An old idea with a new take on it - the WARP engine. Top Secret: NASA is developing a warp drive Warp Theory

Last September, several hundred scientists, engineers and space enthusiasts gathered under one roof at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Houston. The reason for the meeting is the second open meeting 100 Year Starship. The agency itself finances this high-tech get-together DARPA, and is led by a former astronaut May Jemison. The goal is simple: “make a reality of human flight beyond our solar system to another star in the next 100 years." Intriguing? An exciting story awaits you.

Most of those present at the conference agree that the development of manned cosmonautics is depressingly slow. Despite the billions of dollars that have been spent over the past 20-30 years, the space agencies have not moved much from the point laid back in the 60s. By the way, Elon Musk did not fail to take advantage of this by founding his own space agency SpaceX. 100 Year Starship plans to speed up the process of flying to another star, forcing the development of promising technologies. Well, let's buckle up.

Among the most anticipated presentations at the conference was this: "Warp Field Mechanics 102" ("Warp Field Mechanics 102"), presented by Harold "Son" White from NASA. A space agency veteran works on a special propulsion program at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) near the Hyatt. With a team of six, White recently laid out NASA's goals for the future. space travel. There was a lot in the new presentation: from all kinds of flight projects and improving chemical rockets to powerful engines based on antimatter and nuclear energy. However, the most interesting thing was this: warp drive. Or a warp engine. Call it what you will, but the warp is still the warp for many, from Star Trek lovers to Star Craft lovers.

Let's shed some light: warp drive could make travel possible faster speed Sveta. Of course, you will say that this is impossible, since it contradicts Einstein's general theory of relativity. White thinks not. In the half hour allotted to him at the symposium, he talked about the physics of potential warp motion, using concepts such as bubbles Alcubierre and hyperspace fluctuations. He also noted that his theoretical calculations had paved the way for warp propulsion, and he began physical testing at his NASA laboratory, which he called Eagleworks.

As you have begun to suspect, a working warp drive will be the number one word in the history of space travel. We will not only be able to fly to Mars in less than a year and a half, as planned, but also go beyond the solar system, and maybe even replace the power source on Voyager. A trip on a modern spacecraft to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would take 75,000 years. But if the ship was warp-driven, it would take two weeks to get everything done, according to White.

With the shutdown of the shuttles and the increasing activity of private segments in the field of near-Earth flight, NASA says that it will focus on daring forays farther into space, much further than the bored digging of the moon. But without fundamentally new engines, such sorties will be of little use. A couple of days after the 100 Year Starship meeting, NASA chief Charles Bolden echoed White's words:

“One day we want to get to warp speed. We want to move faster than the speed of light and not stop at Mars.”

star way

Physicist Miguel Alcubierre developed the warp drive model after watching an episode of Star Trek.

The first use of the term "warp propulsion" dates back to 1966, when Gene Roddenberry launched Star Trek. For the next thirty years, the warp existed only as one of the most enduring concepts. science fiction. But one day the episode caught the eye of a physicist named Miguel Alcubierre. Then he worked in the field of general relativity and asked himself: what it takes to build a warp drive? He published his work in 1994.

Alcubierre imagined a bubble in space. At the front of the bubble, space-time contracts, while at the back of the bubble it expands (as in the Big Bang). The warp will have little effect on the ship, like a normal wave, despite the turmoil outside the bubble. In principle, a warp bubble can move arbitrarily fast: the speed limit predicted by Einstein's theory only works with spacetime, not the distortions of spacetime itself. In the bubble, as predicted by Alcubierre, space-time will remain unchanged, and the space travelers themselves will be safe and sound.

The warp drive will be able to send travelers not only beyond the earth's orbit, but also the entire solar system. Einstein's equations of general relativity are very complex in a one-way solution—calculating how matter curves spacetime—but quite simple in reverse. Using them, Alcubierre figured out what distribution of matter is needed to create a warp bubble. But the problem is that the solution revealed a strange form of matter - negative energy.

In a primitive explanation, gravity is the force of attraction between two objects. Every object, regardless of its size, attracts the matter around it. In Einstein's understanding, this force is the curvature of space-time. Negative energy, however, is repulsive gravity. Instead of pulling space-time together, negative energy will push it apart. To put it bluntly, Alcubierre's engine needs negative energy to run the space-time behind the ship to expand.

And although no one has ever measured negative energy, quantum mechanics(let's add to the list of paradoxes) predicts its existence, which means that scientists may well create it in the laboratory. One way to create it would be Casimir effect: Two parallel conductive plates close enough to each other should produce a small amount of negative energy. Alcubierre's model collapsed at the exact moment it was needed great amount negative energy, much more than you can create - according to scientists.

White says he has found a way around this limitation. In a computer simulation, White was changing the strength and geometry of the warp field. It turned out that in theory it was possible to create a warp bubble using a million times less negative energy than Alcubierre had imagined, and enough for the spacecraft to be able to produce it itself.

“From the impossible, everything became plausible.”

"Son"

Harold "Sonny" White, engineerNASAdeveloping a warp drive in a labEagleworks.

Further narration - on behalf of Konstantin Kakaes withPopSci.

The Johnson Space Center sits next to the lagoons where Houston gives way to the port of Galveston. The smell of campuses where future astronauts train is in the air. On the day of my visit, White met me in the fifteenth building, a low-rise building with a labyrinth of corridors, offices and laboratories that together make Eagleworks. He wore a polo shirt embroidered with the Eagleworks emblem: an eagle spreading its wings over a futuristic starship.

White didn't start his career in a movement lab. He studied mechanical engineering and joined the agency in 2004 as a contractor in the robotics group, where he has worked since 2000. He ended up taking control of the manipulator on the ISS while working on his Ph.D. in plasma physics. It was not until 2009 that White began studying engines, which he had been interested in for a long time, and the job at NASA was gone.

“The son is a unique individual,” said his boss, John Applewhite, who heads the propulsion systems division at the Johnson Center. “He's definitely a dreamer, but he's also an engineer. He can turn his imagination into a useful technical product."

After joining Applewhite's group, White requested permission to open his own laboratory dedicated to advanced engines. I chose my logo and got to work.

White took me to his office, which he shares with a colleague who searches for water on the Moon (he apparently found it on Mars), and then took me to Eagleworks. As we walked, he told me about the difficulties of opening the laboratory, which he described as "a long and tedious process of finding advanced engines that will help people explore space." He speaks with a slight drawl, the result of many years in the South, first at an Alabama college and then 13 years in Texas.

White shows me the apparatus and draws my attention to its central element, the Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster (QVPD). The device looks like a big red velvet donut with wires wrapped tightly around the core. It is one of the two main developments of Eagleworks, along with the warp drive. Of course, it's classified. When I asked about this device, White said that he could not divulge details, except that the development of this technology would take longer than the creation of a warp drive. A report published by NASA in 2011 said that it uses quantum fluctuations in empty space as a fuel source (which, apparently, Tesla spoke about), so space ship on the basis of KVPD, “gasoline” is not needed.

White's experiments with the warp were centered in a corner of the room. The helium-neon laser is mounted on a small table behind a perforated grille, along with a beam splitter and a black-and-white CCD camera. This is a White-Judy warp field interferometer, named after White himself and Richard Judy, a retired Johnson Center staffer who helped White analyze data from the CCD. Half of the laser light passes through the ring, White's experimental fixture. The other half is not. If the ring does not change in any way, White will notice this in the data from the CCD. If the space is distorted, then "the interference picture will be completely different."

When the device is activated, White's setup works like in the movie: the laser glows red and the two beams cross like laser swords. Inside the ring are four barium titanate ceramic capacitors, which White charges up to 23,000 volts. For the past year and a half, he has been modeling this experiment, and according to the engineer, "capacitors are gaining a powerful energy potential."

However, when I asked how all of this would generate the negative energy needed to warp space-time, White's response became evasive: “It works like this… I can tell you what I can say. I can't tell you what I can't." He referred to a non-disclosure agreement, so the details remained under the veil of secrecy. I asked with whom he signed such an agreement, to which the answer was:

“People come and ask about all sorts of things. I just can't go into more detail than I do now."

warp drive

White works in the shadow of a Saturn V rocket at the Johnson Space Center (JSC).

The theory of warp travel is intuitive - warp space-time and create a moving bubble. But in practice, it has several significant obstacles. Even if White manages to significantly reduce the required amount of negative energy than Alcubierra needed, there will still be much more of it than scientists can create. Lawrence Ford, a theoretical physicist at Tufts University, who has written dozens of papers on negative energy over the past 30 years, says so. Ford and other physicists say there are fundamental physical limits - not just engineering problems - as to how much negative energy can be concentrated in one place for a long time.

Another problem is that in order to create a warp bubble that travels faster than the speed of light, scientists will have to spread negative energy around the ship, including in front of it. White doesn't see this as a problem. When I asked him, he answered rather vaguely, saying that the warp drive will work, since "all that is needed is an apparatus that will create everything the necessary conditions". But creating these conditions in front of the ship would mean distributing negative energy that travels faster than light, violating general relativity.

Finally, warp drive is a conceptual issue. In general relativity, traveling faster than the speed of light is equivalent to traveling through time. We have already discussed whether such travel is possible in principle. By saying that warp drive is possible, White is actually claiming that he can create a time machine.

Doubt creeps like night on earth.

"I don't think any of the usual understandings of physics suggest what he wants to see in his experiments," says Ken Olum, a physicist at Tufts University who attended the 2011 100 Year Starship meeting. Noah Graham, a physicist at Middlebury College who read two of White's papers at my request, responded with the following remark:

"I don't see anything scientific in these papers other than summarizing old papers."

Alcubierre himself, now a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, also doubts:

“Even if I am sitting in a ship and I have negative energy, there is no way to get it where I need it,” he said by phone. - “It's a great idea. I like it because I wrote it myself. But it has a number of limitations that I have encountered over the years, and I do not know how to get around them.

To the left of the main gate of the Johnson Center lies a Saturn V rocket on its side. All stages are disconnected so that you can admire the intestines of the rocket. Just one of the many carrier engines is about the size of a small car, and the side-lying rocket is a couple of meters longer than a football field. This speaks volumes about the complexity of space travel. The rocket is forty years old, and the time when it was introduced - and when NASA was part of the big American dream to put a man on the moon - is long gone. Today, the Johnson Space Center is like a place where greatness once roamed but disappeared.

A breakthrough in engine development could mark new era in JSC and NASA, which will last for many years and the end of which we will not see. The Rassvet probe, launched in 2007, explores the asteroid belt on ion thrusters. In 2010, the Japanese unveiled Ikarus, the first interplanetary solar sail project, another experimental engine variant. In 2016, the ISS will begin the VASIMR experiment, a high-thrust plasma system. And while these systems could one day carry astronauts to Mars, they certainly won't get out of the solar system. That's why, according to White, NASA needs to take on risky projects.

The warp drive is probably NASA's most incredible propulsion project. The brightest minds in the scientific community claim that White cannot build it. Experts say it works against the laws of nature and physics. Despite all this, NASA supports this development.

"What he's trying to do doesn't need a lot of funding," Applewhite says. - “I think the authorities are very interested in him continuing to work. So far it's just a theory, but if it turns into reality, the rules of the game will change dramatically."

In January, White assembled his warp interferometer and took it to a new location. Eagleworks has moved into a new home that is larger and "seismically isolated," White enthuses. That is, it is protected from vibrations. But the best thing about the new lab is that NASA gave White the space to develop the Apollo program, the same one that once took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon.

And it became such an incredible breakthrough that many still do not believe that the Americans landed on the moon.

The Defense Intelligence Agency has published a paper on the possibility of using dark energy and manipulating extra dimensions to create a warp drive.

Such technologies would allow faster-than-light travel, but according to skeptical scientists, their creation is impossible at the moment and in the foreseeable future.

Scientists reported that dark energy is being used to create development. The engine will be able to overcome the speed of light.

The news about the creation was published in the Pentagon Intelligence Agency. Specifically, the structure was nicknamed the warp drive. In the Pentagon, the development is regarded at a promising level, since thanks to it, experts will create a ship that will even outrun the movement of light. Many astrophysicists believe that technology does not have the prospects that the authors of the engine of the future see. Despite the criticism, the Pentagon believes that traveling faster than the speed of light is real. Initially, scientists intend to study the secret of the accelerating amplification of the Universe. Astrophysicists report that if there are any other dimensions besides ours, then moving at hyperfast speed will not be a miracle.

As the authors of the document write, humanity has come close to unraveling the mysteries of hidden dimensions and dark energy, which causes the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Using the extra dimensions that M-theory introduces could help create the exotic matter needed for FTL. Such matter has a negative density.

However, some scientists are skeptical about such claims. For example, physicist Sean Carroll believes that the report uses separate pieces of theoretical physics that are put together to create the appearance that they may have practical use. However, warp drive technology may never be invented.

Back in 1994, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a method for curving space-time using a wave that compresses it in front and expands it behind, creating a "bubble". Although inside the "bubble" a hypothetical ship cannot move with superluminal speed, the wave itself can overcome the limit set by special theory Einstein's relativity.

According to Carroll, although it is theoretically possible to bend space, it is not known how to obtain and use matter with negative energy to do this. To travel to Alpha Centauri, 4.367 from Earth light year, an astronomical amount of such matter would be required, comparable to what is released during the complete annihilation of an entire planet. Although the scientist does not rule out that in the distant future technologies of superluminal motion will be developed, he is inclined to think that they are impossible in principle.

An illustration of the warp field generated by the theoretical Alcubierre Drive device. A spacecraft located inside the field will be able to move faster than the speed of light by "compressing" the fabric of space in front of it and "unfolding" the space behind

In the report, its authors touch upon several issues of interest to modern physics at once. Among the concepts discussed are dark energy (whose existence was predicted, but not proved by the father of GR Albert Einstein), gravitational waves that bend space-time, the Casimir effect, which consists in the mutual attraction of conducting uncharged bodies under the action of quantum fluctuations in a vacuum, and also M-theory, which talks about the possible existence of several additional dimensions, the development of which is definitely needed for the operation of the warp drive.

“This paper considers the possibility, even the high probability, that future developments in advanced aerospace technologies will be associated with influences that distort the space-time structures that underlie vacuum space. You could call it vacuum or metric engineering."

“This is far from just a fancy concept. There is a specialized literature in peer-reviewed physics publications that explores the topic in detail.”

“The idea is that sufficiently advanced technology can interact with and gain direct control over space-time dimensions. This tantalizing possibility certainly merits further study,” the document says.

“Of course, we may not be able to achieve such technological heights for a very long time, but already now, at the early stage of the 21st century, we can consider many impressive physical phenomena which we believe to be true."

The same document provides an infographic explaining how fast space travel could become if humanity could move through space at a speed a hundred times the speed of light.

The document also provides general principle, according to which these trips can be carried out. So, according to the document, the use of a sufficient amount of dark energy will allow "compressing" in front of the spacecraft and "unfolding" the space behind it. Being in a kind of bubble, the ship will be protected from deformation. The ship itself inside the distortion field will actually remain motionless - the distorted space itself in which it is located will move. This, in fact, will allow the ship to move faster than the speed of light, without technically violating Einstein's physical principle.

Carroll notes that the concept "is not absolute nonsense" because it mathematical model was developed back in 1994 by the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre.

"You really can't go faster than the speed of light, but you can imagine the possibility of effectively bending space-time, which will allow you to overcome this barrier," says Carroll.

“That is, if you, for example, want to visit Alpha Centauri, then you can easily resort to the principle of space-time curvature so that Alpha Centauri is very close to you. Close enough to get there in a day, not tens of thousands of years. Will the curvature of space-time help you with this? Of course it will help. But can you do it? I doubt ".

According to Carroll, the DIA report digs too deep into the analytics.

“It discusses the warp drive, extra dimensions, the Casimir effect, and dark energy. All these things really, perhaps someday, will be revealed to us. But I am convinced that no one will be able to understand all this for the next millennium, not to mention how to use it all, ”the scientist comments.

Carroll believes that we are very far from reality with warp drives because so far no one really knows what dark energy is at all (hence the name "dark", that is, incomprehensible), not to mention where it comes from how to store it and how to use it.

Moreover, according to the scientist, in order to fly to Alpha Centauri - the closest star system to us, located at 4.367 light years - in a couple of years with the help of, say, spacecraft volume of a hundred cubic meters, we will have to talk about astronomical amounts of negative energy.

“Take the Earth and turn all of its volume into energy - that's how much you need it. Only it should be understood that it is negative energy. Right now, no one has any idea how to do it,” says Carroll.

“And we're not talking about the ordinary atoms that make up the Earth and their dispersion, as happened with the help of the Death Star. We will have to come up with a way to erase them from this reality.”

After that, this energy must somehow be collected, stored and used with 100 percent efficiency.

“This is an unrealistic task. The issue here is not "we just don't have the right transistors" for the job. It's about about something that doesn't fit within the limits of possibility in principle."

By the way, the report itself says that all its conclusions are speculative; acknowledges the need to use "a huge amount of negative energy", and also notes that "a full understanding of the nature of dark energy can take a very long time."

At the same time, in the paper, the authors suggest that “experimental scientific breakthroughs in research with the Large Hadron Collider, as well as further development of M-theory, may lead to a quantum leap in our understanding of this unusual shape energy and possibly new direct technological innovations.”

After almost ten years of work, the LHC has not found at least some evidence of the existence of particles that would allow us to lift the veil of secrecy around dark energy. The ongoing experiments also did not contribute to the further development of M-theory.

Even if we assume that somehow a way to obtain dark energy will be discovered, as well as a way to feed its planetary volume to the warp engines of the ship, choose a suitable direction for travel and even go to it, we, or rather those who fly, will face at least important issues, which will be vital to solve even before the start of such a journey.

Due to the curvature of space itself, interstellar travelers can lose control of the ship even at the moment the flight begins. On the way to their goal, people can also encounter problems. There is a possibility that Hawking radiation, supposedly located at the edges of black holes and other highly gravity-curved regions of space, can not only interfere with the operation of the warp field, but also kill the passengers of a ship flying by.

The slowdown of the spacecraft could also prove fatal to its crew. A device emerging from the warp can turn space gas and dust, several light-years across from origin to destination, into a deadly shockwave of highly charged particles.

“Science does not allow me to immediately exclude the possibility of warp travel, but still I believe that this is impossible. I think that if we had a better understanding of physics, we would have said without any doubt that this is simply impossible to do, ”summed up Carroll.

This news has not yet appeared, but NASA scientists may have created a warp drive!

A group of scientists from NASA conducted a series of optical tests by passing laser beams through the resonator chamber of the engine, and it turned out that the speed of the passing beams is different, which should not be, since the speed of light is constant. The behavior of the beams is exactly the same as if they were passing through the warp -field. However, there is a possibility that the obtained data is a consequence of distortions due to earth's atmosphere, which is why scientists now want to repeat the test in a vacuum, and ideally in space.

If you don't already know what a warp drive is, here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
warp drive(English) Warp drive, warp drive) is a hypothetical technology that, according to the hypothesis, will allow a ship equipped with such an engine to overcome interstellar distances at speeds exceeding the speed of light. This is possible, as some physicists expect, due to the generation of a special warp field - a warp field - which, by enveloping the ship, distorts the space-time continuum, moving it. The warp drive will not accelerate a physical body faster than the speed of light in ordinary space, but uses the properties of space-time to move faster than a plane electromagnetic wave (light) does in a vacuum.

In general terms, warp drives work by warping the space ahead and behind a starship, allowing it to travel faster than the speed of light. The space "shrinks" in front of the vessel and "swells" behind the vessel. At the same time, the ship itself is in a kind of “bubble”, remaining protected from deformations. The ship itself inside the distortion field actually remains motionless: the distorted space itself, in which it is located, moves. For example, the fictional warp drive in Star Trek works exactly like this.

Journey through wormhole in the mind of the artist

Image: Wikimedia Commons

NASA officials have disowned the creation of a warp drive. To the rumors that have appeared in the media over the past weeks mass media, agency staff responded in a letter to Space.com. You can get acquainted with the opinion of the engineers of the Lyndon Johnson Space Center, as well as a number of independent experts, in the material of the publication.

As industry watcher NASASpaceFlight.com previously reported, NASA Eagleworks engineers have successfully tested the new EmDrive electromagnetic motor in a vacuum and have even been able to measure its thrust. The feature of this device, which many news outlets have called a warp drive, is that there are no moving parts or a combustion chamber. According to the theoretical physicists who developed the concept, the operation of the engine occurs only due to the interaction generated by it electromagnetic waves with the end plates of the waveguide in which they propagate. It is important to note that the mechanism of traction is unknown.

Appearance EmDrive engine

SPR, Ltd., of the EM Drive

CNET reports that EmDrive will enable fast travel within the solar system, in particular that a flight between the Earth and the Moon can take as little as four hours, and the journey to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, will take less than 100 years.

But such statements are premature, according to NASA officials, responding to a request from Space.com. Despite the fact that the engineers have shown the possibility of creating a prototype EmDrive, their experiment has not yet brought any significant results. "NASA is not developing a warp drive," the agency added.

According to Ethan Siegel, professor of physics and astronomy at Lewis and Clark College (Portland), the thrust values observed in the experiment (about 30-50 micronewtons) are only 3 times the measurement error of the instrument. This does not allow us to consider these measurements as reliable enough, however, the expert notes that it was important to test the device in various directions in order to level out possible interaction with magnetic field Earth. No less important, he considers the fact that the device was tested in a vacuum - in atmospheric conditions, repulsion from gas molecules, known to physics, could be observed. In addition, Siegel notes that the details of the experiments and their results have not yet been peer-reviewed and have not been published in scientific journal- this condition is necessary for the scientific community to recognize the discovery.

Most of those present at the conference agree that the development of manned cosmonautics is depressingly slow. Despite the billions of dollars that have been spent over the past 20-30 years, the space agencies have not moved much from the point laid back in the 60s. Than, by the way, Elon Musk, having founded his own space agency SpaceX. 100 Year Starship plans to speed up the process of flying to another star, forcing the development of promising technologies. Well, let's buckle up.

Among the most anticipated presentations at the conference was this: "Warp Field Mechanics 102" ("Warp Field Mechanics 102"), presented by Harold "Son" White from NASA. A space agency veteran works on a special propulsion program at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) near the Hyatt. With a team of six, White recently set out on the future of space travel. There was a lot in the new presentation: from all kinds of flight projects and improving chemical rockets to powerful engines based on antimatter and nuclear energy. However, the most interesting thing was this: Or a warp engine. Call it what you will, but the warp is still the warp for many, from Star Trek lovers to Star Craft lovers.

Let's shed some light: warp drive could make faster-than-light travel possible. Of course, you will say that this is impossible, since it contradicts Einstein's general theory of relativity. White thinks not. In the half hour allotted to him at the symposium, he talked about the physics of potential warp motion, using concepts such as bubbles Alcubierre and hyperspace fluctuations. He also noted that his theoretical calculations had paved the way for warp propulsion, and he began physical testing at his NASA laboratory, which he called Eagleworks.

As you have begun to suspect, a working warp drive will be the number one word in the history of space travel. We will not only be able to fly to Mars in less than a year and a half, like, but also go beyond the solar system, and maybe even replace the power source with "". A trip on a modern spacecraft to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would take 75,000 years. But if the ship was warp-driven, it would take two weeks to get everything done, according to White.

“One day we want to get to warp speed. We want to move faster than the speed of light and not stop at Mars.”

Physicist Miguel Alcubierre developed the warp drive model after watching an episode of Star Trek.

The first use of the term "warp propulsion" dates back to 1966, when Gene Roddenberry launched Star Trek. For the next thirty years, the warp existed only as one of the most enduring science fiction concepts. But one day the episode caught the eye of a physicist named Miguel Alcubierre. Then he worked in the field of general relativity and asked himself: what it takes to build a warp drive? He published his work in 1994.

Alcubierre imagined a bubble in space. At the front of the bubble, space-time contracts, while at the back of the bubble it expands (as in time). The warp will have little effect on the ship, like a normal wave, despite the turmoil outside the bubble. In principle, a warp bubble can move arbitrarily fast: the speed limit predicted by Einstein's theory only works with spacetime, not the distortions of spacetime itself. In the bubble, as predicted by Alcubierre, space-time will remain unchanged, and the space travelers themselves will be safe and sound.

And although no one has ever measured negative energy, quantum mechanics (to add to the list of paradoxes) predicts its existence, which means that scientists can very well create it in the laboratory. One way to create it would be Casimir effect: Two parallel conductive plates close enough to each other should produce a small amount of negative energy. Alcubierre's model collapsed at the moment when it took a huge amount of negative energy, far more than can be created - according to scientists.

“From the impossible, everything became plausible.”

"Son"

Harold "Sonny" White, engineerNASAdeveloping a warp drive in a labEagleworks.

Further narration - on behalf of Konstantin Kakaes withPopSci.

“The son is a unique individual,” said his boss, John Applewhite, who heads the propulsion systems division at the Johnson Center. “He's definitely a dreamer, but he's also an engineer. He can turn his imagination into a useful technical product."

After joining Applewhite's group, White requested permission to open his own laboratory dedicated to advanced engines. I chose my logo and got to work.

White took me to his office, which he shares with a colleague who searches for water on the Moon (), and then took me to Eagleworks. As we walked, he told me about the difficulties of opening the laboratory, which he described as "a long and tedious process of finding advanced engines that will help people explore space." He speaks with a slight drawl, the result of many years in the South, first at an Alabama college and then 13 years in Texas.

White shows me the apparatus and draws my attention to its central element, the Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster (QVPD). The device looks like a big red velvet donut with wires wrapped tightly around the core. It is one of the two main developments of Eagleworks, along with the warp drive. Of course, it's classified. When I asked about this device, White said that he could not divulge details, except that the development of this technology would take longer than the creation of a warp drive. A report published by NASA in 2011 said that it uses the quantum fluctuations of empty space as a fuel source (which, apparently, even Tesla spoke about), so a spacecraft based on KVPD would not need "gasoline".

“People come and ask about all sorts of things. I just can't go into more detail than I do now."

warp drive

White works in the shadow of a Saturn V rocket at the Johnson Space Center (JSC).

Another problem is that in order to create a warp bubble that travels faster than the speed of light, scientists will have to spread negative energy around the ship, including in front of it. White doesn't see this as a problem. When I asked him, he answered rather vaguely, saying that the warp drive would work, since "all that is needed is an apparatus that will create all the necessary conditions." But creating these conditions in front of the ship would mean distributing negative energy that travels faster than light, violating general relativity.

Finally, warp drive is a conceptual issue. In general relativity, traveling faster than the speed of light is equivalent to traveling through time. We are already on the topic of whether such travel is possible in principle. By saying that warp drive is possible, White is actually claiming that he can create a time machine.

Doubt creeps like night on earth.

"I don't think any of the usual understandings of physics suggest what he wants to see in his experiments," says Ken Olum, a physicist at Tufts University who attended the 2011 100 Year Starship meeting. Noah Graham, a physicist at Middlebury College who read two of White's papers at my request, responded with the following remark:
"I don't see anything scientific in these papers other than summarizing old papers."
Alcubierre himself, now a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, also doubts:
“Even if I am sitting in a ship and I have negative energy, there is no way to get it where I need it,” he said by phone. - “It's a great idea. I like it because I wrote it myself. But it has a number of limitations that I have encountered over the years, and I do not know how to get around them.

A breakthrough in engine development could usher in a new era at JSC and NASA that will last for years to come and never see the end of. The Rassvet probe, launched in 2007, explores the asteroid belt on ion thrusters. In 2010, the Japanese unveiled Ikarus, the first interplanetary solar sail project, another experimental engine variant. In 2016, the ISS will begin the VASIMR experiment, a high-thrust plasma system. And while these systems could one day carry astronauts to Mars, they certainly won't get out of the solar system. That's why, according to White, NASA needs to take on risky projects.

"What he's trying to do doesn't need a lot of funding," Applewhite says. - “I think the authorities are very interested in him continuing to work. So far it's just a theory, but if it turns into reality, the rules of the game will change dramatically."

And it became such an incredible breakthrough that many still believe that the Americans landed on the moon.