December 1st, 2009
New Scientist has an interesting article about novel methods for interstellar travel, which includes links to recent scientific articles:
In August, physicist Jia Liu at New York University outlined his design for a spacecraft powered by dark matter (arxiv.org/abs/0908.1429v1). Soon afterward, mathematicians Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland at Kansas State University in Manhattan proposed plans for a craft powered by an artificial black hole (arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803).
Liu claims to have his inspiration come from Bussard and the interstellar ramjet concept, but maybe he just read my novel Spider Star that has a very similar idea, at least in the sense that dark matter is used as fuel. My idea is very direct, with a “beater” that pushes around WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles). Liu’s idea is based on a theory involving how dark matter may annihilate to release energy.
I’m not the first to use black holes to drive space ships (as I did in Star Dragon using a variation on an idea that first appeared in a physics paper in the 1950s), not by a longshot, but it is always welcome to see serious efforts to develop new ideas about how to do this thing.
Also recently, Charlie Stross has made a very thoughtful post getting a lot of attention about how interstellar travel is really hard and doesn’t even fit into the spaceship paradigm, barring some series developments in physics. Well, a dark matter drive could potentially be such a development.
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Interesting idea you describe. I don’t know much about the finer technical aspects of propulsion drives, or the speed/time dilation ratio myself. However, the fundamental problems with travelling to the nearest likely inhabitable planet i can’t see being overcome with any sublight drive, that is if the crew want to reach it in their lifetime. Perhaps the only solution is some kind of cryogenic suspension, but who would risk the possibility of not being revived due to some malfunction … or alien boarding? Ok, I guess some would, just as soldiers are prepared to enter a war zone.
What I’m considering is some way of manipulating space itself (never mind the huge amount of power involved) that somehow warps it, compressess it. I’ll have to do more research.
One idea that seems a non-starter is sending uploaded versions of mindstates, not so much because of the technical limitations but for philosophical and ethical reasons. What kind of sentience is being sent, humans or simulated humans? What they will be are copies, even if they can be reintegrated with bodies. Still, if it can be done…
Yes, Adrian, these are the kind of issues being discussed in the comments over at Charlie’s blog.
my idea for a space drive comes from the philedelphia experiment where the government tried to cloak a warship using magnetic fields. i dont know if the government really tried this it is rumor but apparently the magnets compressed space around the ship increasing lightspeed so that the ship reached its destination much sooner than anticipated even sooner than is possible by modern physics.