Y’ALL!!!!!!! GUESS WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?!?! LISTEN UP!!!!!
THE WARP DRIVE IS NOW EVEN CLOSER TO BEING POSSIBLE THAN EVER BEFORE!!!
So, to put this as a caveat, this is definitely still a very very long way to go and a Work In Progress! BUT. One of the main theoretical issues with getting a working warp drive is the requirement for negative mass, or negative energy, in order for the warp drive to function and propel the USS Enterprise forwards at a speed faster than light.
THIS STUDY HAS PRODUCED QUASIPARTICLES WITH NEGATIVE MASS!!!
To summarise the article for the less scientifically minded (to the point where its now actually wrong)
electrons do the many wizz
so fast, much speed
so you can only tell either where it is, or how fast its going
electrons that are going faster or not in the same place as the others (nebulous, generic others) are out of phase
shoot them at big metal detector plates (the Bragg deflectors) exitons are balls of energy made from light hitting electrons (not really but hey)
hit the two together against the defelctor plate thingys record how they mush togther/ don;t mush together
results show that they mush together in space/time breaking ways
theory is that the space breakage mushing is happening in basically a mini worm hole. i.e at warp
if we can make this many big and stable, we too can do the warp
Again, please be warned that I have massacred thescience to make it simpler. Any second now, a particle physicist is going to appear and strangle me for writing this…
DUDE tbh i think that is actually a remarkably coherent abridged version of warp drive tech ;p
The other key thing to note is that negative gravitational mass as a property would also mean it’s possible to reach faster than the speed of light in itself anyway, even beyond a warp drive. And that in turn implies that time travel is also possible!
But please god don’t ask me to science that one. Basically at high speeds time dilation happens. Time slows. Technically if you hit the speed of light time freezes for the object travelling at that speed. SO if you can get something to go faster than the speed of light it would actually travel back in time!!!
but you can’t because the mass basically rises exponentionally the closer an object gets to lightning speed, which makes it harder for the object to reach higher speeds, which is why it hasn’t happened yet but that’s basic physics ….???
You’re right, normally the mass would increase so much, the speed of light can never be reached, like so:
BUUUUUT….
What this space destroying interaction is also causing (as @logicallythyla said above), is a negative mass reaction. I.e where the mass should keep going up and up and up…. its not. Which means, that what these scientists think they’re seeing is this:
And oh boy is that exciting…
@insane-sociopath TYSM for putting in this explanation! Honestly, I’m kind of terrified by how many notes this has gotten, and it’s buried most of the responses until they cross my dash!!!
It’s exactly like that! Since, however, I don’t think I can explain this all very well by myself, I’d also like to drop this wiki page about the Alcubierre drive – this is what I’m talking about when I mention warp drives being possible!
The point of the drive is that it utilises negative mass to create a condition – a warp bubble – that means due to space-time being warped, the actual ship itself is not technically travelling at faster than light speeds! Meaning, the actual ship can still be made of standard positive mass and feel no ill-effects!
The below article on negative mass explains as well how, if a particle has negative mass then it also has negative momentum, and on applying this to, the equation E=mc^2, negative mass ‘breaks’ the momentum section of the energy calculations, meaning that the energy does not cause the mass to increase exponentially on acceleration to beyond light speed any longer.
The other exciting thing is, that it includes the possibility that negative mass, as theorised by Stephen Hawking, could be used to ‘balance’ wormholes/Einstein-Rosen bridges! Which is yet another way we could achieve travel through space or even time!
Once again. This is all so very far beyond real life application right now – but the existence of negative mass lends credence to the possible future application of theories which have relied on it’s existence in order to work! Which is very exciting!
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