Quote:
Originally Posted by ilnjscb
I'll give you that - if he is proven correct it is the most important mechanical invention ever. The wheel, the plane, the combustion motor, the plow harness, refining, the battery .. nothing compared to this.
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Disclaimer: I did not listened the whole hour, just looked here and there, and I am hobby about this, not recognised by science bodies.
But for sure, the guy did not invented the concept, there's 1990's experiments, and older theories, see Alcubierre. So that empty space itself (quantum vacuum, spacetime metric) might be used to provide energy=thrust for space vehicles by certain matter/vacuum interactions.
Wikipedia: In quantum theory the vacuum is the seat of energetic particle and field fluctuations, and in general relativity the vacuum is the seat of a spacetime structure (metric) that encodes the distribution of matter and energy.
Also, the Alcubierre shape he uses it seems outdated:
See here:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.3706v1.pdf
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn...s/2013/482734/
"we have analyzed the Alcubierre warp drive mechanism within the framework of Conformal Gravity. We have seen that a particular choice of the shaping function (Hartle shaping function, instead of the original Alcubierre one) can overcome the main limitation of the weak energy condition."
A better shape it may be Hartle function instead (for what anyone knows):
Just, the Hartle shape it looks less cute (or making sense) for sci-fi movie visuals, and this may be why the NASA guy kept the Alcubierre one.
To see how old is the stuff the guy in the video talks about, using google you find that in 1988 nobelist T.D. Lee in his textbook "Particle Physics and Introduction to Field Theory" stated: “The experimental method to alter the properties of the vacuum may be called vacuum engineering…. ".
Let me talk of the time issue: to do this vacuum engineering, even if you really can make it happen (and stable space and gravity inside the bubble, so no one is smashed by acceleration or so), you have most probably to alter time, more in detail have time clock different in the bubble than outside. Create a time-slowed (or time-turbo) condition inside the bubble where spaceship to be for a "while" within such a temporally-modified field. So when returned to the normal space, spaceship astronauts will experience "missing time", much like Planet of the Apes (1960's movie) or most likely vice-versa: time outside was slowed down to blocked, so the spaceship move faster-than-light... for 10 minutes in outside-world time, but inside the ship that was 10 or 100 years time! So you transferred super-luminal warp speed (10 minutes instead of 100 years), but the side effect of the trick it is: you're receiving the elder children of austronauts, even if after just 10 minutes of our time. This may be still good to transfer robots or minerals, but not so much the lifeforms - either planet of the apes effect, or the inverse effect - a warp sailor would never find own wife and friends after the warp, as either him or the people outside died of natural elderness.
Other issues it comes to my mind: if you travel so fast in direction of a light source (like stars) you're getting those photons concentrated to a point it is a laser burning the spaceship. Shoud the bubble have an antimatter shield, whatever. This is much like sailing against the wind at super speed, but with light particles instead of the wind (and there may be same effect of Mach 1 for sound waves in jets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_number , but when you go faster than light, the light concentrates when you're same fast as light, and burns all).