NASA Designs Near Light Speed Engine That Breaks Laws Of Physics

[Music] the planet earth isn't going to be habitable forever if the human race is going to survive one day we'll have to pack up our things and move to another planet it sounds easy until you realize the vastness of space and even how big our solar system is no matter where we're going in space we need to travel fast and not just at the speed of light either we're talking about ludicrous speed but some researchers have designed an impossible engine that violates the laws of physics and another group of scientists are now saying a warp drive is possible is nasa really working on this technology and what does the future hold for space travel consider this for a moment our closest neighbor alpha centauri is 4.367 light years away so even if we traveled in a ship at 100 light speed it would still take you 4.367 years to get there we could use rockets to get ourselves around in space but the big problem with them is the amount of fuel we would need to carry to get anywhere but even rockets have their limits including how fast they can push a spacecraft we're going to need something that can generate some serious thrust and be able to do so without carrying a large amount of fuel because in space there are no gas stations but there is an engine out there that reportedly can push a spacecraft around without the need for fuel and this engine produces no exhaust either you just plug it in fire it up and go it's called the em drive or impossible engine because it claims it can do the impossible so how does this em drive work at first glance it actually does look a bit like a rocket engine from the side however there are no openings in the device and it works by bouncing around microwaves inside a closed chamber that bouncing around of microwaves in the chamber is supposed to create a push so to speak this is a big deal because all forms of rocketry require some conservation of momentum in order to put a spacecraft in motion you've got to push off something for example if you jump your feet push off the ground an airplane pushes off the air and rockets use exhaust gas to push them and whatever they're carrying forward but the em drive doesn't push off anything basically it's a container with microwaves bouncing around inside it and it can supposedly move itself now you understand why this is called an impossible engine the explanations for how this thing works goes past our current understanding of physics nobody really knows how it's supposed to work it could turn out that our understanding of physics is broken or perhaps the testing of this device will give us some brand new physics the em drive concept came to life in 2001 and there have been some research groups that claim they've measured a net force coming from their devices however what they're measuring is an incredibly small effect so small it couldn't move a piece of paper so what we have after nearly 20 years is a bunch of experiments that haven't delivered something worth talking about or any explanation of how they work some experts say that this drive will never work and all projects will likely be a waste of time and money it's possible that our understanding of physics or new physics not yet discovered could make this thing work but there are other space engines out there that people said would never work and they sprang to life we're talking about the ion drive something that was only thought possible in science fiction when this was first imagined and when people first heard about a real ion drive they also thought it would never produce enough power to move a small spacecraft but the ion drive really does work and in 2016 nasa awarded the california-based company aerojet rocketdyne 67 million dollars to design build and test an advanced and super efficient solar electric propulsion system or scp for short they also call this driver hall effect thruster that uses propellant accelerated by an electric field the ion drive works first by converting solar power to electricity that electricity is used to accelerate ions out of a nozzle which in turn generates thrust it turns out that engineers have been developing scp technology for more than half a century and there are ion thrusters on multiple spacecraft including nasa's dawn probe which is now orbiting the dwarf planet series there are plans to use the scp drive for missions to mars but the issue with the ion drive is that it transfers a very small amount of momentum to the spacecraft but while ion drives are slow they're among the most fuel efficient of all spacecraft propulsion methods right now nasa is using a high power electric propulsion system for the lunar gateway an outpost that will orbit the moon in april 2021 nasa fired up the iron thruster system which is about 30 percent more powerful than previous designs but nasa started to look at another means of getting spacecraft quickly to their destination nuclear pulse propulsion around the same time that nuclear jet engines were being developed for bombers there's been some interest in using nuclear reactors to power spacecraft one thing is that they can survive the cold dark regions of space without requiring any sunlight and they're also reliable the zeus reactor is designed to last 10 to 12 years and it could propel spacecraft to other planets in less time but there are some problems with this propulsion system too only fuel like highly enriched uranium can withstand a nuclear reactor's extremely high temperatures and that doesn't make them safe to use but there is another blow to this type of propulsion system because the us recently prohibited the use of highly enriched uranium to propel objects in space if another safe means was possible right now russia is planning to launch a nuclear-powered spacecraft that will travel from the moon venus and then to jupiter ross cosmos said that its space tug will launch in 2030. the energy module that will power this spacecraft is called zeus basically a mobile nuclear power plant and is designed to produce enough power to push heavy cargo through space right now it would take more than three years to make a round-trip visit to mars but nasa figures that a nuclear-powered spacecraft can cut a year off that time now nasa wants to integrate a 10 kilowatt nuclear power plant with a lunar lander and put it on the moon as early as 2027 the usa has never put a nuclear reactor into space but russia has put more than 30 reactors in space so far and zeus will use a kilowatt nuclear reactor to jump from planet to planet advances in nuclear technology such as nuclear fusion may well change everything but some say we're still far away and propellant-powered rockets are the best we have at the moment propulsion of any spacecraft usually requires some sort of propellant but there are other methods that use only the sun itself solar sails have been in development for many years now but now that technology is advancing spacecraft powered by the sun are fast becoming a reality in 2019 spacex launched the lightsail 2 using the spacex falcon heavy the 7 million light sail 2 is 344 square feet in size and has sails made of tear resistant mylar when radiation pressure from the sun hits this material it creates pressure which moves the spacecraft so how fast can it go that depends on how much sunlight is hitting the sails and if the craft is far away from a star it's going to move much slower but what about warp drive technology just because you've heard that warp drive would be impossible to design and create doesn't mean it won't happen in fact scientists have just recently announced that a physical warp drive is now possible yes seriously in the new paper researchers say that they've nailed down a physical model for a warp drive many have said the technology is impossible because it would require a huge amount of exotic negative forces we all know the term warp drive comes from the famous science fiction series star trek the federation's faster than lightspeed warp drive works by colliding mata and antimatter which produces explosive power but what about warp drives in reality our current understanding of the warp drive comes from the now iconic theoretical physicist named miguel alsubia this drive conforms to einstein's theory of general relativity to achieve super luminal travel by a local expansion of space-time behind the spaceship and an opposite contraction in front of it but the aldsubia drive would need a ton of energy probably more than what's available in the entire universe in order to contract and twist space-time in front of it and create a bubble if you were an astronaut inside that spaceship with the bubble around it you wouldn't feel any acceleration nasa has actually been trying to build a physical warp drive for the last decade but hasn't made much progress yet but this brings us to the new study scientists at the advanced propulsion laboratory at applied physics unveiled the world's first model for a physical warp drive where the existing model uses negative energy or exotic matter that doesn't exist or is impossible to generate with our current understanding of physics this new concept uses floating bubbles of space-time rather than floating ships in space-time in fact this new physical model uses almost none of the negative energy needed in the previous model and capitalizes on the idea that space-time bubbles can behave any way they want to alsubia even endorsed this new model however this is just a concept for now and the mass requirements needed are still enormous but while a physical drive may not be a reality today or even a century from now with this exciting new model warp speed travel is a lot closer than we previously thought do you think we'll see warp drive in our lifetime or do you think it'll be centuries away let us know what you think in the comments thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Destiny

Views: 5,854,410

Keywords: EM Drive, Interstellar Travel, Physics Is Broken, NASA, Light Speed Engine, Impossible Engine, universe, space, science, scientists, galaxy, star, sun, earth, destiny, ridddle, what if, spacex, nasa, black hole, cosmos, moon Scientists Discovered, Scientists Are Worried, Should We Worry, Worry, Discovered, Just Discovered, Something Strange, Found, Scientists Can’t Explain, What’s Hidden Under, astronomy, astrophysics, travel space, space travel, spacex launch, nasa rocket, documentary

Id: W6WjiupbVHI

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021