Daily Archives: December 17, 2021

Is time travel possible? Short answer: Yes, and you're doing it right now hurtling into the future at the impressive rate of one second per second. You're pretty much always moving through time at the same speed, whether you're watching paint dry or wishing you had more hours to visit with a friend from out of town.

But this isn't the kind of time travel that's captivated countless science fiction writers, or spurred a genre so extensive that Wikipedia lists over 400 titles in the category "Movies about Time Travel." In franchises like "Doctor Who," "Star Trek," and "Back to the Future" characters climb into some wild vehicle to blast into the past or spin into the future. Once the characters have traveled through time, they grapple with what happens if you change the past or present based on information from the future (which is where time travel stories intersect with the idea of parallel universes or alternate timelines).

Related: The best sci-fi time machines ever

Although many people are fascinated by the idea of changing the past or seeing the future before it's due, no person has ever demonstrated the kind of back-and-forth time travel seen in science fiction, or proposed a method of sending a person through significant periods of time that wouldn't destroy them on the way. And, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in his book "Black Holes and Baby Universes" (Bantam, 1994), "The best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future."

Science does support some amount of time-bending, though. For example, physicist Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity proposes that time is an illusion that moves relative to an observer. An observer traveling near the speed of light will experience time, with all its aftereffects (boredom, aging, etc.) much more slowly than an observer at rest. That's why astronaut Scott Kelly aged ever so slightly less over the course of a year in orbit than his twin brother who stayed here on Earth.

Related: Controversially, physicist argues that time is real

There are other scientific theories about time travel, including some weird physics that arise around wormholes, black holes and string theory. For the most part, though, time travel remains the domain of an ever-growing array of science fiction books, movies, television shows, comics, video games and more.

Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905. Along with his later expansion, the theory of general relativity, it has become one of the foundational tenets of modern physics. Special relativity describes the relationship between space and time for objects moving at constant speeds in a straight line.

The short version of the theory is deceptively simple. First, all things are measured in relation to something else that is to say, there is no "absolute" frame of reference. Second, the speed of light is constant. It stays the same no matter what, and no matter where it's measured from. And third, nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

Read more: Hidden in Einstein's math: faster-than-light travel?

From those simple tenets unfolds actual, real-life time travel. An observer traveling at high velocity will experience time at a slower rate than an observer who isn't speeding through space.

While we don't accelerate humans to near-light-speed, we do send them swinging around the planet at 17,500 mph (28,160 km/h) aboard the International Space Station. Astronaut Scott Kelly was born after his twin brother, and fellow astronaut, Mark Kelly. Scott Kelly spent 520 days in orbit, while Mark logged 54 days in space. The difference in the speed at which they experienced time over the course of their lifetimes has actually widened the age gap between the two men.

"So, where[as] I used to be just 6 minutes older, now I am 6 minutes and 5 milliseconds older," Mark Kelly said in a panel discussion on July 12, 2020, Space.com previously reported. "Now I've got that over his head."

The difference that low earth orbit makes in an astronaut's life span may be negligible better suited for jokes among siblings than actual life extension or visiting the distant future but the dilation in time between people on Earth and GPS satellites flying through space does make a difference.

Read more: Can we stop time?

The Global Positioning System, or GPS, helps us know exactly where we are by communicating with a network of a few dozen satellites positioned in a high Earth orbit. The satellites circle the planet from 12,500 miles (20,100 kilometers) away, moving at 8,700 mph (14,000 km/h).

According to special relativity, the faster an object moves relative to another object, the slower that first object experiences time. For GPS satellites with atomic clocks, this effect cuts 7 microseconds, or 7 millionths of a second, off each day, according to American Physical Society publication Physics Central.

Read more: Could Star Trek's faster-than-light warp drive actually work?

Then, according to general relativity, clocks closer to the center of a large gravitational mass like Earth tick more slowly than those farther away. So, because the GPS satellites are much farther from the center of Earth compared to clocks on the surface, Physics Central added, that adds another 45 microseconds onto the GPS satellite clocks each day. Combined with the negative 7 microseconds from the special relativity calculation, the net result is an added 38 microseconds.

This means that in order to maintain the accuracy needed to pinpoint your car or phone or, since the system is run by the U.S. Department of Defense, a military drone engineers must account for an extra 38 microseconds in each satellite's day. The atomic clocks onboard dont tick over to the next day until they have run 38 microseconds longer than comparable clocks on Earth.

Given those numbers, it would take more than seven years for the atomic clock in a GPS satellite to unsync itself from an Earth clock by more than a blink of an eye. (We did the math: If you estimate a blink to last at least 100,000 microseconds, as the Harvard Database of Useful Biological Numbers does, it would take thousands of days for those 38 microsecond shifts to add up.)

This kind of time travel may seem as negligible as the Kelly brothers' age gap, but given the hyper-accuracy of modern GPS technology, it actually does matter. If it can communicate with the satellites whizzing overhead, your phone can nail down your location in space and time with incredible accuracy.

General relativity might also provide scenarios that could allow travelers to go back in time, according to NASA. But the physical reality of those time-travel methods are no piece of cake.

Wormholes are theoretical "tunnels" through the fabric of space-time that could connect different moments or locations in reality to others. Also known as Einstein-Rosen bridges or white holes, as opposed to black holes, speculation about wormholes abounds. But despite taking up a lot of space (or space-time) in science fiction, no wormholes of any kind have been identified in real life.

Related: Best time travel movies

"The whole thing is very hypothetical at this point," Stephen Hsu, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oregon, told Space.com sister site Live Science. "No one thinks we're going to find a wormhole anytime soon."

Primordial wormholes are predicted to be just 10^-34 inches (10^-33 centimeters) at the tunnel's "mouth". Previously, they were expected to be too unstable for anything to be able to travel through them. However, a new study claims that this is not the case, Live Science reported.

The new theory, which suggests that wormholes could work as viable space-time shortcuts, was described by physicist Pascal Koiran. As part of the study, Koiran used the Eddington-Finkelstein metric, as opposed to the Schwarzschild metric which has been used in the majority of previous analyses.

In the past, the path of a particle could not be traced through a hypothetical wormhole. However, using the Eddington-Finkelstein metric, the physicist was able to achieve just that.

Koirans paper was described in October 2021, in the preprint database arXiv, before being published in the Journal of Modern Physics D.

While Einstein's theories appear to make time travel difficult, some researchers have proposed other solutions that could allow jumps back and forth in time. These alternate theories share one major flaw: As far as scientists can tell, there's no way a person could survive the kind of gravitational pulling and pushing that each solution requires.

Infinite cylinder theory

Astronomer Frank Tipler proposed a mechanism (sometimes known as a Tipler Cylinder) where one could take matter that is 10 times the sun's mass, then roll it into a very long, but very dense cylinder. The Anderson Institute, a time travel research organization, described the cylinder as "a black hole that has passed through a spaghetti factory."

After spinning this black hole spaghetti a few billion revolutions per minute, a spaceship nearby following a very precise spiral around the cylinder could travel backwards in time on a "closed, time-like curve," according to the Anderson Institute.

The major problem is that in order for the Tipler Cylinder to become reality, the cylinder would need to be infinitely long or be made of some unknown kind of matter. At least for the foreseeable future, endless interstellar pasta is beyond our reach.

Time donuts

Theoretical physicist Amos Ori at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, proposed a model for a time machine made out of curved space-time a donut-shaped vacuum surrounded by a sphere of normal matter.

"The machine is space-time itself," Ori told Live Science. "If we were to create an area with a warp like this in space that would enable time lines to close on themselves, it might enable future generations to return to visit our time."

There are a few caveats to Ori's time machine. First, visitors to the past wouldn't be able to travel to times earlier than the invention and construction of the time donut. Second, and more importantly, the invention and construction of this machine would depend on our ability to manipulate gravitational fields at will a feat that may be theoretically possible, but is certainly beyond our immediate reach.

Time travel has long occupied a significant place in fiction. Since as early as the "Mahabharata," an ancient Sanskrit epic poem compiled around 400 B.C., humans have dreamed of warping time, Lisa Yaszek, a professor of science fiction studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told Live Science.

Every work of time-travel fiction creates its own version of space-time, glossing over one or more scientific hurdles and paradoxes to achieve its plot requirements.

Some make a nod to research and physics, like "Interstellar," a 2014 film directed by Christopher Nolan. In the movie, a character played by Matthew McConaughey spends a few hours on a planet orbiting a supermassive black hole, but because of time dilation, observers on Earth experience those hours as a matter of decades.

Others take a more whimsical approach, like the "Doctor Who" television series. The series features the Doctor, an extraterrestrial "Time Lord" who travels in a spaceship resembling a blue British police box. "People assume," the Doctor explained in the show, "that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff."

Long-standing franchises like the "Star Trek" movies and television series, as well as comic universes like DC and Marvel Comics revisit the idea of time travel over and over.

Here is an incomplete (and deeply subjective) list of some influential or notable works of time travel fiction:

This article was adapted from previous work by Space.com contributor Elizabeth Howell.

See original here:

Is time travel possible? | Space

Free printable PDF lesson plans, word banks, quizzes and games for EFL/ESL teachers & learners

SPACE and SPACE TRAVEL

Reading LessonsSPACE and SPACE TRAVEL

Space Travel Video Quiz

SPACE AND SPACE TRAVEL

10 Questions about space travelLevel: Intermediate to AdvancedTime: 5:02

ACTIVITY SUGGESTION

Consider introducing the topic of space and space travel to your learners by showing them this video to test their general knowledge. Pause the video after each question and give your learners a minute or two discuss before continuing the video so they can check their answers.

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Approximate Time: 20 minutes

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Activity Notes on Page 2 (with ActivityVersion 1 and Version 2)

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Approximate Time: 10 - 15 minutes

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Level: Intermediate to Advanced

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Reading and GrammarSPACE ('Apophis')

Level: Intermediate

WorksheetSPACE and SPACE TRAVEL

Use a dictionary to help you complete the chart below. All of the words must begin with the letter of the alphabet given. Some letters may have many different answers, while others may not have an answer.

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Approximate Time: 20 minutes

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Space and Space Travel - All Things Topics

This year, weve seen a rivalry between billionaires come to fruition as they forge their way into space. Composed of entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the private industry-centric race to space involves sending projectiles to the ionosphere, orbital launch rockets and suborbital tourist space flightschanging the way that we think about space altogether.

We talked with three Temple experts to learn more about the impact that the race to space has had on space travel, education and technology, as well as the social implications of Branson, Bezos and Musk using their wealth in this way.

John Helferty(Courtesy of the College of Engineering)

John Helferty is an associate professor in the College of Engineering. His research focuses on rocketry and space engineering, including specific interests in remote controlled QuadCopters, near-space payloads, lunar mining robots, high-altitude ballooning, autonomous mobile robots and rotorcraft. He also directs the NASA-funded Student Exploration and Embedded Systems Laboratory at Temple.

With the funding provided by the private industries involved in the billionaire race to space, there have been upgrades to space travel technologies that make the trip to space more efficient and cost-effective, he said.

Lets start with Richard Bransonss company, Virgin Galactictheyve created a spaceship that is attached to a plane. Once the plane has reached about 60,000 feet, the plane drops the spaceship and then you fire your rockets into space, said Helferty. Because of this, the spaceship doesnt require as much of a boost like youre seeing with Musks SpaceX, Bezos Blue Origin and NASA rockets, which require a massive boost just to get off the ground. The propulsion systems for these rockets are still using liquid fuel, but the chemistry that's used for the engine propellants into them has made them much more efficient. Additionally, the advances in materials used to build these rockets and spaceships makes them lighter and arguably stronger, meaning it requires less fuel to propel them into space.

Once Branson, Bezos and Musk were able to launch into orbit, their businesses varied from one another. We need to be careful about using the phrase space exploration here, because thats not necessarily what they are all doing. Bezos and Branson (and their corresponding companies) are more so doing what would be considered space travel, said Helferty. Space exploration has a connotation that youre going out and seeking something new and in uncharted territory, like Mars or the polar regions of the moon. Bezos and Branson are more interested in commercial space traveltaking people up for a ride to get a nice view of the curvature of the Earth, experience weightlessness out of the atmosphere and then youre on your way back. Musk and his company, SpaceX, definitely have plans to go to Mars and explore while also making plans for space travel.

As expected, commercial space travel will come at no small cost to those who want a seat on one of these space flights. While Blue Origin has yet to release ticket prices, a seat on one of Virgin Galactics flights is believed to cost around $450,000making for a large return on investment once they get them off the ground.

Christina Rosan(Courtesy of the College of Liberal Arts)

Christina Rosan is an associate professor in geography and urban studies focused on sustainable cities. She is also a Faculty Fellow with Temples Center for Sustainable Communities and the Loretta C. Duckworth Digital Scholars Studio. She is the co-author of Reimagining Sustainable Cities: Strategies for Designing Greener, Healthier, More Equitable Communities (University of California Press, December 2021).

While some are intrigued by the idea of commercial space travel, others are concerned that the wealth of billionaires is being misused. Given the state of the world, the need to address climate change, COVID-19, racial justice and inequality, focusing on a race to space seems like a misplaced priority, said Rosan. Space is becoming a private frontier. Its like a big yacht. If you have enough money, you can explore space, float around, while the rest of us are dealing with a climate emergency here on Earth. If we have real scientific goals for space exploration, lets coordinate with governments, business and universities rather than relying on the whims of billionaires.

Space tourism has an enormous carbon footprint, so it is not helping to solve the climate problem at allits contributing to it.

-- Christina Rosan, associate professor in geography and urban studies

Rosan continued to explain how unnecessary space travel can have damaging effects on the environment. Space tourism has an enormous carbon footprint, so it is not helping to solve the climate problem at allits contributing to it. We are in a climate emergency. How can they use their resources here, on Earth?

Not only is space travel raising concerns about climate change, but it is also affecting the many employees that work for the other companies of these entrepreneurs, such as Amazon. I think their employees probably wonder how much of these billionaires excess money comes from employee exploitation, stated Rosan. The 2020 median employee salary at Amazon was $29,007.

So, what else can billionaires do to support space exploration? Rosan believes that money can be redirected and used to fuel those who are already involved in space programs and organizations. Rather than having a handful of billionaires guide our science and technology development, we should tax them appropriately to publicly fund scientific exploration and space programs, she said.

Jim Napolitano(Courtesy of the College of Science and Technology)

Jim Napolitano is an associate professor in the Department of Physics. His research focuses on parity violation and neutrino oscillations in quantum mechanics.

When you look at the purpose of the three different billionaires space companies, Musk is the only one who is in it for space exploration, said Napolitano. SpaceX is technically considered a telecommunications company because they launched their own telecommunications satellite and now their own telecommunications network. Thats pretty impressive when you think about it. However, Bezos and Branson are launching people into space for tourism. Sure, its exciting to see celebrities like William Shatner get launched into space now, but it's not the kind of commercial enterprise that is going to excite people in the long run.

Napolitano touched on the idea that celebrities going into space could motivate or inspire more young people today to get involved in science and technology and eventually go into STEM-related fields. From an educational standpoint, if it inspires students to go into science and technology, then that's great. We can all use more of that, he said. Whether or not the money these guys (Branson, Bezos and Musk) are spending could be better spent on better textbooks for students in schools, paying teachers the kind of salaries they should be paid to teach our kids science and mathematics, and inspire them and give them the time they need to get better at it and learn things in school and through summer programs ... I think they could do more with it.

However, Napolitano thinks the real way to get kids passionate about space, science and technology is to spark that interest while theyre young.

STEM is more than just knowing science, engineering and mathematics. Its about understanding how they affect us and how we can affect them, explained Napolitano. But I think if were going to make a real difference in STEM education in this country, we have to make teaching STEM to elementary, primary and secondary school students a priority. We have to educate teachers who are able to reach these kids and see this as an honorable, well-paying profession. And its really fun when you get in at that age because these kids are not afraid of raising their hands and saying the wrong thing. Second, third grade, maybe even kindergarten, we have to start them earlythis is what we need to do to make a difference in STEM.

Kierstyn Smith

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An in-depth look at the race to space - Temple University News

Investing Over $38 Million in Florida and Creating 240 Jobs

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., December 16, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Space Perspective, the worlds leading luxury spaceflight experience company, today announced that it has selected Floridas Space Coast Spaceport in Titusville, Florida as the location for the companys worldwide campus and manufacturing complex.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211216005895/en/

Space Perspective's radically gentle journey via Spaceship Neptune's pressurized capsule propelled by a high-performance SpaceBalloon. The ultra-comfortable, accessible and gentle six-hour journey redefines space travel. (Photo: Business Wire)

Along with the companys world-class launch operations facilities at the Launch and Landing Facility on NASA Kennedy Space Center, Space Perspective is building a campus on the Space Coast Spaceport site for their capsule and balloon manufacturing facility, laboratories, and operations infrastructure from launch to mission control. Space Perspective will invest more than $38 million in new construction and high-value equipment and tooling, including the $9 million, 120,000 square foot manufacturing building slated to be fully operational within the next 24 months. The investment will also spur the creation of approximately 240 full-time permanent jobs by the end of 2026, with an annual average wage of $80,000, plus benefits. Hiring began in 2021 and will continue through 2022.

Space Perspective conducted an extensive five-state site selection search. "The amazing opportunities in space tourism made the selection process very competitive. Florida and its system of spaceports became the front-runner," said Taber MacCallum, Founder, Co-CEO and Chief Technology Officer of Space Perspective. "This is a win for the entire state of Florida, as we are planning launch operations from three Florida spaceports."

Story continues

Upon completion, the new complex will serve as Space Perspectives worldwide campus, the carbon neutral production site of Space Perspectives SpaceBalloonsTM and the zero emission Spaceship Neptune spacecraft, and as a welcome center for history-making Space Explorers and their guests, complete with interactive experiences as well as capsule models.

Space Coast Spaceport located adjacent to Kennedy Space Center is the only independently operated multi-modal space center in America. "Multi-modal logistics and operations capability gives us rail, road, marine and air service all right on our campus. That, combined with the speed, flexibility, and efficiency of being independently operated, makes the Space Coast Spaceport a great location for Space Perspective," continued MacCallum. "Being adjacent to our operations facilities on NASA Kennedy Space Center made it easy for us to become the first space launch operator at the Space Coast Spaceport, where we successfully completed our first test flight in June 2021. This location will allow us to continue to attract the most accomplished talent in the world, and we are grateful for the continued support of the North Brevard Economic Development Zone as we prepare for our first commercial flights in late 2024."

"Were witnessing a revolution in space access and Floridas Space Coast is now the place for production, as well as launch," said Lynda Weatherman, President and CEO, Economic Development Commission of Floridas Space Coast. "With its selection of Titusville, Space Perspective joins Lockheed Martin, Astrotech, Boeing and others in what is quickly becoming a significant aerospace hub across the causeway from Cape Canaveral."

"Congratulations to Space Perspective on its selection of the Space Coast Airport and Spaceport for operations," said Frank DiBello, Space Florida President and CEO. "Titusville has played a significant role in Floridas aerospace history, and Space Perspective represents a new era of commercial space exploration, adding to that space narrative. Space Florida is pleased to welcome Space Perspective to the region."

"It is my absolute pleasure to welcome Space Perspective as our new anchor tenant at the Space Coast Spaceport," said Kevin Daugherty, AAE, Director of Airports Titusville Cocoa Airport Authority. "Our vision is to create a world-renowned air and space center and Space Perspectives global reach will aid in achieving our vision, as well as being a positive addition to the community."

"The Titusville City Council and I are very excited that Space Perspective has selected our city as the location for their space tourism manufacturing and operations. Space tourism is yet another example of the continued expansion of the commercial space marketplace. I am very pleased to welcome Space Perspective and space tourism to our city, which is truly the Gateway to Nature and Space," said City of Titusville Mayor Dan Diesel.

"Titusvilles very own spaceport is the ideal site for the headquarters, production and operation of a space tourism venture with its easy access to transportation and the world-class talent pool of Floridas Space Coast," said Brevard County Commissioner Rita Pritchett, District 1. "We are thrilled to welcome Space Perspective to North Brevard and look forward to their success."

"As space tourism becomes a reality, it is exciting to see its potential to create jobs in Brevard County, particularly those in manufacturing," said Chair of Brevard County Board of County Commissioners Kristine Zonka, District 5. "I am confident that Space Perspective will find the workforce on Floridas Space Coast to be second to none and a key ingredient as they scale up."

Founded in 2019, Space Perspective was created to provide a transformative opportunity to view planet Earth from space. The company recently announced a historic $40 million Series A financing round, the largest for a human SpaceBalloon company to date. Space Perspective has already begun filling key leadership positions with individuals whose unparalleled depth of experience includes responsibility for: safety and medical operations for every human spaceflight under a SpaceBalloon in the last 40 years; manufacturing of SpaceX Dragon Capsule and Falcon rocket structures; design and manufacturing of NASAs innovative SpaceBalloons including for the heaviest mass ever flown under a SpaceBalloon; more launches of more types of SpaceBalloons for NASA and others than any other individuals; development and operations of SpaceX Dragon Capsule marine recovery systems and Falcon rocket launches; development and operations of the highest human flight under a SpaceBalloon ever conducted; Ritz Carlton rebrand to private 5-star and marketing for other award-winning hotels; experience curation for Virgin Galactic and Zero-G; and Virtuoso.

Commercial flights are targeted to begin in late 2024, with more than 500 tickets sold to date. With the first year of seats completely reserved, Space Perspective is currently taking reservations for 2025 and beyond. Tickets are priced at a market-beating $125,000 per person, and bookings are made with a fully refundable deposit beginning at $1,000. Entire capsules are also available for reservations (up to eight guests and a pilot). Space Perspectives human spaceflight launches are regulated by the FAA Office of Commercial Spaceflight.

About Space Perspective

Space Perspective is the worlds first luxury spaceflight experience company. It invites more people than has historically been possible to experience a thrillingly new and visceral perspective that expands the human consciousness the incredibly exhilarating panoramas and scale of Earth in space. The Observer cited Space Perspective as "the best suborbital space tourism offering in the world."

Setting a new bar in out-of-this-world thrilling experiences, as soon as late 2024 Space Perspective plans to take Space Explorers to space inside Spaceship Neptunes pressurized capsule propelled by a high-performance SpaceBalloon without using rocket fuel or high G forces. Space Explorers see the world anew through its vast windows, 450 miles in any direction. The ultra-comfortable, accessible and gentle six-hour journey redefines space travel.

Space Perspective is led by industry luminaries Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum and their unique-in-the-world expert crew who have been integral to all human SpaceBalloon flights in the last 50 years. Building on that experience, the Space Perspective crew has innovated and patented the safest SpaceBalloon technology in the world. With the only technology enabling routine accessible flights to the edge of space, Poynter and MacCallum have been dubbed Masters of the stratosphere by Bloomberg Businessweek. MacCallum also served as Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. For more information, visit SpacePerspective.com. Follow Space Perspective for updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

About the Economic Development Commission of Floridas Space Coast

The Economic Development Commission of Floridas Space Coast (EDC) is dedicated to attracting new business and investment and expanding existing industry throughout the Space Coast, influencing change on government laws and regulations affecting economic development, promoting the Space Coast to encourage new investment, supporting efforts of Space Coast military installations, and relaying new programs and procedures to assist manufacturing and high-tech companies. The EDC is a private, not-for-profit coalition whose stakeholders are business leaders committed to the economic growth and stability of Floridas Space Coast. Visit http://www.SpaceCoastEDC.org.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211216005895/en/

Contacts

Kathie Gonzalez, Button Collective, kathie.gonzalez@buttoncollective.com, 720-320-4304

Brian Baluta, Economic Development Commission of Floridas Space Coast, bbaluta@spacecoastedc.org, 321-638-2000

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Space Perspective Selects Floridas Space Coast Spaceport for Worldwide Campus and Manufacturing Complex - Yahoo Finance

Don't pack your bags and move to Bozeman yet. This micro-scale warp bubble won't be capable of propulsion, but it could have myriad other applications, says its discoverer Dr. Sonny White.

A properly constructed Alcubierre warp bubble. As space constricts in front of the vessel and expands behind, the ship is theoretically pushed forward at speeds faster than light.

Image: LSI, White, et al.

Space is vast. Really, really vast. So vast, in fact, that it would take Voyager 1, the furthest man-made object from earth, more than 73 millenia to reach the nearest star to our Sun, Proxima Centauri, at its current speed of over 38,000 mph, if it were headed that way to begin with. In short, if we're ever going to find a way to explore beyond our own solar system, we need to find a way to bend the laws of physics to make faster-than-light travel possible.

A team of scientists working with DARPA, including warp drive pioneer Dr. Harold G "Sonny" White, may have just taken us one step closer to that reality with their announcement that they've discovered a space-warping bubble, the fundamental thing needed for the faster-than-light travel of the Star Trek universe.

SEE: Windows 10 in S mode: A cheat sheet (free PDF) (TechRepublic Premium)

Before we jump ahead to romantic visions of space travel, Dr. White said, we need to think about what we could do with a microscale warp bubble, like the one his team discovered, before even dreaming of what it could be in the future. Dr. White is passionate for space travel, but says we need to start simple. "there may be lots of other things along the way before we ever get there that could have some really interesting implications," he said.

This is a pretty complicated notion that involves a ton of math, but at its most basic level, a warp bubble is a bit of space that's contracted in the front and expanded in the back. This shape in theory pushes the bubble, and its contents, forward at speeds surpassing the speed of light without ever violating the laws of physics: You're not technically traveling faster than light, you're surfing a bubble of condensed space.

Warp bubbles are also important because they eliminate a major problem of faster-than-light travel: Time dilation. Say you did manage to travel faster than light: Everything else outside of your craft would speed up, meaning that three-hour tour you took to a nice, tropical planet could have equated to years of time passing on earth. Put simply, if you plan to move faster than light while following the known laws of physics you had better say goodbye to everything you've ever loved before heading out.

Again, warp bubbles get around this problem because the space inside the bubble remains unaffected, so an hour of travel at warp speed would mean that only an hour passed for everyone else not currently in a pocket of sci-fi space.

Warp bubbles were long the domain of science fiction, until theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre came along and theorized his Alcubierre warp drive in 1994, which maintained general relativity while allowing for faster-than-light travel. The key upon which it rested, was an energy-density field that was configurable into a vacuum bubble that would make anything inside it have negative mass.

Unfortunately, the amount of energy required to operate an Alcubierre drive made it impossible, until 2012 when Dr. White proposed changes to the mathand shape of the craft designed to create the field, which lowered the necessary energy from "impossible" to a power source the size of the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Since then, development of an actual warp bubble or Alcubierre drive has continued to be a distant dream.

Fast forward to 2021, and Dr. White, whose 2012 paper was written while he worked at NASA as Advanced Propulsion Theme Lead, is doing research funded by DARPA on objects called Casimir cavities. These cavities are formed of two parallel plates with a pillar running between them. These things are small mere microns in size and they do something really interesting: Create a negative vacuum between the plates when exposed to a regular vacuum.

"You would anticipate zero pressure outside and zero pressure in the cavity, but what we find when we measure is negative pressure in between the plates," Dr. White said.

"What we're trying to do is explore the quantum vacuum at a fundamental level," Dr. White said. "We think there's a bit more to these vacuums than we currently know. Some of the unknown characteristics could be used to create some really useful technologies." Hence DARPA's interest.

These uses could include amazing things, like batteries based around what Dr. White calls "quantum vacuum solar cells" that would never run out of energy. Telecommunications products that use longitudinal waves undisturbed by buildings or natural barriers could be a potential use, as could photosensors that don't suffer from chromatic aberration because they sense all elements of the EM spectrum evenly.

Potential applications aside, testing those cavities led to an interesting discovery: A negative vacuum energy field that looked just like a two-dimensional slice of an Alcubierre warp bubble.

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"Our custom Casimir cavities are basically two big planes with a long pole in the middle. The Alcubierre metric, by comparison, needs a total ring of negative vacuum energy density, which means it needs to look more like a lifesaver," Dr. White said.

Having already done all the math and collected all the data that was generated by the experiment with the 2D version of the bubble that the team observed, the next logical step was to take that data and change the shape of the object in the center, getting rid of the pole and putting in the eerily Vulcan starship-esque shape shown at the top of the article.

After running simulations with the warp ship shape, the math just added up, Dr. White said. "We did a purposeful analysis using [the warp ship shape], and wow hey, that matched the Alcubierre metric requirements."

The warp bubble team has published a paper on their findings, which Dr. White says are in no way illustrative of a warp bubble analog: Their data shows that, given the right shape placed in the same physical cavities they're experimenting with now, an honest-to-God warp bubble would be created.

"We can identify to the physics community that there is a real world type of structure that we can make that the analysis predicts. It will manifest a negative vacuum energy density, such that it would manifest a real nanoscale war bubble, not an analog this would be a real, no kidding nanoscale war bubble," Dr. White said.

In the world of Star Trek, the warp bubble works basically the same way: The Enterprise isn't actually travelling faster than light, it's just surfing a cosmic space wave generated by its matter/antimatter warp core.

Zefram Cochrane was responsible for building the first functional warp-capable ship in the Trek universe in 2063, at which point the Vulcans, who just happened to be passing by, decided it was time to make first contact and welcome humans into the galactic community. We might be right on course, then, with Dr. White's team laying the practical groundwork for theoretical concepts that takes us away from Earth and toward the stars.

So, when can humans expect to vacation on Risa, do business on Ferenginar, and study at the Vulcan Science Academy (conditional on meeting the strict entry requirements)? Let's not get ahead of ourselves, says Dr. White.

"A lot of people wanna get straight into application: when are we gonna go make something like this fly? I get the motivation for that, but science is a slow, arduous process." Dr. White says his motto has been "crawl, walk, run," when it comes to this sort of cutting-edge stuff. Dreaming is important, he says, but so is doing the basic research that goes into finding additional applications that are practical and valuable now, in the age where we're still terrestrially-bound.

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"I don't have a crystal ball more than anyone else does. I don't know when this idea could be applied to space travel, or even if that could even become a reality," Dr. White said. That's understandable given we are currently talking about warp bubbles generated in cavities smaller than the width of a human hair.

"Science will continue to turn the crank and hammer the rock, chipping slowly away at some of the unknown to get to more of the known," said Dr. White. Consider this discovery just one chip in the right direction.

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Paging Zefram Cochrane: Humans have figured out how to make a warp bubble - TechRepublic