Nexilist Notebook

      I have been reading science fiction since I was a kid. A lot of the stories happened in other star systems. When I got older and started reading physics books, I realized that Relativity theory seemed to rule out faster than light travel. As the years went by, I kept an eye out for any theoretical technology that might permit the human race to travel to the stars in less that decades or centuries.

      Last March, I was invited to speak about FTL drives at Norwescon, a local science fiction convention. Before I went to the convention, I told Barbara that, with my luck, someone else on the panel would have expertise in the area and would challenge my presentation. When I got to my panel, the other panelist scheduled for that panel was not there. Instead, there was a guy from a previous panel in his place.

      I said, “What happened to Ted?”. The other guy said, “He died last week.” Being the smart ass that I am, I said, “Some people will do anything to get out of being on a panel.” The response was, “He was a friend of mine.” About then I felt like a real jerk. Then he said, “He would have appreciated the joke.” I introduced myself as someone with a general interest in science and technology. He introduced himself as a member of the Air Force laboratory for advanced space propulsion systems for 10 years. SIGH!

      Anyway, I want to share three possible FTL drive systems in this post.

1) A German rocketry expert named Heim was severely injured in the Second World War when his munitions plant exploded. He spent many years working on a new theory of physics but only published in German. Very esoteric math but the basic idea was that an extremely intense magnetic field might be able to overcome gravity.

    Another physicist named Droscher added more dimensions to Heim’s theory and said that a ship that was accelerated to near the speed of light by Heim’s system could then leap into another dimension he called “parallel space” where it could travel at speeds above 1 light year per day.

     With a month to accelerate and a month to decelerate, a 90 day trip could reach out 30 light years. This would allow us to explore a lot of nearby stars. The Heim- Droscher concept won an award at a competition for new ideas in space propulsion recently. The math is very hard to follow and our technology is just getting to the point where it might be possible to create the necessary magnetic fields to test the theory.
 
http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/index.html

2) In 1994, an English physicist named Alcubierre postulated that if it were possible to contract space-time ahead of a ship and expand it behind the ship, then the area of space-time surrounding the ship could be accelerated beyond the speed of light. There would be no acceleration effects on the ship. This approach would take an enormous amount of energy.

     Chris Van Den Broeck came up with the idea of contracting the bubble of space-time containing the ship down to the size of an elementary particle. This would require a tiny fraction of the energy the original concept required. Unfortunate, no one knows how to manipulate space-time in the ways that would be required to utilize the theories of Alcubierre and Van Den Broeck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

3) A physicist named Andrew Bender just published a book that explains his approach to FTL drives. Basically, he suggests that we need to create enough transuranic element 115 to create a cube 3 meters on a side. Usually the transuranics last for nanoseconds when created in the lab. But, there is an isotope of 115 that could be stable.

     His drive system would inject anti-protons into the cube of 115. This should create a spherical standing gravity wave that would isolate a bubble of space-time from the rest of the universe. Then, by distorting the bubble, the surrounding space-time would be forced to propel the bubble considerably faster than light. There would be no acceleration effects on the ship. This technology which Bender calls “slipstring drive” is based on an extension of string theory and seems to offer the best approach at present for an FTL drive.

http://www.slipstring.com/

     As I feared, the other panelist at Norwescon challenged any of the systems that I mentioned. He said that they would result in a violation of causality and that was not permitted under Relativity theory. Basically, the problem is that if you can exceed the speed of light, you can travel in time. That might lead to nasty paradoxes such as killing your mother before she became pregnant with you.

 However, causality is under assault right now at the University of Washington. An acquaintance of mine by the name of John Cramer is working on an experiment that might transmit information into the past. If his experiment shows that causality can be violated, then the prospects for FTL drives are considerably brighter.

http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/NLS/NL_signal.htm

Scotty, give me warp 7 !!!!