Is a Dark-Energy Fueled Spaceship Possible?

The internet was amazed by images of the world's first warpship recently, and if you're wondering how science got past the fiction so quickly, remember how Leonardo is credited with inventing the helicopter?  Despite not knowing any of the relevant aerodynamics, physics, engineering, or having any of the required skills other than "able to draw a pretty picture"?  It's the same deal.

The internet was amazed by images of the world's first warpship recently, and if you're wondering how science got past the fiction so quickly, remember how Leonardo is credited with inventing the helicopter?  Despite not knowing any of the relevant aerodynamics, physics, engineering, or having any of the required skills other than "able to draw a pretty picture"?  It's the same deal.

Dr Richard Obousy recently gifted the Discovery channel with designs for the first "warpship", and in return they gave him more publicity than you can shake a physics consulting firm at.  Did you know Dr Obousy has a consulting firm?  You do now!  Despite containing about as many actual scientific systems as the average Buck Rogers prop, the image circulated the internet because

a) It looks really cool
b) Complete with circular-spinny bits just like in the new Star Trek movie
c) Real Science Credibility (TM) added by throwing around words like "Dark Energy"!

The idea that dark energy (still unobserved) had a key role in inflating the universe is real science, and the idea of using harnessed dark matter to squeeze and stretch space before and behind the ship (thereby sidestepping the universe's speed limit - because the ship itself isn't moving faster than light) is brilliant fun, but there are an awful lot of steps between "Coming up with a scientific idea" and "designing a cool-looking hull."  ALL the steps, actually.

The idea is fun, and Dr Obousy is a real scientist of not inconsiderable repute, but the "design" is a public relations scam of the highest order - and we mean that in a complimentary way, because it worked fantastically.   But when even the designer confesses in interviews that he has no idea what would go inside the ship, and mentions how it would have to eat Jupiter to run, it's not exactly NASA-grade.  "A pretty picture and some relevant but not actually applied words" is more science fair grade.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Recommended Posts:

Stephen Hawking: Why Isn't the Milky Way "Crawling With Self-Designing Mechanical or Biological Life?"

"The Great Silence": Why Haven't Signs of Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life Been Discovered?

"Warpship" http://dsc.discovery.com/space/im/warp-drive.html

Dr Richard Obousy recently gifted the Discovery channel with designs for the first "warpship", and in return they gave him more publicity than you can shake a physics consulting firm at.  Did you know Dr Obousy has a consulting firm?  You do now!  Despite containing about as many actual scientific systems as the average Buck Rogers prop, the image circulated the internet because

a) It looks really cool
b) Complete with circular-spinny bits just like in the new Star Trek movie
c) Real Science Credibility (TM) added by throwing around words like "Dark Energy"!

The idea that dark energy (still unobserved) had a key role in inflating the universe is real science, and the idea of using harnessed dark matter to squeeze and stretch space before and behind the ship (thereby sidestepping the universe's speed limit - because the ship itself isn't moving faster than light) is brilliant fun, but there are an awful lot of steps between "Coming up with a scientific idea" and "designing a cool-looking hull."  ALL the steps, actually.

The idea is fun, and Dr Obousy is a real scientist of not inconsiderable repute, but the "design" is a public relations scam of the highest order - and we mean that in a complimentary way, because it worked fantastically.   But when even the designer confesses in interviews that he has no idea what would go inside the ship, and mentions how it would have to eat Jupiter to run, it's not exactly NASA-grade.  "A pretty picture and some relevant but not actually applied words" is more science fair grade.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Recommended Posts:

Stephen Hawking: Why Isn't the Milky Way "Crawling With Self-Designing Mechanical or Biological Life?"

"The Great Silence": Why Haven't Signs of Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life Been Discovered?

"Warpship" http://dsc.discovery.com/space/im/warp-drive.html

Comments

[Narendra Nath]

Dr. Richard Obousy seems to have given a twin propeller sketch with script that seems to be of an Asian language , rather than of English or American origin. The idea of contracting space in front and expanding it behind such a vehicle seems interesting. But the implementation of this idea , as per existing technology does not appear to be in sight. The sketch mentioned seems to be out of some ancient asian literature. To illustrate, ancient Indian literature talks of 'Pushpa Viman', a vehicle that could flyb in air which carried Lord Rama from Sri Lanka to his kingdom in Ayodhya, UP, India some 4000 years back. The picture of that eventin Indian literature shows that the said vehicle did not have propellers/machines of any kind. It just could fly with some yogic power that Lord Rama and his famous monkey face-like Hanuman had to make them fly in atmosphere! Hanuman is considered as a child of 'air' ( pawan putra), as per the script of Ramayana and Mahabharat. Hanuman is supposed to have lived far longer to cover the historic periods of the lives of Lord Rama and Lord Krisna,separated by atleast 1000 years!Dr Richard owes an explanation for the sketch that is carried in the news item!

[claudio]

Dark energy is truly 'dark' and we do not know much about it.

Then to use dark energy for warp drive is a true JUMP.

Is he on the verge of writing a sci-fi film ??

What the example of Leonardo sketch on helicopter would mean in relation to dark matter engines ???

Leonardo was known to have observed at lenght the fly of birds...and therefore his anticipation of a possible flying machine was totally understandeable....expecially from a GENIUS like Leonardo.

Regards to the genius that humanity had-has....they do not tantalize about dark matter.

[Jonathan]

Narendra, that sketch is one of Leonardo Da Vinci's, and is the "helicopter" the author has referenced in the first paragraph. The language is italian, but he wrote backwards so that other people wouldn't be able to read his notes.

The artists impression of the "warp ship" is in the article linked at the bottom. http://dsc.discovery.com/space/im/warp-drive.html

[Alfred]

Given that we don't even really know what dark energy is, I doubt we'll be doing anything with it. It's like saying "are unicorn-powered space ships possible?"

[Narendra Nath]

i remember to have posted my comments after getting the authors clarification. It seems things do disappear from the site. Any way, with some effort i recollect that i mentioned the following points:
1. dark matter and dark energy source material/ interaction are still unknown. What we know is that visible part is getting repelled by dark matter content and the corresponding energy is called dark energy. The former is around 23 %, and the latter is 73 % . The remaining 4 % is our visible matter in the universe. What were the contents of the primordial matter created at the time of Big bang? Scientists have different conjectures. Some say these were kind of massive neutrinos. i personally prefer these to be heavy neutral quarks. The density being extremely high, the gravity interaction was kind of repulosive in nature, in order to result in extermely fast expansion to what is called the initial size of the Universe.It is then both dark and visible matter resulted from the primordial matter. I suspect that the dark matter constitutes a frozen part of the decay products of very heavy quarks that got frozen as such as the interaction gravity force fell below a certain strength. The remaining small part (4%) then came down to constitute the six quarks we know about,the constituents of the visible baryon matter of nuclei , as strong nuclear interaction emerged on the scene. Much later, atomic nuclei led to the atoms formation with the emrgence of e.m. interaction. Then came the light emission in the universe,as the density of matter came down with expansion of the original universe. This envisages two important aspects about the early universe. (1) the gradual/sequential emergence of the four force fields, as per the logic behind the evolution of the Universe creation and evolution and (2) the gradual change in the strengths of the force fields, resulting in a more or less fixed relative strengths as are being observed by us only after 13 billion years (presently). Physics of the early universe can not be guided by the modern physics we developed during the past few hundred years. The conditions in early universe/birth were too violent to speculate adequately, as we hardly have comological data on that dark period of the Universe. We need to wait when our interstellar satellites will be able to detect the matter constituents that existed in the early universe. Our High Energy Colliders will not be able to simulate conditions close to the first half billion years of the universe!Thus, we live in a purely speculative stage about the scientific facts close to and at the time of Big bang. The greatest puzzle as to what existed prior to the instant of Big Bang also bedevils us.
What is this aspect we label as ' Consciousness ' today. It is a kind of awareness through which we perceive the universe. Its universal/cosmic content may well be the Creator of the Universe, with its hidden extremely high potential strength!

[Jonathan]

Wow, that's an awfully long winded way of saying nothing at all.

[Narendra Nath]

Respected Mr. Jonathan,
what a brief comment on 'nothing'. The whole Universe has been born out of 'nothing' and science finds it impossinle to know what existed before the Big Bang. Has science created the universe or we humans have added anything to the created universe? We have only played with what exists already.The humility in my view the essence of creativity and innovation. High egos leave one with no learning spirit. Apologies if i may have been unwarranted in any manner in this comment!

[Narendra Nath]

Dear Jonathan , please do come out with your academic credentials before we may continue the dialogue. i happen to be retired Professor of Physics from a local university in India, with opportunities to travel and work extensively in USA/ UK institutions during my active service.

[Velocity Wave]

Ya Jonathan:

Unless your academic background clearly shows completion of a PhD in physics, with mathematical research into theoretical multidimensional string theory (and a minor in quantum-mechanics) and you have clearly provided us with your GPA, then kindly refrain from posting any further comments on this website or the Internet in general. That goes for the rest of you as well!

The comment section of websites is only for those with PhD's, who have properly documented their academic background for all other users.

Graduate-research-assistants posting comments will be mildly tolerated, but be sure to mind your place.

[The skepTick]

The concept of using dark energy to warp space to travel at faster than light speed is entirely theoretical, maybe even less so since we still don't understand what dark energy is. The leading theory tells us that it is nothing more than a term in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity - namely the cosmological constant. But even then, it is a factor of 10^120 off from observation of the expansion rate of the universe. Recently, a paper published in PNAS suggests that dark energy may not even be needed to explain acceleration of the universe. Rather, we could be at the center of expanding density waves arising from the big bang, which gives the appearance of distant objects accelerating away from us. It has the unfortunate drawback of placing us at the center of the universe for the calculations to be valid, but it underscores that their are other alternatives that may be equally valid to dark energy.

Nice to see a skeptical viewpoint on this subject.

[A Sculptor]

What is your issue with Leonardo? Give the man his due, just because he was not a modern engineer does not mean that he was not way ahead of his time or that his skill set did not go beyond his ability to draw a pretty picture. Many of his idea's where actualized in his lifetime. Sculptors contend with the same material properties that flummox engineers and Leonardo made huge advancements with his observations of metallurgy and mechanical physics. I'll have to admit he had no idea what dark matter is but then neither do you.