It is an old project that involves a warp drive and which (perhaps) will allow us to curve space-time to shorten the time of an interstellar journey with a spaceship
Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise may soon become a reality. A NASA physicist named Harold Whitea specialist in propulsion systems, has decided to resume his studies Miguel Alcubierre to work on this new spatial model. However, we will still have to wait several years before we can travel between stars at speeds close to that of light. In the meantime, let’s try to understand what NASA’s ambitious project is based on.
What is the Alcubierre warp drive?
To understand how NASA’s futuristic spaceship will move, we need to go back for a moment to 1994when the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre wrote the essay entitled “Warp Drive: Hyperfast Travel within General Relativity”. In practice he argued that it would be theoretically possible to move in space at even speed higher than that of light. This is a statement which, however, would deny the limits imposed by Einstein’s theory of relativity.
In reality, in his article the physicist explained that on the one hand the spacecraft would travel within the limits of the speed of light. On the other he would have “folded” the space to shorten the distance so as to reach the destination in the shortest time possible. Too bad that it would require a huge amount of energy (equal to the mass of Jupiter, according to some astronomers) to do so. An intervention on the warp engine, however, would allow us to significantly reduce consumption and at that point a mass of “only” 750 kg would be necessary.
Get to the nearest star with the starship Enterprise
In this way we could even reach Alpha Centauri (the closest star to our Sun) in just two weeks. We always talk about hypotheses, but there is no doubt that scientists are working to artificially bend space-time according to Alcubierre’s indications. Currently, Harold White has joined a nonprofit focused on building technologies to take humans far beyond the outer solar system. Will he succeed in his aim?
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