The legendary scientist Albert Einstein is credited for many discoveries and some of those is speed. His works remain a reference up until this day. In this piece, we look how he predicted a faster than light engine. To get more on this, we focus on the latest methods and studies.
How Einstein predicted faster-than-light engine
Firstly we need to acknowledge that there are different studies and experiments Einstein was involved in. Apart from theoretical workarounds which have to do with the fact that the very fabric of space-time itself can warp and bend. There’s the notion of wormholes, or Einstein-Rosen bridges: shortcuts created by folding space-time.
And then there’s the warp drive, or Alcubierre drive, a hypothetical engine that can create warps in space-time that circumvent the speed limit.
Science Alert published an article that it would work by squeezing space in the fore and expanding it aft, like toothpaste in a tube, thus shrinking the amount of space to be traveled and allowing some hypothetical craft to traverse the distance faster than if space-time had been left alone.
“Even if we had the technology to rocket us through space on high-speed colony ships, how fast we can travel normally is limited to light speed in a vacuum,” it reports.
“Nothing in the Universe can move faster than 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second) – and nothing with mass can reach that speed.”
Obviously, this is not something humanity has been able to achieve but one international group of scientists called Applied Physics has been theorizing about how it might work – and now they think they have a new solution, what they call the constant velocity warp drive.
“This study changes the conversation about warp drives,” says physicist Jared Fuchs of Applied Physics, who did his PhD at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
“By demonstrating a first-of-its-kind model, we’ve shown that warp drives might not be relegated to science fiction.”
Are scientists getting closer to predicting working warp drive
As posted by Popular Mechanics, Warp Factory provides an online playground for researchers to test warp engine ideas. This is where physicists can be able to generate and refine several designs.
“Physicists can now generate and refine an array of warp drive designs with just a few clicks, allowing us to advance science at warp speed,” Gianni Martire, CEO of Applied Physics, said.
“Warp Factory serves as a virtual wind tunnel, enabling us to test and evaluate different warp designs. Science fiction is now inching closer to science fact.”
As a Public Benefit Company, Applied Physics is ponying up $500,000 in potential grants for aspiring warp drive theorists.
Scientists still longing for technology
During the times of Einstein, the privilege of using technology was non existent, but he still managed to predict and discover a number of scientific terms and objects.
In this modern day, scientists are still looking for ways to determine and predict ways of discovering new things.
Last week, Applied Physics, which is an international group of scientists and engineers, announced that they’d created an online toolkit for “analyzing warp drive spacetimes” called the “Warp Factory.” Time 0:0
Associated Press’ Christopher Helmerich, in an interview with The Debrief, also compared the Warp Factory as a “reality check” for warp drives as concepts can be analyzed in a comprehensive way.
And while a fully working warp drive has many hurdles to overcome, it’s a technology worth taking seriously.
“Because if humans have any hope of one day exploring distant stars, it’ll need the help of space-bending tech that the newly-minted Warp Factory hopes to nurture,” concludes the science portal.