The galaxy — not to mention the universe — is a big place. The Milky Way, containing 100,000 to 400,000 million stars (and, by extension, trillions of planets), spans 100,000 light-years. This means that a transgalactic photon leaving the Milky Way today could have started its journey before Homo sapiens had yet migrated out of Africa, and it was traveling at 670 million kilometers per hour. Given the speed limits of our rockets, it would take half a human lifetime to leave our solar system.
Simply put, if humans want to be a spacefaring species, we'll need something better than chemical or nuclear power, rockets, and for decades, science fiction has had the answers. A very famous example Star Trek, which relies on the power of its warp drive to traverse the galaxy in a certain amount of time. Interstellar journeys that once took centuries can now be completed in two hours.
Scientists have longed for some kind of technology that could propel humans faster than physics dictates, and now a new online tool is helping engineers engineer a warp drive for Starfleet. Last week, Applied Physics, an international group of scientists and engineers, announced the creation of an online toolkit called WarpFactory to “analyze warp impulse spacetimes.”
It only happens for a few years After an avalanche of essays The construction of warp engines – based on the idea of warp bubbles folding in space-time – was reported to be theoretically possible. The Warp Factory provides an online playground for researchers to test their warp drive ideas.
“Physicists can now create and refine continuous factorial engine designs in just a few clicks, allowing science to advance at breakneck speed,” said Gianni Martire, CEO of Applied Physics. A press release. Warp Factory acts as a virtual wind tunnel that allows testing and evaluation of various warp designs.
As a public utility, Applied Physics offers $500,000 in potential grants to interested warp motor theorists. Those grants come with some caveats, however, mainly because the idea is to build a physical warp engine based on classical relativity, meaning that a time warp engine that relies on “negative energy or superluminal matter” won't work.
AP's Christopher Helmerich in an interview The DebriefHe also compared the Warp Factory to a “reality check” for Warp Engines, as concepts can be thoroughly analyzed and ideas that have no chance of working in the real world can be weeded out.
Although warp motors still have many hurdles to overcome, it is a technology to be taken seriously. Because if humans hope to one day explore the distant stars, they will need the help of space warping technology that harnesses the power of the newly created Warp Factory.
Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about science fiction and how our world works. If you look hard enough you can find his previous stuff on Gizmodo and Paste.
