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http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-p ... light.html

LOOK AT THIS!!!!!

We've been over this.

The concept relies on 'exotic matter', otherwise known as 'magic'.

Late to the party aren't you.

Also, LJS. It is possible to have a net negitive energy in real life, and E=MC^2 + whatever the heck the momentum term is I always forget means that negative mass could exist maybe.

Keon wrote:Also, LJS. It is possible to have a net negitive energy in real life, and E=MC^2 + whatever the heck the momentum term is I always forget means that negative mass could exist maybe.

Why are you talking to me? O_o

Well, dark energy is essentially anti-gravity, but it´s called dark energy because we don´t know what it actually is expanding our universe.
Actually, it looks like negative mass, but then it still would not be a negative energy because it is a negative force, which, in fact, is just a normal force with the vector turned around.
The point is that negative mass would require, according to what we know about physics now, negative mass would require a negative ammount of particles.
try get negative ammounts of paricles first.

...In fact, I have no Idea how that would help the alcubierre drive to work.
According to the article, there are two problems with the concept why we can´t even think of building something yet.
First, it just says "exotic matter" in the article. To me that sounds like "We know what kind of matter we need, but we don´t know if it exists, so it doesn´t have a proper name." So... long time until we´ll be able to produce and store useful ammounts of that stuff.
The other problem is the energy. The warp drive needs about the mass equivalent of about 800kg. If you know what mass-energy is, you´ll know how much that is. The article also fails to say how fast that Warp drive uses that energy. Maybe it also is just the starting energy.

...wait!
I now get it: the Wikipedia page on Alcubierre drives says a lot more useful stuff. Including that negative energy thing. hoever, that website seems to claim to be able to use positive energy.
I am not a professional physicist, but even is we will ba able to build it, it might take very long to make it real. Also, the exotic matter seems to be tachylonic matter. We´re not even sure it exists, so we are far away from using it.

I however, do know how to get "negative amounts of particles". It involves fluctuations in quantum fields, which results in a minim 'vacuum' energy (this is how ZPMs work). These fluctuations take the form of of virtual particles popping into existence then destroying each other (usually virtual bosons, but occasionally fermions or even atoms will appear [I'll tell you about quantum resurrection at some time or another].) If you put a sheet of some material (I don't remember if it mattered what it was made of) microscopically close to another sheet, the space in between them won't be enough for fluctuations to produce particles, resulting in a "negative" amount of energy in between the sheets. It's like air pressure, but with radiation and the other forces.

I think that's how negative energy goes, anyway. I did that without a wiki: I feel proud!

The future wiill be like:

Star trek warpdrives

Mass Effect Drives

Babylon Five Drives

Standard Sci-Fi Drives?