Richard Obousy on Warp Drives
- October 21st, 2011
- Posted in Video
Dr. Richard Obousy describes a novel approach to creating a warp drive based on modifying the local cosmological constant to facilitate an expansion/contraction of spacetime around a spacecraft to create an exotic form of field-effect propulsion. The proposal is analogous to the Alcubierre warp drive bubble, but differs entirely in the approach, utilizing the physics of higher dimensional quantum field theory instead of general relativity as Miguel Alcubierre had originally proposed in his theoretical warp drive model.
Obousy presents an interesting quantification of how a warp drive might be created in the context of supersymmetry rather than in general relativity. In supersymmetry there is a 3+1 dimensional brane representing spacetime and the QED world, and in this model one of the dimensions is compacted and represents gravity or the graviton. If a method can be found to change the radius of the extra dimension locally around the ship then the cosmological constant will also be locally affected, resulting in a warp drive.
“My interest has always been in space. I’m very aware that current technology severely limits our ability for exploration beyond the solar system, and I’ve always tailored my thinking in theoretical physics to how to potentially apply this to new and advanced propulsion paradigms. The space shuttle has a maximum speed of 10km per second, which puts the closest star approximately 50,000 years to reach. So without some kind of warp drive we’re severely limited in our exploration of the galaxy.
In the spirit of Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever these warp drives provides a unique and inspiring opportunity to ask the question ‘what constraints do the laws of physics place on the abilities of an arbitrarily advanced civilization’. In this paper a new and innovative mechanism to generate the necessary ‘Alcubierre warp drive bubble’ is proposed. The main focus of is to demonstrate that the manipulation of the radius of one (or more) of the extra dimensions found in quantum gravity theories creates a local asymmetry in the cosmological constant which could be used to propel a space vehicle.
At such an early stage in the theoretical development of this idea it is challenging to make predictions on how these warp drives might function. Naively one could envision a spacecraft with an exotic power generator that could create the necessary energies to locally manipulate the extra dimension(s). In this way, an advanced spacecraft would expand/contract the compactified spacetime around it, thereby creating the propulsion effect.” – Dr. Richard Obousy