The US Department Of Defense Has Conducted Research On Warp Drive Technology And Dark Energy - Alternative View

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The US Department Of Defense Has Conducted Research On Warp Drive Technology And Dark Energy - Alternative View
The US Department Of Defense Has Conducted Research On Warp Drive Technology And Dark Energy - Alternative View

Video: The US Department Of Defense Has Conducted Research On Warp Drive Technology And Dark Energy - Alternative View

Video: The US Department Of Defense Has Conducted Research On Warp Drive Technology And Dark Energy - Alternative View
Video: The Alcubierre Warp Field and Anti Matter [2020] 2024, March
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In August 2008, the US Department of Defense invited dozens of research groups to consider the prospects for research into completely new aerospace technologies, including new methods of propulsion, takeoff and stealth. Among the papers presented, the most interesting was a 34-page report prepared by two scientists under the heading "Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and Extra Dimensional Manipulation." The document was presented to the military on April 2, 2010 and was only recently publicly published by the US Department of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Business Insider reports.

In this work, the authors suggest that humanity is not far from the moment when it will be able to solve the riddle of higher, hitherto invisible dimensions, as well as negative or "dark energy" - the repulsive force, which, according to physicists, causes the universe to expand at an increasing rate.

“The ability to control a higher spatial dimension will allow technological control over dark energy, which in turn will open up the possibility of developing more exotic propulsion technologies. In particular - vapr-engine ", - the report notes and here it is added that" thanks to this, travel to other planets of the solar system will be carried out not in years, but in minutes and hours, and flights inside the local star cluster can be carried out in weeks, not hundreds of thousands of years."

Despite all the optimism noted in this document, the California Institute of Technology physicist Sean Carroll, who specializes in dark energy and general relativity, was very skeptical about the published report.

“These are just pieces and fragments of theoretical physics, which are presented as if we are on the verge of their application in the real world. Although this is not at all the case. I cannot call it nonsense - after all, this is not Maharashi (Indian guru, founder of transcendental meditation - ed.), Who said that spiritual energy will allow us to rise above the ground and fly. It's still real physics. But this is not at all something that soon can be combined into something coherent and offer use cases. Perhaps we will never come to this at all,”Carroll comments.

How it all started

The reason for this study is still unclear. The only thing that is known at the moment is that this work has some references to research by the US military aimed at predicting "potential threats" from potential adversaries developing new technologies. And to a large extent all this is very, very conditional. All studies were conducted within the framework of the "Latest Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP)" and its subprojects.

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It was within the framework of the AAWSA (Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program) that at least two research projects in the development of engines and space technologies that border on science fiction were funded. The first of these studies, dated March 29, 2010, focuses on an engine capable of propelling a spacecraft to superluminal speed. The study deals with theoretical physical concepts such as space-time curvatures and gravitational and anti-gravity forces. The second study, published by the AAWSA Program on April 2, 2010, covers similar areas, but also includes dark energy and other dimensions.

The AAWSA experts were doing the work under the auspices of the Intelligence Agency's Defense Alert Service, which makes sense, at least conceptually. According to the official briefing, the organization first appeared in 2002 and "is engaged in identifying sources of growing threats to US interests in critical regions of the world."

"This service will also determine the possibilities of influencing enemy behavior before and in the early stages of the crisis," the report said.

In 2003, these tasks expanded to include work to "provide early warning of technological advances that could undermine US military superiority."

UFO sightings are often evidence of promising and secret military aircraft research and development projects. As part of the DIA's mandate, a team of experts could examine observation reports and try to determine if they were related to real programs, especially those with which potential adversaries such as Russia or China could work.

The AAWSA team was able to delve into well-known developments in related areas, and it also makes sense in this context. If America's adversaries were rapidly moving towards the creation of warp drives and other promising propulsion systems, the DIA would definitely want to know about this in order to help the United States prepare a response.

However, the applicability of these studies seems dubious, as do parts of the study itself. None of the reports indicated that the technology they described was close to practical use, or that any foreign country was close to making a technological breakthrough.

AATIP reports of UFO sightings did not generate much enthusiasm among scientists who read the published report. Seth Shostak (head of the SETI Institute, which searches for alien civilizations) has previously spoken out on the topic of why he, being an alien hunter himself, does not believe that alien civilizations have ever visited us.

“It's hard to believe that aliens will fly here hundreds and hundreds of light years away and then show complete inactivity,” Shostak said.

A similar skepticism from prominent experts in the field of interest was met by the report on warp drives, wormholes and other "stargates" in the framework of the AAWSA program.

Warp Drive Physics

In the report, its authors touch on several issues of interest to modern physics. Among the discussed concepts, it is said about dark energy (predicted but did not prove the existence of which the father of general relativity, Albert Einstein), about gravitational waves bending space-time, about the Casimir effect, which consists in the mutual attraction of conducting uncharged bodies under the influence of quantum fluctuations in a vacuum, as well as about M-theory, which talks about the possible existence of several additional dimensions, the development of which will definitely be required for the warp drive to work.

An illustration of the warp field generated by the Alcubierre Engine theoretical device. A spaceship 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 "unrolling" the space behind
An illustration of the warp field generated by the Alcubierre Engine theoretical device. A spaceship 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 "unrolling" the space behind

An illustration of the warp field generated by the Alcubierre Engine theoretical device. A spaceship 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 "unrolling" the space behind.

The authors of the work note that the solution of all these questions will ultimately allow us to bypass the fundamental rule of Einstein, which states that it is impossible to move faster than the speed of light.

“This document considers the possibility, even the high probability, that future developments in advanced aerospace technologies will involve impacts that distort the space-time structures underlying vacuum space. This can be called vacuum or metric engineering."

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

“The idea is that a sufficiently advanced technology can interact and gain direct control over space-time dimensions. This tantalizing opportunity certainly deserves a deeper study,”the document says.

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

In the same document, an infographic is provided that explains how fast space travel can become if humanity can move in space at a speed a hundred times faster than the speed of light
In the same document, an infographic is provided that explains how fast space travel can become if humanity can move in space at a speed a hundred times faster than the speed of light

In the same document, an infographic is provided that explains how fast space travel can become if humanity can move in space at a speed a hundred times faster than the speed of light.

The document also provides a 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 "squeeze" in front of the spacecraft and "unfold" the space behind it. Being in a kind of bubble, the ship will be protected from deformation. The ship itself inside the field of distortion will actually remain stationary - the very distorted space 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 the physical principle of Einstein.

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

“You really can't go faster than the speed of light, but you can very well imagine the possibility of effectively curving space-time that will allow you to overcome this barrier,” says Carroll.

“That is, if, for example, you 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 it."

According to Carroll, the DIA report goes too deeply into 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 within the next millennium, let alone how to use it all,”the scientist comments.

Why is all this so far implausible

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 even more so 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 using, say, a spacecraft with a volume of one hundred cubic meters, we will have to talk about astronomical volumes of negative energy.

“Take the Earth and turn its entire volume into energy - that's how much you need it. Only one should understand what exactly negative energy is. Nowadays nobody has any idea how to do this,”says Carroll.

“And we are not talking about ordinary atoms that make up the Earth and their dispersal, as it was done 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 be somehow collected, stored and used with 100% efficiency.

“This is an unrealistic task. The question here is not that "we just don't have the right transistors" to work with. It is about something that does not fit into 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 complete understanding of the nature of dark energy can take a very long time."

At the same time, in the document, the authors suggest that "experimental scientific breakthroughs in research with the Large Hadron Collider, as well as the further development of M-theory, may lead to a quantum leap in our understanding of this unusual form of 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 opening the veil of secrecy around dark energy. The experiments carried out also did not contribute to the further development of M-theory.

Even if we assume that somehow a way will be discovered to obtain dark energy, as well as a way to feed its planetary volume to the ship's warp engines, choose a suitable direction for travel and even go to it, we, or rather those who fly, will encounter no less important problems, which will be vital to solve even before the start of such a journey.

Due to the very curvature of space, interstellar travelers can lose control of the ship at the time of the start of the flight. People can also face problems on the way to their goal. It is possible that Hawking radiation, presumably located at the borders of black holes and other very gravitationally curved regions of space, could not only interfere with the operation of the warp field, but also kill the passengers of the ship passing by.

Slowing down a spacecraft can also prove fatal to its crew. The craft emerging from the warp can transform cosmic gas and dust light-years 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 it is simply impossible to do this,”Carroll concluded.

Nikolay Khizhnyak

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