A Mexican physicist has come damn close to making warp speed possible, say experts. If they are correct, a new Star Trek series will soon be developed. Estartré. Captain is Mexican. First officer is half-Chilean, half Vulcan. Ship’s doctor is Uruguayan. Engineer is Cuban, named Chucho. Bridge crew includes Dominican communications officer, Peruvian-Japanese lieutenant. They will still have a Russian ensign named Chekov, of course.
First two lines of dialogue, as the star ship Guadalupe is being chased by Romulans:
Capitan Quijote: Chucho, largame una guar nueve, ándale, sacanos de este apretón. Chucho Morales: Oye, capitan, no me jodas, chico.
Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say
by Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com Assistant Managing EditorDate: 17 September 2012 Time: 07:00 AM ET (not factoring in warp speed)
A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television’s Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.
A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.
Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially brining the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.
“There is hope,” Harold “Sonny” White of NASA’s Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight.
Warping space-time
An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind.
Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn’t being warped at all.
“Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light,” explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar spaceflight. “But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light.”
With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the cosmic speed limit.
The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.
But recently White calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring. He found in that case, the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.
Furthermore, if the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more, White found.
“The findings I presented today change it from impractical to plausible and worth further investigation,” White told SPACE.com. “The additional energy reduction realized by oscillating the bubble intensity is an interesting conjecture that we will enjoy looking at in the lab.”
Continue reading here, captain, before the Romulans overtake us and send us back through time to the Kingdom of Castrolandia (includes video).
Miguel Alcubierre
24 thoughts on “Aye, Captain, but what about the dilithium crystals? And how the bloody hell do you say “warp” in Spanish?”
Many years ago, I stopped reading Science Fiction, not because I stopped reading the genre, but rather because I thought that the name of the genre was no longer appropriate. I thought that perhaps Futurist Fiction, or Speculative Fiction was a better name, but they both included the term “fiction”. I was growing up in the shadow of the launch pads of the Central Florida coast in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, and the rocket men were anything but fiction.
I embraced Heinlein’s notion of Future History, and assumed that everything that I watched and read, from Star Trek to Time Enough for Love, were stories built around a time in the history of man that would eventually be real.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a Spock, but that we would go off into the final frontier was a given to me.
“If they are correct, a new Star Trek series will soon be developed. Estartré. Captain is Mexican. First officer is half-Chilean, half Vulcan. Ship’s doctor is Uruguayan. Engineer is Cuban, named Chucho. Bridge crew includes Dominican communications officer, Peruvian-Japanese lieutenant.”
Dr. Eire, I respectfully disagree, and I know that at the surface it may appear as if I am contradicting my own notion of Future History, but what you described above is a physical impossibility.
Sadly, Latinos in space may be nothing more than a pipe dream.
It is impossible to drive a spaceship through the Universe with the driver’s window down, and the driver’s arm hanging out.
I understand. But these are Lateeen-ohs who migrated north and lived through many winters. The’ve been conditioned to the concept of an enclosed space.
Ah!
The fabled Northern Cubans that I’ve read about!
🙂
A poll was announced today that showed that while Latinos will go 80% for Obama, Cubans will go 46% to 39% for Romney. Who the hell are those Cubans who will go 39% for Obama?
Send it to Henry, Honey. He’ll tear it apart!…bound to be BS.
I don’t know the source of it. I gave up watching all tv news and saw this in passing as I was rewinding a tape.
“A poll was announced today that showed that while Latinos will go 80% for Obama, Cubans will go 46% to 39% for Romney. Who the hell are those Cubans who will go 39% for Obama?”
One could make the argument that the composition of our community has changed; we are not the community that once turned out en masse to cheer Reagan down the streets of Little Havana.
Uniquely, we remain “Cubans” in spite of the length of time of our presence in the United States. In fact, the argument could be easily made, specially when you consider that a child of a child born on US soil to a parent who was born in Cuba, is still considered to be a Cuban by and large, that at best, we as a homogeneous group, can only rise to the level of “Hispanic’ regardless of the depth of our roots in the US. The same may possibly be said for Orientals.
That would never be the case, nor has it ever been the case for any other wave of immigrant that I can think of. The offspring of Italian immigrants are simply Americans, and the same goes for the descendants of Irish, German, Nordic, Slav, or any other European grouping of immigrants.
The point of my rant?
We appear to have assimilated, albeit the artificial “separator” kept in place by the U/S. Census Bureau, and part of that assimilation seems to include the same propensity to make dumbass political decisions as the rest of the country.
Yep-I married a gringo, but our kids consider themselves pro-freedom Cubans-guayabara, arroz con pollo, fried yucca and all!
The temptation to be a fashion victim is very strong, and too many can’t resist it.
For those Cubans who will vote Dem, three letters: JFK. For SHAME.
Asombra: next October 22 is the fiftieth anniversary of his greatest moment of shame — and our doom.
“Yep-I married a gringo, but our kids consider themselves pro-freedom Cubans-guayabara, arroz con pollo, fried yucca and all!”
Looks like you have done a good job of preventing liberal academia and the MSM to corrupt your kids minds with the liberal agenda.
Unfortunately many Cuban-Americans parents have failed to do the same, plus a good number of the recent Cuban arrivals display signs of Communist brainwashing, therefore their support for Obama.
Anyone who enjoys the song at Humberto’s link might appreciate the original video (from a 1969 promotional film of Bowie’s, and pre-Ziggy Stardust):
Really sort of amazing how that song launched his career.
George, it’s simple: those who don’t respect themselves don’t deserve respect from others.
“Asombra: next October 22 is the fiftieth anniversary of his greatest moment of shame — and our doom.”
Do you mean October 27? Otherwise, I will admit I’m not sure what you mean.
“We on our part, would agree–upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments–(a) to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect and (b) to give assurances against an invasion of Cuba.”
You know Fuzzy, I’m getting sick and fucking tired of you coming here and trying to prove something we never asked you to prove. Go troll somewhere else. One more and you’re banned.
(P.S., October 22 was the night JFK gave his speech, marking the beginning of the crisis. So there, asshole, satisfied?)
Hey Fuzzy…thanks for the links to JFK-related stuff.
I find it amazing that the only time that leftists roll out JFK as an example, is when they need to justify 50 years of brutality and human right violations going unchallenged just a few miles off the coast.
I’m thinking that JFK is an embarrassment to today’s progressive (read: Socialist) DNC.
They don’t want to be reminded that JFK was a tax-cutting, union-busting, pro-life Democrat who believed in a strong military and (as we may so vividly remember) would not shrink when faced with challenges from overseas.
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.” – John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget* message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference *
“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.” – John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.
I can’t begin to imagine the sort of disconnect from reality that someone who was a Kennedy Democrat must force themselves to engage in these days to convince themselves that today’s DNC is the same Party that they stood for back in Kennedy’s day.
Notes:
1. A Presidential news conference is where the President shows up, and answers questions from journalists *. No known Presidential news conference has ever taken place in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon the Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The View, or Entertainment Tonight.)
2. A “fiscal year” is a twelve month period of time delimited by a budget.
3. Journalist – A person who reports news in an unbiased, factual manner.. Generally speaking, a journalist is seldom seen humping a candidate’s knee in a manner that can only be described as a hormonally imbalanced Lhasa Apso caught up in the throes of passion.
George, relax. I didn’t understand why you said Oct 22, so I asked. It wasn’t a “troll” comment, it was a bleeding simple and honest question! It just seemed to me that you may have been thinking of Oct 27. Not a big deal, why do you get so worked up? My advice is for you to stop always assuming the worst, but you (obviously) will take or leave that (I’m guessing the latter).
And, Luis, my pleasure and you’re welcome.
Fuzzy, you piss me off one more time and you’re out. You’ve been warned.
Freedom for Cuba-yes, we are very lucky. One has recently graduated from a very academic but super progressive Universiy out west so you can imagine the intellectual garbage he was fed; luckily he recognized it. I place alot of our success by encouraging lots of time between our kids and my folks. They have a sense of their history and how capitalism is moral and not just practical. They have a framework to fight back…reading Heinlan didn’t hurt either 😀
Freedom for Cuba-yes, we are very lucky. One has recently graduated from a very academic but super progressive Universiy out west so you can imagine the intellectual garbage he was fed; luckily he recognized it. I place alot of our success Two fold: #1study #2 by encouraging lots of time between our kids and my folks. They have a sense of their history and how capitalism is moral and not just practical. This gives them a framework to fight back…reading Heinlan didn’t hurt either 😀
JFK was in well over his head, but too pleased with himself and his crowd to see reality as it was. The fact he had so many adoring enablers to “validate” him didn’t help. He had what I call Golden Boy Syndrome, whereby someone with certain advantages (like good looks, charm, money and social status) becomes a giant in his own mind and feels entitled to whatever he wants, even the most powerful position on earth. Such thinking, of course, may be quite unfounded, not to say delusional–essentially a fantasy, even if it happens to deceive the masses, who can be abysmally wrong (and don’t Cubans know it in spades).
JFK was a triumph of appearances and style over substance. He was aided and abetted by numerous well-placed and eager devotees, who crafted and sustained his mythology, the whole Camelot fairy tale. He was never up to the myth, which was juvenile romantic nonsense anyhow, and he only looks flimsier and weaker with time. He may look relatively good compared to current Dems, but that’s not saying much. He could have been good as VP or an ambassador, meaning a position with no real power but where high decorative or surface value can be effective. However, serious power and responsibility require the real deal, not someone who looks and sounds good but can’t deliver.
Many years ago, I stopped reading Science Fiction, not because I stopped reading the genre, but rather because I thought that the name of the genre was no longer appropriate. I thought that perhaps Futurist Fiction, or Speculative Fiction was a better name, but they both included the term “fiction”. I was growing up in the shadow of the launch pads of the Central Florida coast in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, and the rocket men were anything but fiction.
I embraced Heinlein’s notion of Future History, and assumed that everything that I watched and read, from Star Trek to Time Enough for Love, were stories built around a time in the history of man that would eventually be real.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a Spock, but that we would go off into the final frontier was a given to me.
Ground Control to major Tom:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFks9A9TCF0
“If they are correct, a new Star Trek series will soon be developed. Estartré. Captain is Mexican. First officer is half-Chilean, half Vulcan. Ship’s doctor is Uruguayan. Engineer is Cuban, named Chucho. Bridge crew includes Dominican communications officer, Peruvian-Japanese lieutenant.”
Dr. Eire, I respectfully disagree, and I know that at the surface it may appear as if I am contradicting my own notion of Future History, but what you described above is a physical impossibility.
Sadly, Latinos in space may be nothing more than a pipe dream.
It is impossible to drive a spaceship through the Universe with the driver’s window down, and the driver’s arm hanging out.
I understand. But these are Lateeen-ohs who migrated north and lived through many winters. The’ve been conditioned to the concept of an enclosed space.
Ah!
The fabled Northern Cubans that I’ve read about!
🙂
A poll was announced today that showed that while Latinos will go 80% for Obama, Cubans will go 46% to 39% for Romney. Who the hell are those Cubans who will go 39% for Obama?
Send it to Henry, Honey. He’ll tear it apart!…bound to be BS.
I don’t know the source of it. I gave up watching all tv news and saw this in passing as I was rewinding a tape.
“A poll was announced today that showed that while Latinos will go 80% for Obama, Cubans will go 46% to 39% for Romney. Who the hell are those Cubans who will go 39% for Obama?”
One could make the argument that the composition of our community has changed; we are not the community that once turned out en masse to cheer Reagan down the streets of Little Havana.
Uniquely, we remain “Cubans” in spite of the length of time of our presence in the United States. In fact, the argument could be easily made, specially when you consider that a child of a child born on US soil to a parent who was born in Cuba, is still considered to be a Cuban by and large, that at best, we as a homogeneous group, can only rise to the level of “Hispanic’ regardless of the depth of our roots in the US. The same may possibly be said for Orientals.
That would never be the case, nor has it ever been the case for any other wave of immigrant that I can think of. The offspring of Italian immigrants are simply Americans, and the same goes for the descendants of Irish, German, Nordic, Slav, or any other European grouping of immigrants.
The point of my rant?
We appear to have assimilated, albeit the artificial “separator” kept in place by the U/S. Census Bureau, and part of that assimilation seems to include the same propensity to make dumbass political decisions as the rest of the country.
Yep-I married a gringo, but our kids consider themselves pro-freedom Cubans-guayabara, arroz con pollo, fried yucca and all!
The temptation to be a fashion victim is very strong, and too many can’t resist it.
For those Cubans who will vote Dem, three letters: JFK. For SHAME.
Asombra: next October 22 is the fiftieth anniversary of his greatest moment of shame — and our doom.
“Yep-I married a gringo, but our kids consider themselves pro-freedom Cubans-guayabara, arroz con pollo, fried yucca and all!”
Looks like you have done a good job of preventing liberal academia and the MSM to corrupt your kids minds with the liberal agenda.
Unfortunately many Cuban-Americans parents have failed to do the same, plus a good number of the recent Cuban arrivals display signs of Communist brainwashing, therefore their support for Obama.
Anyone who enjoys the song at Humberto’s link might appreciate the original video (from a 1969 promotional film of Bowie’s, and pre-Ziggy Stardust):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D67kmFzSh_o
Or the video of his 1970 award winning Ivor Novello Awards performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr-xTMHZbRQ
Really sort of amazing how that song launched his career.
George, it’s simple: those who don’t respect themselves don’t deserve respect from others.
“Asombra: next October 22 is the fiftieth anniversary of his greatest moment of shame — and our doom.”
Do you mean October 27? Otherwise, I will admit I’m not sure what you mean.
“We on our part, would agree–upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments–(a) to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect and (b) to give assurances against an invasion of Cuba.”
Sources for Luis:
http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/d67
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Cuba/kennedyletter1.shtml
You know Fuzzy, I’m getting sick and fucking tired of you coming here and trying to prove something we never asked you to prove. Go troll somewhere else. One more and you’re banned.
(P.S., October 22 was the night JFK gave his speech, marking the beginning of the crisis. So there, asshole, satisfied?)
Hey Fuzzy…thanks for the links to JFK-related stuff.
I find it amazing that the only time that leftists roll out JFK as an example, is when they need to justify 50 years of brutality and human right violations going unchallenged just a few miles off the coast.
I’m thinking that JFK is an embarrassment to today’s progressive (read: Socialist) DNC.
They don’t want to be reminded that JFK was a tax-cutting, union-busting, pro-life Democrat who believed in a strong military and (as we may so vividly remember) would not shrink when faced with challenges from overseas.
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.” – John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget* message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference *
“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.” – John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.
I can’t begin to imagine the sort of disconnect from reality that someone who was a Kennedy Democrat must force themselves to engage in these days to convince themselves that today’s DNC is the same Party that they stood for back in Kennedy’s day.
Notes:
1. A Presidential news conference is where the President shows up, and answers questions from journalists *. No known Presidential news conference has ever taken place in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon the Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The View, or Entertainment Tonight.)
2. A “fiscal year” is a twelve month period of time delimited by a budget.
3. Journalist – A person who reports news in an unbiased, factual manner.. Generally speaking, a journalist is seldom seen humping a candidate’s knee in a manner that can only be described as a hormonally imbalanced Lhasa Apso caught up in the throes of passion.
George, relax. I didn’t understand why you said Oct 22, so I asked. It wasn’t a “troll” comment, it was a bleeding simple and honest question! It just seemed to me that you may have been thinking of Oct 27. Not a big deal, why do you get so worked up? My advice is for you to stop always assuming the worst, but you (obviously) will take or leave that (I’m guessing the latter).
And, Luis, my pleasure and you’re welcome.
Fuzzy, you piss me off one more time and you’re out. You’ve been warned.
Freedom for Cuba-yes, we are very lucky. One has recently graduated from a very academic but super progressive Universiy out west so you can imagine the intellectual garbage he was fed; luckily he recognized it. I place alot of our success by encouraging lots of time between our kids and my folks. They have a sense of their history and how capitalism is moral and not just practical. They have a framework to fight back…reading Heinlan didn’t hurt either 😀
Freedom for Cuba-yes, we are very lucky. One has recently graduated from a very academic but super progressive Universiy out west so you can imagine the intellectual garbage he was fed; luckily he recognized it. I place alot of our success Two fold: #1study #2 by encouraging lots of time between our kids and my folks. They have a sense of their history and how capitalism is moral and not just practical. This gives them a framework to fight back…reading Heinlan didn’t hurt either 😀
JFK was in well over his head, but too pleased with himself and his crowd to see reality as it was. The fact he had so many adoring enablers to “validate” him didn’t help. He had what I call Golden Boy Syndrome, whereby someone with certain advantages (like good looks, charm, money and social status) becomes a giant in his own mind and feels entitled to whatever he wants, even the most powerful position on earth. Such thinking, of course, may be quite unfounded, not to say delusional–essentially a fantasy, even if it happens to deceive the masses, who can be abysmally wrong (and don’t Cubans know it in spades).
JFK was a triumph of appearances and style over substance. He was aided and abetted by numerous well-placed and eager devotees, who crafted and sustained his mythology, the whole Camelot fairy tale. He was never up to the myth, which was juvenile romantic nonsense anyhow, and he only looks flimsier and weaker with time. He may look relatively good compared to current Dems, but that’s not saying much. He could have been good as VP or an ambassador, meaning a position with no real power but where high decorative or surface value can be effective. However, serious power and responsibility require the real deal, not someone who looks and sounds good but can’t deliver.