It's sixteen years since Miguel Alcubierre suggested that faster-than-light travel might be achieved by generating a warp bubble that contracts space-time ahead of the spaceship and expands it behind. Now a metamaterial test laboratory is available to see if this idea really could work. Image sourced from: andersoninstitute.com
The Alcubierre drive is one of the better known warp drive on paper models – where a possible method of warp drive seems to work mathematically as long as you don’t get too hung up on real world physics and some pesky boundary issues.
Recently the Alcubierre drive concept has been tested within mathematically modeled metamaterial – which can provide a rough analogy of space-time. Interestingly, in turns out that under these conditions the Alcubierre drive is unable to break the light barrier – but quite capable of doing 25% of light speed, which is not what you would call slow.
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Read the rest of Astronomy Without A Telescope – Warp Drive On Paper (620 words)
© Steve Nerlich for Universe Today, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Alcubierre metric, metamaterial
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Full story at http://www.universetoday.com/77005/astronomy-without-a-telescope-warp-drive-on-paper/
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