Space & Astronomy

NASA investigating warp drive

By T.K. Randall
July 24, 2013 ·  44 comments

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/ESO Physicist Dr. Harold G. White believes that it may be possible for a spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light by bending the rules of time and space. The idea is based on the theories of Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre who postulated that this could be achieved by harnessing the expansion and contraction of space. A ship that uses a "warp bubble" that expands space on one side and contracts it on the other could theoretically be propelled by space-time itself.

In a new experiment Dr. White will aim to demonstrate this effect by attempting to propel a single photon faster than the speed of light. "Space has been expanding since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago," he said. "And we know that when you look at some of the cosmology models, there were early periods of the universe where there was explosive inflation, where two points would've went receding away from each other at very rapid speeds."[!gad]Physicist Dr. Harold G. White believes that it may be possible for a spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light by bending the rules of time and space. The idea is based on the theories of Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre who postulated that this could be achieved by harnessing the expansion and contraction of space. A ship that uses a "warp bubble" that expands space on one side and contracts it on the other could theoretically be propelled by space-time itself.

In a new experiment Dr. White will aim to demonstrate this effect by attempting to propel a single photon faster than the speed of light. "Space has been expanding since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago," he said. "And we know that when you look at some of the cosmology models, there were early periods of the universe where there was explosive inflation, where two points would've went receding away from each other at very rapid speeds."

Source: Russia Today | Comments (44)

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