Warp Drive, Faster Than Light:Breaking the interstellar distance barrier

15 November 2007                              9.30 am - 5.00 pm

General Relativity defines the geometrical warpage of spacetime within the vicinity of a matter distribution. Since its publication by Albert Einstein nearly a century ago our understanding of the universe has undergone a revolution. In particular, the existence of black holes, objects once considered not worthy of serious consideration for the end point of stellar collapse has now become a largely accepted phenomenon. In 1994 Miguel Alcubierre used Einstein’s theory of gravity to design a metric that resembled a bipolar distortion otherwise known as a spherical warp bubble in spacetime. This suggested the possibility of effectively enabling a vehicle to move across enormous stellar distances in a short transit time, allowing the warp bubble interior as well as a vehicle located within to be moved through spacetime faster than the speed of light with respect to the distant universe. That is to say, within the warp field the speed of light limit has been raised so that locally the vehicle does not violate the central tenet of special relativity.

Since this seminal paper around 50 publications have appeared internationally on the topic demonstrating that academic interest in the ‘warp drive’ proposal is growing. In the first decade of research several technical physics obstacles have been identified towards making the warp drive a realistic proposal for interstellar travel. In particular, calculations show that physically enormous and unobtainable amounts of negative energy are required to generate the desired geometrical warpage. In an effort to generate interest in solving some of the technical problems a symposium is being organised with the intention of focussing on four main themes: The Current Status of the Warp Drive Proposal; Quantum Field Constraints; Photon Propagation through the Warp Field; Alternative Faster than Light Drives. Where the latter may be based upon alternative versions of Einstein’s gravity such as Brans-Dicke theory or Yilmaz theory, or based upon alternative suggestions for interstellar travel such as the Krasnikov tube and wormholes.

Confirmed Speakers

Casimir Energy: A Fuel for Traversable Wormholes
Remo Garattini, Bergamo University, Italy

Computer Tensor Codes to Design the Warp Drive
Claudio Maccone, International Academy of Astronautics

Warp Drive: From Imagination to Reality
Jeremy Gardiner

The Status of the Warp Drive
Kelvin Long

Higher Dimensional Vacuum Energy Warp Drive
Richard K. Obousy & Gerald Cleaver, Department of Physics, Baylor University, Texas

Warp Drives in Cosmology
Pedro F. González-Díaz, Instituto de Física Fundamental “Blas Cabrera”, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain

Can the Flyby Anomalies be Explained by a Modification of Inertia
M.E. McCulloch

Space Teleportation with Present Day Technology (Poster)
Yvan Bozzonetti

Registration Fees include refreshments and lunch.

Please note the registration fee will increase by £10 after 19 October.

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