Some scientists enjoy watching TV series and do not hide their interest. A physicist from Mexico had seen enough of Star Trek to the point that he spent a whole night calculating. Now the Alcubierre engine is one of NASA's projects.
Still, you need to find time and opportunities in any, any way for what is interesting, what inspires. It can change life, make it worthwhile. If you watched "Star Trek", then you probably know who invented all this. Not? His name was Gene Roddenberry. More precisely, Eugene Wesley Roddenberry.
Screenwriter, writer, author of the idea for the series * Star Trek * Gene Roddenberry.
He was a pilot, during the war (World War II) he flew a B-17, this is a heavy bomber. Then he switched to civil aviation, but got into a plane crash and decided not to fly anymore. I went to the police. But moving through life between work and home was not enough for him. He had a passion. Composed stories. Including sci-fi. Just don't go to a nursing home in Springfield - MUCH they told him that this was not serious, blah blah blah. In this case, you need character. Bend your line and that's it. On television, of course, all the good stuff is enough, but you suggest! What are you missing? Here he is, an illustrative example: he offered - and it came in handy. Moreover, he began to earn money as a screenwriter. Whole series began to appear. Yes, it was not a cult movie. But in the end, the plot turned out to be cult.
An idea was born: the ship "Enterprise", XXIII century, superluminal speeds, captain Christopher Pike, extraterrestrial intelligence, adventures on different planets. Proposed by CBS, but rejected, brought the script to NBC. Okay, they say, do it. They filmed the pilot episode "The Cage" about how the crew was lured to the planet so that the earthlings would populate it. The gorgeous Jeffrey Hunter (who is from The Searchers and other Westerns) was invited to play the captain. But somehow the main television artists did not really like it, and even this handsome man did not want to continue acting. This is the question of how to deal with your own failures. It didn't work, yes, it didn't. That's it, come on now, close yourself in a tin can and sit there souring. Not! Take Gene's example: one scenario failed? Just think! And we'll write THREE more. Here you are: one of them approved. Old scenery, new actors and - ta-dam!"Star Trek. The original series”.
Warp - means "warp", "deformation"
Of course, it cannot be said that it was Roddenberry who was responsible for the very idea of the engine that bends the fabric of space-time. First, as early as 1931, the writer John Campbell Jr. expressed it in his novel Islands in Space. Secondly, Isaac Asimov has this theme in I, Robot. But that in the series - this, of course, was not.
Promotional video:
Nobody argues, the speed of light is the absolute limit, nothing can move faster. Einstein's general theory of relativity is inviolable. But we are not going to violate it. The trick is not to move IN SPACE, but to move SPACE ITSELF. In popular science films, this is compared to an escalator: you don't go anywhere and you don't go - what you are standing on is driving.
This is how the Enterprise flies: the space in front of it shrinks, and behind it expands. At the same time, the ship itself does not bend anywhere, it seems to be on an escalator, safe and sound, and rushes at incredible speeds. Light speed = 1 warp. And 9.8 warp is already 9 THOUSAND times faster than light, this is the maximum in "Star Trek". At this speed, you can fly in a day the distance that light travels in 24 years, that is, to get, for example, to Gliese 581, where astronomers have found a potentially habitable planet, and generally explore the immediate vicinity.
What is happiness due to? In the series - at the expense of reactors in which matter and antimatter are mutually destroyed. In general, there is an electroplasma in the plot, and a singularity, that is, a flight of fantasy based on real scientific achievements. The spectators watched and were carried away with their thoughts to unknown distances. Yes, they thought, well thought out.
And believe it or not, but the series was liked not only by those who, for the life of me, do not understand what the singularity is, but also by the most real astrophysicists. Meet the viewer who is not evil, but really knowledgeable.
Astrophysicist Miguel Alcubierre.
His name is Miguel Alcubierre, he is now 55, he is Mexican. Professor, by the way, PhD in physics. Works at the Nuclear Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. And you and I would hardly be interested if he had not watched "Star Trek". He watched it, apparently, in the late 80s - early 90s, then a new season was shown: "The Next Generation". By the way, in 1991 Gene Roddenberry died, his ashes were launched into space six years later on a Pegasus rocket. So, Alcubierre was so impressed by the idea of deformation that after the next episode he did not sleep all night. He was calculating. The next morning he had a concept ready. The world learned about her in 94.
Alcubierre engine
The main point is this: theoretically it is POSSIBLE. That is, it is realistic to create just such a wave of space-time curvature. To understand that our reality, in principle, can be bent, you need to understand that this is happening right now around the Earth, and around the Sun, and around any star and planet - any massive object in space-time deforms it, therefore everything is attracted to it: tightens like a funnel.
The concept of the warp drive is known as the "Alcubierre Bubble". Judging by the way it is explained, it really turns out to be such a bubble in which the ship is located, and in general everything happens as in the "Star Trek", only the starship is not as spectacular: a flying saucer is, of course, cool, but it is better to be more modest - in the form ball for American football.
And one more detail, which is also the main snag: what is needed here is not antimatter, but something worse. The ball must be surrounded by a ring, and not simple, but "golden": it must contain "exotic" matter. It is also called negative substance. Let's figure it out: ANTI-matter is, for example, an antiproton - also a proton, but with a negative charge. Or a positron - again an electron, but with a plus sign. These particles exist, we know them. That is, not us, but scientists, of course. But the NEGATIVE substance is completely different, it is already something generally strange. These are particles that do not attract, like all respectable particles, but, on the contrary, repel. That is, it is not gravity that acts on them, but antigravity. Some kind of looking glass. How it is possible to live in conditions of antigravity, of course, is completely incomprehensible, but physicists are looking for it. Not found in space yet. How do you find herif she flies away from you all the time? But something similar was found on Earth. And a long time ago, back in the 30s.
There was a Dutch physicist - Hendrik Kazimir. Once he conducted an experiment: he took two tiny metal plates and placed them strictly parallel to each other, and very, very close, at a microscopic distance. So what? They "collapsed", attracted to each other. And Kazimir knew that it would be so. Why? Because he knew that quantum particles were scurrying around in a vacuum and that you couldn't get them anywhere. And they don't just scurry around unnoticed. They create pressure. Yes Yes. And now, if the plates are placed very close, it turns out that there will be less of these particles between them than are worn around. This means that the pressure outside is greater than in this gap. And if the pressure is less than usually in a vacuum, then this pressure is negative. This is how it should be with a negative substance. Another question is where to get so much of it for interstellar travel. That's just it.
Go crazy one by one
If Alcubierre was the only one like that, you could still say that he is with his "Star Trek" a little of that and so on. But he is not alone. There are also smart people who believe in this.
Aerospace engineer Harold White.
Harold White, NASA often just calls him Sonny. Aerospace engineer, leads the Advanced Movement Research Laboratory at the Lyndon Johnson Space Center. And speaks a lot about the Alcubierre bubble. He improved the design of the ship: now his ring is not flat, but in the shape of a donut - a torus. It's funny for you, but due to this, much less of this negative energy is required.
Engineer Joseph Agnew.
And another, a young man from the University of Alabama at Huntsville, just gave a talk. Joseph Agnew. So far, however, he has not invented or improved anything, but he plunged headlong into the problem.
The moral of this fable: science is on the verge of fantasy. We are all urgently looking for fuel. While all this is not very hard to believe, but tempting. No joke - to Proxima Centauri in two weeks instead of four years at the speed of light! How many warps are you getting?
Author: Adel Romanenkova
