The biggest challenge we face when exploring space is the almost incomprehensible amount of travel we have to do just to get to other heavenly bodies to explore. The fastest craft we’ve ever launched, the New Horizons probe, will take approximately 9 years to reach Pluto and would still take tens of thousands of years to reach another star once it’s completed that initial mission. There are many ways of tackling this problem but even if we travel as fast as the fastest thing known (light) there are still parts of our galaxy that would take thousands of years to reach. Thus if we want to expand our reach beyond that of our cosmic backyard we must find solutions that allow us to travel faster than the speed of light. One such solution that every sci-fi fan will be familiar with is the warp drive.
Now many will be familiar with the concept, a kind of space engine that allows a craft to travel faster than the speed of light, however fewer will know that it actually has roots in sound science. Essentially whilst nothing can travel faster than light space itself can expand at a rate faster than light travels, a property we have already observed. The trick, of course, is being able to manipulate space in such a way that it shrinks in front of you and expands behind you, something which required a kind of exotic matter that, as of yet, has not been created nor observed. However if you watch the video above (and I highly recommend you do if you can spare the hour) you’ll see that there’s been some amazing progress in validating the science behind the warp drive model and it’s quite incredible.
For me the most amazing thing about the presentation was the use of a toroidal capacitor as a space warping device. The idea of a warp drive has long hinged on the idea that a new type of matter would be required in order to create the expanding and contracting regions of space. However White’s experiments are instead seeking to validate if a positive energy density field could create the required negative pressure zone, negating the need to actually create exotic matter. As he states in the video however the results are non-negative but not conclusive so we don’t know if they’re creating a warp field yet but further experimentation should show us one way or another. Of course I’m hoping for research in the positive direction as the other improvements White and his team made to the original Alcubierre designs (reducing the energy required to sustain the field) mean that this could have many practical applications.
The video also goes on to talk about Q-Thrusters or Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thrusters which I’ve written about here previously. What I didn’t know was just how well those thrusters scaled up with bigger power sources and if their models are anything to go by they could make many missions within our solar system very feasible, even for human exploration. Keen observers will note that a 2MW power supply that comes in at 20 tons is likely to be some kind of fissile reactor, something which we’re going to have to adopt if we want to use this technology effectively. Indeed this is something I’ve advocated for in the past (in my armchair mission to Europa) but it’s something that’s going to have to be overcome politically first before the technology will see any further progress.
Still this is all incredibly exciting stuff and I can’t wait to hear further on how these technologies develop.
