http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/04/nasa-may-have-accidentally-developed-a-warp-drive/ If this turns out to be verified...then its one of those many happy scientific accidents. The question is: Will it be scaleable to envelop a whole ship? How much energy will be needed? And will it be stable? Which warp factors would we be able to get?
Interesting. I would say it's too early to get very excited. And even if this is what it is, there would surely be decades of engineering ahead of us before even an unmanned probe wold be practical. I mean, whose to say, but in all likelihood. --Alex
Y'all should know it was already been posted here a few days ago. http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=11023942#post11023942
I hope something like this does not one day lead to a "Big Mistake", like what we read about in the novel 'Hyperion'!
I was trying to be tactful. Although, if anything like warp fields are to be discovered I suppose it'll be though some means such as described in the article. To be clear, all the article really says is that while experimenting with EmDrive conceptual prototype equipment, laser beams behaved oddly but in a way that might be consistent with the math behind the Alcubierre concept of field distortion. Which, itself, is purely mathematical. Whether or not this result will in any way lead to practical Alcubierre hardware is, tactfully, too early to say. And, if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on "no." --Alex
Spoiler: "The Big Mistake" in the 'Hyperion' novels.... It didn't involve a warp field, but scientists had created an artificial black hole that dropped to the center of the Earth, eventually consuming the planet, forcing EVERYONE to leave Anatevka....
I once wrote a short story where an experiment in FTL propulsion accidentally destroyed the sun. Eventually, everyone died. --Alex
Sounds like what some people were afraid that the Large Hadron Collider would cause. If that is the case, they might want to keep the existence of the technology a secret as long as they can, to attempt any fuss when they try to leave. There are conspiracy theories that the military already has the technology reverse engineered from alien technology, but it is locked up in black projects. If the elites has knowledge of this technology, it might explain why most major corporations don't seem to give a shit about the environment. They probably figure they can milk the planet for all it's worth, pay the military to build ships for them to use, then move on to the next poor inhabitable planet they can find to exploit. Rinse and repeat. They'll probably make us pay through the nose to leave our planet, if at all. That, or it's just plain, careless greed.