OU on the BBC: Blue Sky - Running rockets

Space propulsion that we use at the moment is really one hundred-year-old physics.

The physics that was developed during the 20th century has had no impact at all on propulsion. Therefore, new ways of doing propulsion are being investigated.

Propulsion can be divided up into three parts - from earth to orbit, from orbit to the solar system and then beyond the solar system.

The technology that we are currently using is really old missile technology. Anders Hansson's dream is going from one solar system to another solar system in a time that is reasonable:

"What we want to do is to travel at very fast speeds so that we can do it within our lifetime. What is intriguing is that general relativity appears to allow us to do that."

Creative Commons Image patersor via Flickr
A buble in a column of oil [Image: Patersor under CC-BY-NC licence]

The warp drive is basically creating a different universe around your vessel: a bubble universe. To achieve it, you would take a piece of space time, "cut it out" and warp it around the vehicle. You will be sitting inside that little bubble, so you create a bubble universe. Inside that bubble you would travel faster than the speed of light.

Anders Hansson says it would be similar to if you were in an aircraft and instead of the aircraft taking off and flying through the atmosphere and landing somewhere, you would sit statically inside the aircraft and that whole bubble would move through a different part of the universe:

"If we could do this little bubble, it would mean that we would be able to travel from our solar system to any other solar system in a very short period of time. It’s radical because people do not tend to think of space time as something that we could change."

Theoretically, this would work, but the problem is that it requires a lot of power to achieve it.

Anders says that about two years ago it was thought that it needed more power or energy than there is in the known universe, "but in those two years we have already made enough progress that we now know we can do it with just the power that is in Jupiter."

NASA
Jupiter during a rare triple eclipse. [Image:NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)]

Astronomers have believed since 1998 that the universe is not slowing down but actually going faster. The question is: where does that energy come from?

"That is precisely the kind of force we need to actually make the act against gravity," says Anders. "So we now know that there could be a physical force that could do the work for us."

There is a very close connection between fiction and science fiction and development in theoretical physics, according to Anders:

"I think it helps enormously because it conceptualises something. So if you read or watch a science fiction film you actually see a piece of hardware - it’s not just a theory or mathematics. You have to be careful - there is a fine line between what is, in principle, possible and what is just wishful thinking.

You have to avoid the wishful thinking and stay within at least the bounds of known science. Maybe there is one advantage in theoretical physics because it is always on the border between what is possible and not possible, so you tend to like or at least have an interest in speculative things like science fiction."

Further Reading

2001: A Space Odyssey
by Arthur C Clarke

First broadcast: Friday 11 May 2001 on BBC TWO

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