Amazing Astronomy2: NASA Admits Alcubierre Drive Initiative: Faster Than The Speed Of Light

In order to explore the prospect of travelling faster than the speed of light, NASA is now developing the first real-world test.

The Alcubierre Drive, developed by Harold White and his NASA team, revolutionised the perception that travelling faster than light was only possible in science fiction. Even if special relativity may be valid, we might not require a vehicle that can move at the speed of light in order to travel faster or at that speed. The answer might lie in putting a craft inside a space that is travelling faster than light! As a result, the craft itself does not need a propulsion system that can propel it at the speed of light.

It’s easier to think about if you think in terms of a flat escalator in an airport. The escalator moves faster than you are walking! In this case, the space encompassing the ship would be moving faster than the ship could fly, keeping all the matter of the ship intact. Therefore, we can move faster than light, in a massless cloud of space-time.

What is the Alcubierre Drive? It’s actually based on Einstein's field equations, it suggests that a spacecraft could achieve faster-than-light travel. Rather than exceed the speed of light alone in a craft, a spacecraft would leap long distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it. This would result in faster than light travel (1). Physicist Miguel Alcubierre was the first that we know to identify this possibility. He described it as remaining still on a flat piece of space-time inside a warp bubble that was made to move at “superluminal” (faster than light) velocity. We must not forget that space-time can be warped and distorted, it can be moved. But what about moving sections of space-time that’s created by expanding space-time behind the ship, and by contracting space-time in front of the ship?

This type of concept was also recently illustrated by Mathematician James Hill and Barry Cox at the University of Adelaide. They published a paper in the journal proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences (3).

It was once believed that Einstein's theory of special relativity means that faster than light travel is just not possible. This is a misconception, special relativity simply states that the distance you travel depends on how fast you move, for how long you’re moving for. So if you are driving at 70 mph you will have covered 70 miles in one hour. The confusing part is that, no matter how fast you are moving you will always see the speed of light as being the same. It’s similar to sound, if you close your eyes and imagine that the only sense you have is hearing, you will identify things by how they sound. So if a car is driving at a rapid speed and honks its horn, we know that the horn is always tooting the same tone, it’s just the car’s motion that made it appear to change.

Special relativity also showed us that the atoms and molecules that make up matter are connected by electromagnetic fields, the same stuff light is made up of. The object that would break the light speed barrier is made up of the same stuff as the barrier itself. How can an object travel faster than that which links it’s atoms? This was the barrier.

The only problem with our modern day science is that creating distortions in space-time require energy densities that are not yet possible for humans, or so they say. NASA scientists are currently working on tweaking Alcubierre’s model.

Faster-than-light travel, also known as hyper space or “warp” drive from what the masses know for sure is currently at the level of speculation. Although there is already a lot of evidence that shows it is possible and has already been accomplished, mainstream science is still catching up. We are at the point right now where faster-than-light travel is still theoretical, but possible.

At the same time, we have to look at other factors that are now coming to light. As former NASA Astronaut and Princeton Physics Professor Dr, Brian O’leary Illustrates. This topic has recently had another media explosion and congress recently discussed and looked at evidence for Earth like planets recently found by Kepler Telescopes. Three “super-Earths” to be exact that are most probably teeming with life (4). Furthermore, former congressmen and women recently participated in a citizens hearing on the subject of UFOs a few weeks ago. You can read more about that here. I’ve used this video in many articles before, but it’s just a great clip from when Dr O’leary was still with us.

UFOs and the technology behind it should not be subject to speculation. Odds are we have retrieved some of that technology, or manufactured some ourselves. Some of our science may not be so theoretical after all.