FASTER THAN LIGHT 207
This negative energy was actually measured in the laboratory in
1948,
and the results confirmed Casimir's prediction. Thus, negative
energy and the Casimir effect are no longer science fiction but established fact. The problem, however, is that the Casimir effect is quite
small; it takes delicate, state-of-the-art measuring equipment to detect
this energy in the laboratory. (In general, the Casimir energy is proportional to the inverse fourth power of the distance of separation between
the plates. This means that the smaller the distance of separation, the
larger the energy.) The Casimir effect was measured precisely in 1996
by Steven Lamoreaux at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the
attractive force is V30,ooo the weight of an ant.
Since Alcubierre first proposed his theory, physicists have discovered a number of strange properties. The people inside the starship are
causally disconnected from the outside world. This means that you
cannot simply press a button at will and travel faster than light. You
cannot communicate through the bubble. There has to be a preexisting "highway" through space and time, like a series of trains passing
by on a regular timetable. In this sense, the starship would not be an
ordinary ship that can change directions and speeds at will. The starship would actually be like a passenger car riding on a preexisting
"wave" of compressed space, coasting along a preexisting corridor of
warped space-time. Alcubierre speculates, "We would need a series of
generators of exotic matter along the way, like a highway, that manipulate space for you in a synchronized way."
Actually, even more bizarre types of solutions to Einstein's equations can be found. Einstein's equations state that if you are given a
certain amount of mass or energy, you can compute the warping of
space-time that the mass or energy will generate (in the same way that
if you throw a rock into a pond, you can calculate the ripples that it will
create). But you can also run the equations backward. You can start
with a bizarre space-time, the kind found in episodes of The Twilight
Zone. (In these universes, for example, you can open up a door and
find yourself on the moon. You can run around a tree and find yourself
backward in time, with your heart on the right side of your body.) Then
you calculate the distribution of matter and energy associated with
This negative energy was actually measured in the laboratory in
1948,
and the results confirmed Casimir's prediction. Thus, negative
energy and the Casimir effect are no longer science fiction but established fact. The problem, however, is that the Casimir effect is quite
small; it takes delicate, state-of-the-art measuring equipment to detect
this energy in the laboratory. (In general, the Casimir energy is proportional to the inverse fourth power of the distance of separation between
the plates. This means that the smaller the distance of separation, the
larger the energy.) The Casimir effect was measured precisely in 1996
by Steven Lamoreaux at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the
attractive force is V30,ooo the weight of an ant.
Since Alcubierre first proposed his theory, physicists have discovered a number of strange properties. The people inside the starship are
causally disconnected from the outside world. This means that you
cannot simply press a button at will and travel faster than light. You
cannot communicate through the bubble. There has to be a preexisting "highway" through space and time, like a series of trains passing
by on a regular timetable. In this sense, the starship would not be an
ordinary ship that can change directions and speeds at will. The starship would actually be like a passenger car riding on a preexisting
"wave" of compressed space, coasting along a preexisting corridor of
warped space-time. Alcubierre speculates, "We would need a series of
generators of exotic matter along the way, like a highway, that manipulate space for you in a synchronized way."
Actually, even more bizarre types of solutions to Einstein's equations can be found. Einstein's equations state that if you are given a
certain amount of mass or energy, you can compute the warping of
space-time that the mass or energy will generate (in the same way that
if you throw a rock into a pond, you can calculate the ripples that it will
create). But you can also run the equations backward. You can start
with a bizarre space-time, the kind found in episodes of The Twilight
Zone. (In these universes, for example, you can open up a door and
find yourself on the moon. You can run around a tree and find yourself
backward in time, with your heart on the right side of your body.) Then
you calculate the distribution of matter and energy associated with