4 ms·
But the question remains. How did he drop the energy requirements by orders of magnitude, and from my fuzzy memory of such things, would that even be enough to
by deerpig 13y ago
But the question remains. How did he drop the energy requirements by orders of magnitude, and from my fuzzy memory of such things, would that even be enough to make a warp drive practical?
If he's right, it would be at least, a step in the right direction....
- mjfl 13y agoHe is only testing the ability to warp space. The setup is extremely simple actually. All he is doing is splitting a laser, one part goes through an extremely charged toroidal capacitor and the other goes through nothing. If the path lengths of these two lasers are the same, but the interferometer reads that the lasers are out of phase, then you have possible warping of space. Most of the cost is probably in the high-precision interferometer.
- tiglionabbit 13y agoIf you notice a discrepancy, isn't it more likely that one laser was "slowed down", rather than sped up? You'd get the same effect by shining the laser through a thick pane of glass: it arrives out of phase on the other end as if it were slowed down.
- mjfl 13y agoAssuming this experiment is done in a vacuum, I've never heard of a static electric field changing the index of refraction of a vacuum.
- larrydag 13y agoApparently the toroidal ring has some property that allows it to reduce the energy requirements. "and in particular a ring around it that is key to its propulsion system — in a way that he believes will greatly reduce the energy requirements" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/science/faster-than-the-speed-of-light.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/science/faster-than-the-sp...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- fixedd 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive#Mass.E2.80.93energy_requirement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive#Mass.E2.80.93e... | In 2012, physicist Harold White and collaborators announced that modifying the geometry of exotic matter could reduce the mass–energy requirements for a macroscopic space ship from the equivalent of the planet Jupiter to that of the Voyager 1 spacecraft (~700 kg)[5] or less,[19] and stated their intent to perform small-scale experiments in constructing warp fields.[5] White proposed changing the shape of the warp bubble from a sphere to a doughnut shape.[20][21] Furthermore, if the intensity of the space warp can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more.[5] According to White, a modified Michelson-Morley interferometer could test the idea: one of the legs of the interferometer would appear to be a slightly different length when the test devices were energised.[19]
- nether 13y agoI hope to god that Musk's next project is commercializing this tech, assuming the proof-of-concept experiment works.