTL is impossible and STL travel is *really* difficult, then there's nothing like a Fermi paradox). If FTL is possible, I suspect it means humanity is alone in the galaxy, which is I find quite sad.

[siliconshaman]

We should have guessed that warp drives and FTL is possible, since we've seen artefacts, instances of where natural objects under extreme conditions have gone supra-light. There is a black hole galaxy, or rather two merged galaxies, where the supermassive black holes are doing a dance around each other, and producing a super-luminal jet of plasma. Of course we can't see it until it slows down to light speed... but the fact there's a gap along it's trajectory is indication enough.