Travelling faster than light
Two Baylor University scientists have come up with a new method to cause a spaceship to effectively travel faster than the speed of light, without breaking the laws of physics.
Dr. Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Richard Obousy, a graduate student, theorize that by manipulating the extra spatial dimensions of string theory around a spaceship with an extremely large amount of energy, it would cre
ate a “bubble” that could cause the ship to travel faster than the speed of light.
To create this bubble, the Baylor physicists believe manipulating the 10th spatial dimension would alter the dark energy in three large spatial dimensions: height, width and length.
The study was published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
Alcubierre drive
The method is based on the Alcubierre drive, which proposes expanding the fabric of space behind a ship and shrinking space-time in front of the ship.
The ship would not actually move, rather the ship would sit in a bubble between the expanding and shrinking space-time dimensions. Since space would move around the ship, the theory does not violate Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
The theory states that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate a massive object to the speed of light.
String theory suggests the universe is made up of multiple dimensions. Height, width and length are three dimensions, and time is the fourth dimension.
String theorists used to believe that there were a total of 10 dimensions, with six other dimensions that we cannot yet identify because of their incredibly small size.
A new theory, called M-theory, takes string theory one step farther and states that the ‘strings’ that all things are made of actually vibrate in an additional spatial dimensional, which is called the 10th dimension.
It is by changing the size of this 10th spatial dimension that Baylor researchers believe could alter the strength of the dark energy in such a manner to propel a ship faster than the speed of light, according to a Baylor University press release. — Our Bureau
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