From school we were taught that it is impossible to exceed the speed of light, and therefore the movement of a person in outer space is a big insoluble problem (how to fly to the nearest solar system if light can cover this distance only in a few thousand years?). Perhaps American scientists have found a way to fly at super speeds, not only without cheating, but also following the fundamental laws of Albert Einstein. In any case, this is what the author of the space deformation engine project, Harold White, claims.
We at the editorial office considered the news absolutely fantastic, so today, on the eve of Cosmonautics Day, we are publishing a report by Konstantin Kakaes for Popular Science magazine about a phenomenal NASA project, if successful, a person will be able to travel beyond the solar system.
In September 2012, several hundred scientists, engineers and space enthusiasts came together for the group's second public meeting, called 100 Year Starship. The group is led by former astronaut Mai Jemison and founded by DARPA. The goal of the conference is “to make possible human travel beyond the solar system to other stars within the next hundred years.” Most conference participants admit that progress in manned space exploration is too small. Despite the billions of dollars spent in the last few quarters, space agencies can do almost as much as they could in the 1960s. Actually, 100 Year Starship was convened to fix all this.
But let's get to the point. After a few days of the conference, its participants reached the most fantastic topics: organ regeneration, the problem of organized religion on board a ship, and so on. One of the more interesting presentations at the 100 Year Starship meeting was called "Strain Field Mechanics 102" and was given by Harold "Sonny" White of NASA. An agency veteran, White leads the advanced pulse program at Johnson Space Center (JSC). Together with five colleagues, he created the Space Propulsion Systems Roadmap, which outlines NASA's goals for future space travel. The plan lists all kinds of propulsion projects, from advanced chemical rockets to far-reaching developments like antimatter or nuclear machines. But White's area of research is the most futuristic of all: it concerns the space warp engine.
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This is how the Alcubierre bubble is usually depicted |
According to the plan, such an engine will provide movement in space at speeds exceeding the speed of light. It is generally accepted that this is impossible, since it is a clear violation of Einstein's theory of relativity. But White says the opposite. To confirm his words, he appeals to the so-called Alcubierre bubbles (equations derived from Einstein’s theory, according to which a body in outer space is capable of reaching superluminal speeds, unlike a body under normal conditions). In the presentation, he explained how he had recently achieved theoretical results that directly lead to the creation of a real space deformation engine. |
It is clear that this all sounds absolutely fantastic: such developments are a real revolution that will free the hands of all astrophysicists in the world. Instead of spending 75,000 years traveling to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to ours, astronauts on a ship with this engine could make the trip in a couple of weeks.
In light of the end of the shuttle program and the growing role of private flights to low Earth orbit, NASA says it is refocusing on far-reaching, much bolder plans that go well beyond trips to the moon. These goals can only be achieved through the development of new motor systems - the faster the better. A few days after the conference, NASA head Charles Bolden repeated White's words: "We want to travel faster than the speed of light and without stopping on Mars."
HOW DO WE KNOW ABOUT THIS ENGINE
The first popular use of the expression "space warp engine" dates back to 1966, when Jen Roddenberry released Star Trek. For the next 30 years, this engine existed only as part of this science fiction series. A physicist named Miguel Alcubierre watched an episode of the series just as he was working on his doctorate in general relativity and wondering whether creating a space warp engine was actually possible. In 1994, he published a document outlining this position.
Alcubierre imagined a bubble in space. In the front part of the bubble, time-space contracts, and in the back it expands (as it happened during the Big Bang, according to physicists). The deformation will cause the ship to glide smoothly through space, as if it were surfing a wave, despite the surrounding noise. In principle, a deformed bubble can move as quickly as desired; limitations in the speed of light, according to Einstein's theory, apply only in the context of space-time, but not in such distortions of space-time. Inside the bubble, as Alcubierre assumed, space-time would not change, and no harm would come to space travelers.
Einstein's equations in general relativity are difficult to solve in one direction by figuring out how matter bends space, but it is doable. Using them, Alcubierre determined that the distribution of matter is a necessary condition for the creation of a deformed bubble. The only problem is that the solutions resulted in an undefined form of matter called negative energy.
In simple terms, gravity is the force of attraction between two objects. Each object, regardless of its size, exerts some force of attraction on the surrounding matter. According to Einstein, this force is the curvature of space-time. Negative energy, however, is gravitationally negative, that is, repulsive. Instead of connecting time and space, negative energy pushes them away and separates them. Roughly speaking, for such a model to work, Alcubierre needs negative energy to expand spacetime behind the ship.
Despite the fact that no one has ever really measured negative energy, according to quantum mechanics, it exists, and scientists have learned to create it in the laboratory. One way to recreate it is through the Casimir effect: two parallel conducting plates placed close to each other create a certain amount of negative energy. The weak point of the Alcubierre model is that it requires a huge amount of negative energy, several orders of magnitude higher than scientists estimate can be produced.
White says he has found a way around this limitation. In a computer simulation, White modified the geometry of the deformation field so that in theory he could produce a deformed bubble using millions of times less negative energy than Alcubierre estimated required, and perhaps little enough that a spacecraft could carry the means to produce it. "The discoveries," says White, "change Alcubierre's method from impractical to entirely plausible."
REPORT FROM WHITE'S LAB
The Johnson Space Center is located near the Houston lagoons, overlooking Galveston Bay. The center is a bit like a suburban college campus, only aimed at training astronauts. On the day of my visit, White meets me in Building 15, a multi-story maze of corridors, offices and laboratories where engine testing is carried out. White is wearing an Eagleworks polo shirt (as he calls his engine experiments), embroidered with an eagle soaring above a futuristic spaceship.
White began his career as an engineer, conducting research as part of a robotic group. He eventually took command of the entire robotics wing on the ISS while finishing his PhD in plasma physics. It was only in 2009 that he changed his interests to the study of motion, and this topic captivated him so much that it became the main reason he went to work for NASA.
"He's quite an unusual person," says his boss John Applewhite, who heads the propulsion systems division. - He is definitely a great dreamer, but at the same time a talented engineer. He knows how to turn his fantasies into a real engineering product.” Around the same time he joined NASA, White asked permission to open his own laboratory dedicated to advanced propulsion systems. He himself came up with the name Eagleworks and even asked NASA to create a logo for his specialization. Then this work began.
White leads me to his office, which he shares with a colleague searching for water on the moon, and then down to Eagleworks. As he walks, he tells me about his request to open a laboratory and calls it “the long arduous process of finding an advanced movement to help man explore space.”
White shows me the object and shows me its central function - something he calls a "quantum vacuum plasma propulsion" (QVPT). This device looks like a huge red velvet donut with wires tightly wrapped around the core. This is one of two Eagleworks initiatives (the other being the warp drive). This is also a secret development. When I ask what it is, White says all he can say is that the technology is even cooler than the warp drive.) According to a 2011 NASA report written by White, the craft uses quantum fluctuations in empty space as its fuel source, meaning a QVPT-powered spacecraft would require no fuel.
The engine uses quantum fluctuations in empty space as a fuel source,
which means a spaceship,
driven by QVPT, requires no fuel.
When the device is working, White's system looks cinematically perfect: the color of the laser is red, and the two beams are crossed like sabers. Inside the ring are four ceramic capacitors made from barium titanate, which White charges at up to 23,000 volts. White has spent the last two and a half years developing the experiment, and he says the capacitors exhibit enormous potential energy. However, when I ask how to create the negative energy needed for warped spacetime, he avoids answering. He explains that he signed a non-disclosure agreement and therefore cannot reveal details. I ask who he made these agreements with. He says: “With people. They come and want to talk. I can’t give you any more details.”
OPPONENTS OF THE ENGINE IDEA
So far, the warped travel theory is fairly intuitive—warping time and space to create a moving bubble—and it has a few significant flaws. Even if White significantly reduced the amount of negative energy required by Alcubierre, it would still require more than scientists can produce, says Lawrence Ford, a theoretical physicist at Tufts University who has written numerous papers on the topic of negative energy over the past 30 years. Ford and other physicists say there are fundamental physical limitations, not so much due to engineering imperfections as to the fact that this amount of negative energy cannot exist in one place for long.
Another challenge: To create a warp ball that travels faster than light, scientists will need to generate negative energy around and above the spacecraft. White doesn't think this is a problem; he answers very vaguely that the engine will most likely work thanks to some existing “apparatus that creates the necessary conditions.” However, creating these conditions in front of the ship would mean providing a constant supply of negative energy traveling faster than the speed of light, which again contradicts general relativity.
Finally, the space warp engine poses a conceptual question. In general relativity, traveling at superluminal speeds is equivalent to traveling through time. If such an engine is real, White creates a time machine.
These obstacles give rise to some serious doubts. "I don't think the physics we know and the laws of physics allow us to believe that he will achieve anything with his experiments," says Ken Olum, a physicist at Tufts University who also participated in the exotic propulsion debate at the Starship 100th Anniversary meeting. " Noah Graham, a physicist at Middlebury College who read two of White's papers at my request, emailed me: "I see no valuable scientific evidence other than references to his previous works."
Alcubierre, now a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, has his own doubts. “Even if I was standing on a spaceship and I had negative energy available, there was no way I could put it where it needed to be,” he tells me over the phone from his home in Mexico City. - No, the idea is magical, I like it, I wrote it myself. But there are a couple of serious shortcomings in it that I have already seen over the years, and I don’t know a single way to fix them.”
THE FUTURE OF SUPER SPEED
To the left of the main gate of the Johnson Science Center, a Saturn V rocket lies on its side, its stages separated to show its internal contents. It's gigantic—one of its many engines is the size of a small car, and the rocket itself is a couple of feet longer than a football field. This, of course, is quite eloquent evidence of the peculiarities of space navigation. Besides, she's 40 years old, and the time she represents - when NASA was part of a huge national plan to send man to the moon - is long gone. Today, JSC is simply a place that was once great, but has since left the space vanguard.
The breakthrough could mean a new era for JSC and NASA, and to some extent, part of that era is starting now. The Dawn probe, launched in 2007, studies the asteroid ring using ion engines. In 2010, the Japanese commissioned Icarus, the first interplanetary starship powered by a solar sail, another type of experimental propulsion. And in 2016, scientists plan to test VASMIR, a plasma-powered system made specifically for high propulsion thrust in ISS. But when these systems may carry astronauts to Mars, they still won't be able to take them beyond the solar system. To achieve this, White said, NASA will need to take on riskier projects.
The warp drive is perhaps the most far-fetched of Nas' efforts to create movement projects. The scientific community says White cannot create it. Experts say it works against the laws of nature and physics. Despite this, NASA is behind the project. “It's not subsidized at the high government level that it should be,” Applewhite says. - I think that the management has some special interest in him continuing his work; It’s one of those theoretical concepts that, if successful, changes the game completely.”
In January, White assembled his strain interferometer and moved on to his next target. Eagleworks has outgrown its own home. The new lab is larger and, he enthusiastically declares, “seismically isolated,” meaning he is protected from vibrations. But perhaps the best thing about the new lab (and most impressive) is that NASA gave White the same conditions that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had on the Moon. Well, let's see.
Any theory is valid if its consequences are confirmed by experience. This happened with many well-known theories, including Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It was a timely and necessary step in physics and was confirmed by numerous experiments. Its essential element was the representation of gravity as a curvature of space, which can be described by various metrics (the geometry of space). According to the curvature of space by stars and galaxies, light rays are deflected by gravity. Astronomical observations have brilliantly confirmed this geometric concept. The artificiality of general relativity still raises doubts and dissatisfaction among some physicists. It is necessary to find a physical basis for the observed phenomena and the nature of gravity in general. The author put forward a hypothesis about the nature of gravity. It is based on a study of the electrical component of the vacuum structure and is subsequently supplemented by a component of the magnetic continuum. In this form, the physical vacuum is a medium for the propagation of electromagnetic waves (EMW); the birth of a substance when the necessary energy is introduced into it; the environment for the formation of “allowed orbits” of electrons in atoms, wave properties of particles, etc.
The speed of light is not constant in outer space. This is the main difference between the theory of vacuum and the theories of A. Einstein. Based on astronomical observations and the theory of vacuum structure, the following formula is proposed for the dependence of the speed of light on the acceleration of gravity:
| (1) |
α –1 = 137.0359895 – reciprocal value of the radiation fine structure constant;
r= 1.39876·10 –15 m – dipole distance of the electrical component of the vacuum structure;
g[m/s 2 ] – local acceleration of gravity;
E σ = 0.77440463 [ a –1 m 3 c–3 ] – specific electric polarization of vacuum;
S= 6.25450914 10 43 [ a· s· m–4 ] – deformation polarization of vacuum.
Knowing the speed of light, measured under Earth conditions as 2.99792458(000000) 10 8 m/s, we determine the speed using formula (1) in outer space With 0 = 2.997924580114694·10 8 m/s. It differs little from the earth's speed of light and is determined with an accuracy of 9 decimal places. With further refinement of the earth's speed of light, the indicated value for outer space will change. From the wave theory of light by Fresnel and Huygens it is known that the refractive index during transition from a medium with a speed With 0 on Wednesday at speed s e equals
In our case, the angle of incidence of the beam to the normal of the solar surface is equal to i 0 =90°. To estimate the magnitude of the deflection of light by the Sun, two models of light propagation can be cited.
1. Model of light refraction during the transition from an “empty” half-space to a half-space with solar gravity acceleration of 273.4 m/s 2 . Naturally, this simplest model will give a deliberately incorrect result, namely: according to the given refractive index, the angle is determined as
13.53" (arcseconds).
2. A more accurate model must be calculated using the differential-integral method, based on the ray propagation function in the field of increasing and decreasing according to the law 1/ R 2 gravitational potential of the Sun. Help came from a completely unexpected direction - from seismology. In seismology, the problem of determining the course of a beam of elastic waves in the Earth from a source (earthquake, underground atomic explosion) on the surface and its exit angle up to the opposite side of the Earth has been solved. The exit angle will be the desired analogy of the Sun’s deflection of a beam from the source either on a sphere that includes the Earth’s orbit, or at a great distance from the Sun. In seismology, there is a simple formula for determining the exit angle of a seismic wave through a constant ray parameter
p = [R 0 / V(R)] cos( i) = const, Where:
R 0 – radius of the Earth; V(R) is a function of the speed of elastic waves depending on the distance (radius from the center of the Earth); i– exit angle.
Let us transform the seismological formula for cosmic distances and the speed of light:
M s– mass of the Sun. R– variable radius of the sphere at the center of which the Sun is located, determined along beam to a light source passing in close proximity to the Sun; 2.062648·10 5 – conversion of radians of angle to seconds.
The question arises about the constant in this formula. It can be resolved on the basis of world fundamental constants, well known to science. The experimental deflection angle is 1.75".
Based on this value, we determine that
const = Δ t const (M x R 2 sun / M sun R x 2) / (π · 137.0359) 2 .
The number π and the reciprocal of the fine structure constant are the fundamental constants of our modern world. Δ number t const = 1[s] is necessary to enter the dimension. Attitude ( M x R 2 sun / M sun R x 2) – introduced for all possible masses in the Universe and their sizes, as is customary in astronomy: reduce all masses and sizes to solar parameters.
In Fig. Figure 1 shows the dependence of the angle of deflection of a light beam by the Sun depending on the distance to its source.
Rice. 1. Dependence of the angle of deflection of a light beam by the Sun on the distance to the source along a path passing near the Sun
We obtained full compliance with accurate experimental data. It is curious that when the source moves inside the sphere corresponding to the trajectory of the Earth, the angle of deflection of the beam by the Sun decreases according to the graph of the figure. A prediction of this theory is that a beam of light from a source on or near the surface of the Sun will deflect by only 1.25".
Schwarzschild solution:
Here R g = 2MG / c 2 – Schwarzschild radius or gravitational radius.
Light Beam Deflection i = 4MG / c 2 R= 1.746085", where R– impact distance, equal in our case to the radius of the Sun.
Formula (1) gives: i= 1.746054". The difference is only in the 5th digit.
- The results obtained indicate, at least, the consistency of the proposed concept. The formation of so-called “gravitational lenses” in space is also explained by the dependence of the speed of light on gravity.
- In general relativity and in vacuum theory there are the same experimental confirmations.
- General relativity is more of a geometric theory supplemented by Newton's law of gravitation.
- The theory of vacuum is based only on physical relationships, which made it possible to discover gravity in the form of vacuum polarization in the presence of masses that experience attraction by the vacuum structure according to Faraday's laws of induction.
- General relativity has exhausted itself in the possibilities for the development of physics; the theory of vacuum has opened up the possibility of studying vacuum as a natural environment and opens the way for the progress of physics and technologies related to the properties of vacuum.
In conclusion, I express my deep gratitude to astrophysicist P.A. Tarakanov for a very useful comment regarding the variable mass in the formula for the deflection ray, where one can replace the mass of the Sun with any other mass known to science.
Literature
- Rykov A.V. The beginnings of natural physics // OIPHZ RAS, 2001, p. 54.
- Savarensky E.F., Kirnos D.P. Elements of seismology and seismometry // State. technical-theor. Published, M.: 1955, p. 543.
- Clifford M. Will. The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment // Preprint of Physical Reviewer (arXiv: gr- qc/ 0103036 v1 12 Mar 2001).
Black space
During the day, we see a blue sky above the earth because sunlight is reflected by air molecules, like millions of small mirrors. But on the Moon, where there is no atmosphere, the sky is black and the stars are visible even when the Sun is shining. The same applies to outer space. It is a void in which there are too few molecules to return reflected sunlight to the observer.
Therefore, even if the hot Sun shines brightly, outer space still looks like a terrifying black abyss.
Why is space black despite the light of the stars?
The mysterious blackness of space is a true mystery that scientists have been arguing about for many hundreds of years. Why don’t the stars of our Universe all shine with an even, blinding light? Why is the sky black at night? Astronomer Thomas Diggs became interested in this question in the 16th century. Diggs was convinced that the Universe has no end or edge and extends infinitely in all directions, that the Universe has existed forever and will endure forever, and that there are an innumerable number of stars in the Universe.
Olbers' paradox
If the sky is filled with an infinite number of stars, he reasoned, then there must be stars everywhere we look. The sky, covered with distant suns, would blind us with bright light. But this doesn't happen. Diggs never solved this puzzle. The 19th century German astronomer Wilhelm Olbers also wondered about this question for many years. And the problem of why the night sky looks dark is called “Olbers’ paradox.”
