Think about what we mean by non-trivial FTL travel/communication and examine some of theĪrguments against it. When FTL is being discussed, and so they are necessary to deal with. ![]() Mentioned not because they are interesting, but because they come up time and time again If FTL travel or FTL communication were possible, then causality would probably be violated and some veryįirst we will cover the trivial ways in which things can go FTL. Not inevitable that one day technology will enable us to go faster than light. That someone would one day succeed in flying faster than sound, once technology got around the problems. The truth is that some engineers once said that controlled flight faster than sound mightīe impossible, and they were wrong about that. It was known that rifle bullets go faster than sound long before anĪircraft did. They say no-one will ever go faster than light." Actually it is probably not true that anybody said it It is sometimes objected that "they said no-one would ever go faster than sound and they were wrong. The foreseeable future), but it does cover some of the more common points that are This article is not a fullĪnswer to the question (which no doubt will continue to be discussed in the newsgroups for On the other hand, there are also good reasons to believe that realįTL travel and communication will always be unachievable. In actual fact, there are many trivial ways in which things can be goingįaster than light (FTL) in a sense, and there may be other more genuine It might be thought that special relativity provides a short negative answer to this The moon revolves round my head faster than light! The energy savings would need to be drastic, of approximately 30 orders of magnitude to be in range of modern nuclear fission reactors." He goes on to say: "Fortunately, several energy-saving mechanisms have been proposed in earlier research that can potentially lower the energy required by nearly 60 orders of magnitude." Lentz is currently in the early-stages of determining if these methods can be modified, or if new mechanisms are needed to bring the energy required down to what is currently possible.Is Faster-Than-Light Travel or Communication Possible? ![]() Lentz explains, "The energy required for this drive travelling at light speed encompassing a spacecraft of 100 meters in radius is on the order of hundreds of times of the mass of the planet Jupiter. Then we can talk about building the first prototypes," says Lentz.Ĭurrently, the amount of energy required for this new type of space propulsion drive is still immense. The next step is to figure out how to bring down the astronomical amount of energy needed to within the range of today's technologies, such as a large modern nuclear fission power plant. "This work has moved the problem of faster-than-light travel one step away from theoretical research in fundamental physics and closer to engineering. This means there would not be the complications of the so-called "twin paradox" whereby one twin travelling near the speed of light would age much more slowly than the other twin who stayed on Earth: in fact, according to the recent equations both twins would be the same age when reunited. In addition, the solitons (warp bubbles) were configured to contain a region with minimal tidal forces such that the passing of time inside the soliton matches the time outside: an ideal environment for a spacecraft. In comparison, the current rocket technology would take more than 50,000 years for a one-way journey. That means an individual could travel there and back within their lifetime. If sufficient energy could be generated, the equations used in this research would allow space travel to Proxima Centauri, our nearest star, and back to Earth in years instead of decades or millennia. No "exotic" negative energy densities needed. In essence, the new method uses the very structure of space and time arranged in a soliton to provide a solution to faster-than-light travel, which - unlike other research - would only need sources with positive energy densities. Lentz derived the Einstein equations for unexplored soliton configurations (where the space-time metric's shift vector components obey a hyperbolic relation), finding that the altered space-time geometries could be formed in a way that worked even with conventional energy sources. A soliton - in this context also informally referred to as a 'warp bubble' - is a compact wave that maintains its shape and moves at constant velocity. Lentz noticed that there existed yet-to-be explored configurations of space-time curvature organized into 'solitons' that have the potential to solve the puzzle while being physically viable. The author of the paper, Dr Erik Lentz, analysed existing research and discovered gaps in previous 'warp drive' studies.
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