By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Spaceships flying at the speed of light or faster are a staple of science fiction. Think of the Millennium Falcon in the “Star Wars” films and the Enterprise starship in “Star Trek”. This trip sounds like fanciful speculation. But that’s it?
A new research paper by an American physicist offers a potential design for superluminal travel – faster than the speed of light – using conventional physics instead of a construction based on hypothetical particles and states of matter with exotic physical properties .
The article, published this week in Classical and Quantum Gravity, moves the question of superluminal travel a step away from theoretical research and a step towards an engineering challenge, according to physicist Erik Lentz, who did the work while was at the University of Göttingen in Germany.
A major obstacle remains, said Lentz, in finding a way to greatly reduce the immense amount of energy needed to power a theoretical warp drive engine before any hope of building a prototype.
“Warp drive technology is primarily designed to accelerate transport in deep space,” said Lentz. “It can be used to increase current ambitions for interplanetary and interstellar travel, dramatically reducing travel times and increasing mission windows.”
The nearest star beyond our solar system is Proxima Centauri, located 4.25 light years away – the distance it takes light to travel in a year – away. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second (300,000 km per second) and 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km) in one year.
Using traditional rocket fuel, it would take about 50,000 to 70,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri, and nuclear propulsion with the proposed technology would arrive there in about 100 years, said Lentz. A trip at the speed of light would take four years and three months.
Lentz’s project envisages trips above the speed of light, which “have the potential for distant interstellar travel back and forth during human life”.
“If we are limited to traveling at speed below light, then multigenerational spaceships should be used for destinations beyond the nearest stars, which are basically a glorified burial coffin for at least the first generation of people. I don’t think this perspective is nearly as inspiring, “said Lentz.
His article describes the theoretical construction of a class of soliton – a self-sustaining compact wave moving with constant speed through space – capable of superluminal movement. These solitons are often called “warp bubbles” and would provide the basis for a propulsion system.
“Currently, the amount of energy needed for this new type of space propulsion is still immense,” said Lentz. For a spacecraft about 650 feet (200 meters) in diameter to exceed the speed of light, that could perhaps mean the energy equivalent of hundreds of times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system – an absurd amount.
It would take a lot of work to do that. Making it practical, said Lentz, would require drastically reducing energy needs to the range of modern nuclear fission reactors. A way to create and accelerate the solitons must also be devised, added Lentz.
Lentz sees the task as difficult, but not impossible. He said that the next phase of theoretical research and development work could unfold in the coming years, with a fully functional prototype possible in the next decade.
“The first truly superluminal units may come a few decades later,” said Lentz. “I would like to see this technology in use during my life.”
(Reporting by Will Dunham, edited by Rosalba O’Brien)