NASA developing a FTL drive?

NASA is building an Interferometer, the White Juday Interferometer will be able to precisely measure distance in hopes of measuring a contraction or expansion of space on the sub-atomic scale. It's like building a ruler to see if you can make your jeans shrink. The Alcubierre drive is no where's near practical and even if it were, there are significant problems with it. Also, although the warp bubble may travel faster than light, the surface of the warp bubble cannot and therefore must be externally generated, it's more of a warp rail than a warp drive. The quantum effects of the warp drive says that it would only be stable if it traveled at less than the speed of light.

We're still very much stuck with sublight interstellar travel such as generation ships.

I don't know what "new information" you think has been found. But there is none. The Alcubierre proposal is at least theoretically still possible. But......there would still be no feasible way to produce, much less harness, the energy that would be required. NASA is not developing anything. They have provided a rather small amount of funding simply to research the possibilities. NASA isn't doing it though, they're funding other labs that are. It's not really expected that much will come of it. More of just a well if you don't try.....

NASA recently started a project to test the mathematics that seem to say a warp drive is possible. This is NOT "developing a warp drive." They will be carrying out a series of experiments to see if the data supports the math. As I understand it, the project should take 3-4 years.

IF the results are positive, they may have something. Keep your fingers crossed!

No, FTL travel is impossible, according to relativity it would amount to going back in time from some reference frame.

NASA are not working on an alcubierre drive, because it's impossible without something with negative mass if I remember correctly, which as far as we know, doesn't exist.

I think many of us here would love to explore the universe, but if we do it will either be robotically, using generation, cryogenic or other long term ships, or ones at very high (but sub-light) speeds which would have interesting relativistic effects, notably time dilation.

The latter is an interesting option: You could travel across the galaxy accelerating at only 9.8m/s^2, or g which is the acceleration we feel due to gravity on earth and get to the other side in just over 20 years from our perspective, but for those on earth it would be near 100000 years...

"Seems like that math now supports Warp technologies." I'm not qualified to evaluate the math. From what I've *heard*, this isn't much more than a back-of-the-napkin idea, not even an hypothesis.

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The *exact* quote from NASA on this topic is this:

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"(Q) Is there any work being done to search for these breakthroughs? (A) Yes, but not much."

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In other words, they aren't ignoring low-probability claims entirely, because it is their mandate to examine exotic technology, but they aren't putting more than minimal effort into it. This is a very long leap between "not much" and "developing". They are looking at the idea, that's all, for the very reasons you cite--it would be a real game changer, a genuine paradigm shift. Don't bet the farm on it, though, because they aren't.

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FTL is only bad fantasy on the level of "7 league boots" in traditional European fairy tales for children. It is impossible to travel to a nearby star in a few weeks. There are insurmountable problems with the Alcubierre Drive! It depends upon extremely large quantities of exotic matter that is not known to exist.

PhotonX has it right.

It is based on a form of matter we have never seen, and is not predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.

NASA has to be seen to define our limits, it is for others to meet or exceed them.

It would indeed be awesome!

However it's still in the conjecture/speculation phase.

You can learn more from NASA's own website.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/...

still science fiction...