Actual Warp Drive Theory (was Re: Light may break its own speedlimit)

> agoodall@canada.com wrote:

Now the problem is, what the heck is 'negative energy'?   (8-)

JGH

> On Fri, Jul 21, 2000 at 11:16:54AM -0400, Jerry Han wrote:

What you use to accelerate matter with negative mass?

Seriously, I had a physics prof who had his own theory of subatomic physics.
This model predicted particles with negative mass. Not antimatter; this stuff
just had a negative sign in front of its mass value. A chunk of normal mass
and a chunk of negative mass would get you an almost reactionless drive...

> Robert Crawford wrote:

You can find more information about this in Dr.Robert Forward's science fact
book INDISTINQUISHABLE FROM MAGIC.

Jerry Han wrote
> > In the January 2000 (not March 2000 issue, as I erroneously reported

I don't want to claim that I have understood the article, but, for what it's
worth:

In a vacuum, the energy that exists at any given point in space is zero.
However, due to quantum effects, it is not exactly and permanently zero, but
fluctuates around zero, i.e.there are moments/points where it is bigger
than zero and others where it is smaller. Normally, as with all quantum
phenomena, these fluctuations are too small to have any noticeable effect at
macroscopic scales.

However, by setting up the right experimental conditions, it is possible (and
has been done) to separate the negative and positive energies of a small
region of space.

The authors point out that the laws of quantum mechanics make the creation of
any macroscopically useful regions of negative energy more or less
impossible(i.e. a warp bubble for a spaceship), both in terms of the required
precision (a wormhole's wall would have be much thinner than a proton's
diameter) and in terms of the (positive) energy needed (of the order of the
mass of the universe).

Greetings Karl Heinz

> On Fri, 21 July 2000, Jerry Han wrote:

> Now the problem is, what the heck is 'negative energy'? (8-)

Negative energy is, essentially, what it sounds like. Beam negative energy at
a cup of water and it gets cold, not hot.

Apparently it's predicted by quantum mechanics. A total vacuum has a net
energy state of zero. However, quantum mechanics dictates that particles pop
in and out of existence even in a vacuum, so that means that at some given
moment there is energy even in a vacuum. To come to a net state of zero, there
has to be negative energy. It also features in Hawking's dissolving black hole
theory.

The article explains it in more detail (although I had to take some of it as
"okay, umm... take your word for it"). They have apparently produced negative
energy in the lab, but only small amounts for very short periods of time.

I'm not sure how you'd create negative energy. They talk about "squeezing"
quantum states, but no one has figured out how to separate negative and
positive energy without using positive energy (which would then eliminate the
negative energy state). So, it's all still very much conjecture. But the
possibility was quite interesting.