Developing Warp Drive Might Take Antifreeze

In Star Trek, dilithium crystals — whatsoever those people are — are significant to the operation of a starship’s warp drives. But a Texas professor thinks he can make a child move to a warp travel using ethylene glycol, which is generally observed in antifreeze.

Whilst superluminal journey has been regarded as not possible for many decades, the latest get the job done has prompt strategies we may well be capable to circumvent the mild-velocity barrier. Unfortunately, all of these mathematical theories call for electrical power and varieties of subject that we don’t know how to make nevertheless. But [Dr. Chance Glen] thinks that by shaping the electricity in a particular way as a result of a dielectric, the math can perform out so that there’s no unique unfavorable electricity necessary.

The experiment requires taking pictures RF power into an antifreeze container and making use of a laser interferometer to detect gravity waves.  Of program, that will involve some extremely sensitive measurements to account for other very small perturbations that may possibly give bogus readings. As we’ve seen in the past, that’s a undertaking a lot easier stated than performed.

Does this make sense? Beats us. Our physics and math are much too out of date to make a fantastic guess about how significantly of this is true and how a great deal is hype. Of program, if he does detect gravity waves, that is will get us as shut to warp generate as the creation of the telegraph acquired us to mobile phones. Then once more, you have to start off someplace.

If you want to know more about the condition of rocket engines, including the nascent probability of warp drives, we have talked about that right before. By the way, if you think the experiment appears a little bit like the the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), you are not wrong.