Geeks Are Sexy is reporting NASA is working on a Faster Than Light Drive. Star Trek Fans know this as a Warp Drive. Star Wars fans call this devise a Hyper Drive.
Harold White, a physicist with NASA, recently announced that his team is working on the Faster Than Light Drive. It could work on the principles set forward by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. This theory states you can contract space-time in front of a ship and then expand it behind the ship. This would allow the ship to travel at speeds faster than light but it would not violate the theory or relativity.
If developed, a ship could fly to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star, in a few weeks instead of 4.3 years if we traveled at light speed.
It will be interesting to see how this develops.
While Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away, the travel time using conventional propulsion is more like a century, give or take, because (a) you have to accelerate from a stop [more or less], (b) people can’t tolerate continuous acceleration past a certain # Gs, and (c) half-way through, you must start to decelerate so you don’t go boom when you get there. So…that’s why I’m w/you. I’m holding out for warp drive!
Right you are James. There is no way we could travel at light speed in any conventional way. The technology they are trying to develop will be a type of warp or hyper drive.