Monday, September 17, 2012

The warp drive could be come science fact



From Space.com (Clara Moskowitz) and Discovery News:

"A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel -- a concept popularized in television's Star Trek -- may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say. A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy. Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially bringing the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science ..."

See more of the story here.

That's part of the wonder of science ... when the line between science and science fiction starts to blur.  I love the closing quote of the article:

"If we're ever going to become a true spacefaring civilization, we're going to have to think outside the box a little bit, we're going to have to be a little bit audacious,"

It's that lack of audacity that is preventing us from solving the world's problems.  We have possible solutions to things like hunger, global warming, energy and space travel but small, superstitious minds rule the day.  Respecting other people's right to their own belief systems is fine and dandy, but not at the expense of progress.  And the argument that religion is useful for promoting morality is laughable.  You cannot go a day without hearing of religion encouraging killing and hate and bigotry.

Let's be audacious and use rationality and reason.

2 comments:

CyberKitten said...

FTL is definitely something we need to get on top of. If we have to rely on slower-than-light travel it'll take for *ever* to get to all of the interesting places in the Galaxy!

wstachour said...

I quite agree with your closing paragraph. We need, to a certain extent, to embrace and nurture the wacky in order to get to places we might otherwise think impossible. Stuff like this is endlessly fascinating.