Warp Drive When we talk about traveling faster than the speed of light the hottest ticket seems to be development of a warp drive engine. I have no way of knowing if this is possible, or even if it was, would this be the best way to go. Maybe some sort of drive that would use travel through other dimensions is the answer, or mapping wormholes, if that was possible would do the trick. Wormholes would not increase our speed, but would provide shortcuts to where we were going. I will talk more about warp drive developments, but first I would like to point out how it would work and why it doesn’t seem practical to me. Warp drive would fold space, and anything that was in the area would seem to be affected. For you Star Trek fans even the show admitted in one episode warp drive was banned in a certain area because it was damaging. It was Star Trek Next Generation and called The Force of Nature. I believe it was Season 7 Episode 9. I also believe if a warp engine existed it in fact would cause much damage. Having said this, it doesn’t seem to have stopped the idea of someday building a warp drive. Scientific American ran an article about how we were getting closer to perfecting it in 2021. It basically stated the work was leading to new physics. I don’t know personally how far we have gotten to solving the problem of inventing a warp drive, but I do have to say I don’t understand why we would if it could damage space, and folding space just doesn’t seem like a good idea. What if we caused some sort of space tsunami, not with water but with space itself. Would it go on forever or would it dissipate at some point? Could it destroy planets, and stars, and even if it was never used for propulsion would some race decide to use it as the most terrifying weapon ever made? It is said the warp drive would shrink space in front of a spaceship and expand it behind the ship. Others have said the ship would be traveling in a bubble at the time. I have even read if the ship didn’t stop far enough away from its destination, it is thought all that warped space in front of the ship could cause damage to the planet the ship was going to. This is all theoretical of course. According to some scientists creating a warp drive is impossible because our current science says so. The energy required to bend space this much is said to be impossible to achieve. An example of what I am talking about is available to us to measure. The mass of the earth bends space and yet it hardly has any effect on the distance between the earth and sun. Not every scientist agrees with this. At least one thinks he solved the problem and his name is Miguel Alcubierre. He believes negative energy might be able to accomplish it. Most scientists believe negative energy is not a physical thing. Money is being thrown at the problem of faster than light speed. While it seems to be a worthy project, we all know how good ideas often get turned into weapons. Can you imagine a nuclear missile which could travel at light speed, there would be no defense against it. It would arrive at its target almost at the moment it was launched. There will always be some regime who would build it, that is just the nature of things. Let’s assume for the sake of this article warp drive will never become a weapon. Let us also assume the development would be considered a serious step in the progress of space travel. Is NASA taking the idea of warp drive seriously? Since when we talk about advances in space NASA is considered the pinnacle of space science even though the Chinese are offering a serious challenge to that. It is said NASA is funding an experiment into warp drive, but it is not considering it practical yet. Discover Magazine ran a headline stating Why Warp Drives Are About To Get Better. The article mentioned it could be done with positive energy, but the amount was impossible. It states a software tool has been developed for the hard calculations. The tool was named Warp Factory. I suppose if the tool is really helpful, even then it won’t solve the problems encountered before a warp drive can be invented. One of the things I couldn’t help but notice was the bubble technology which is said to be needed for warp drive. Bubble technology has been applied to undersea craft. An example of this is a Russian torpedo which travels in a bubble and can reach hundreds of miles per hour. There is a rumor the Chinese may also have this. It makes me wonder if planes will soon feature some sort of bubble technology allowing them to travel much faster without overheating? It seems to me this technology may have been found while exploring warp engine development. This leads me to wonder how many other countries are working on the development of a warp drive. I don’t know for sure but I bet the usual suspects are involved. I am talking about Russia, China and maybe Great Britain. If China and/or Russia develop one, we are going to be in a heck of a lot of trouble. I have to imagine just the fact the United States is studying the possibility of this engine would push Russia and China to do the same. As far as Great Britain goes, they are one of our strongest allies and have contributed to many things we have today. There are probably spies watching our every move in the process of trying to develop a warp engine. While many different inventions have come about from Star Trek, I think the wildest one is the warp engine. Even if we figured out how to create every other thing, the warp engine would be the hardest to do. We have passed the flip phones which appeared on the series, we have robots and they are getting more sophisticated and may someday equal the robot Data from the Next Generation. We are working on tractor beams, translators and many other things, but we are yet miles away from solving warp drive. For those of you who would like a more scholarly report on the warp engine, NASA is the place so here is a link to an article about it in PDF form. The address is https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20110015936/downloads/20110015936.pdf
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