We have wanted to visit other star systems for a long time. It would take tens of thousands of years to get to the closest one, because they are so far away.
People who give up easily are notPhysicists. If you give them an impossible dream, they'll give you a way to make it happen. It might be possible.
We may have a viable solution to the dilemma, and it's one that could turn out to be more feasible than other would be warp drives.
There are lots of bright ideas in this area, each offering a different approach to solve the puzzle of fast-than-light travel: achieving a means of sending something across space at superluminal speeds.
Travel times to the nearest star to the Sun are hypothetical. Lentz is a person.
There are some issues with this idea. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity states that there is no way to reach or exceed the speed of light, which is something we would need for any journey measured in light-years.
Physicists are still attempting to break the speed limit.
Spacetime has no rule regarding pushing matter past the speed of light. The far reaches of the Universe are stretching away more quickly than the light could ever hope to match.
To create a density of energy that's lower than the emptiness of space, we would need to solve Einstein's equations. This type of negative energy can be seen on a quantum scale, but it's still a realm for exotic physics.
Negative energy can help power the Alcubierre warp drive and other abstract possibilities.
We can't hope to provide such a fuel source to begin with due to the reasons explained above.
If it were possible to achieve faster-than-light travel without any exotic physics that physicists have never seen, what would it look like?
There is an artistic impression of different spaceship designs. Lentz is a person.
Lentz proposed a new class of hyper-fast solitons, a kind of wave that maintains its shape and energy while moving at a constant speed.
According to Lentz's calculations, the hyper-fast soliton solutions can be found within general relativity, and are derived from positive energy densities.
With enough energy, configurations of these solitons could function as 'warp bubbles', capable of superluminal motion, and theoretically enabling an object to pass through space-time.
It's an impressive feat of theoretical gymnastics, but the amount of energy needed means this warp drive is only a possibility for now.
Lentz said in March last year that the energy required for the drive was hundreds of times the mass of Jupiter.
30 orders of magnitude is the amount of energy savings needed to be in a modern nuclear reactor.
While Lentz's study claimed to be the first known solution of its kind, his paper arrived at almost exactly the same time as another recent analysis, which proposed an alternative model for a warp drive that doesn't require negative energy to function.
Lentz said at the time that the researcher intended to share his data further so other scientists could explore his figures. Lentz broadcasted his findings through a live video stream.
Our best hope of ever getting a chance to visit those distant, twinkling stars is the free flow of these kinds of ideas.
The problem of faster-than-light travel has been moved one step away from theoretical research in fundamental physics.
The next step is to find a way to bring down the amount of energy needed in a nuclear power plant. We can discuss how to build the first prototypes.
The findings were reported in two different books.
The first version of this article was published in March of 2011.
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