Recently, I became aware of some research that NASA is performing. They are literally trying to make a warp drive. Our friends over at i09 have a good article about it. If you are interested, and I know you will be after reading this article, it is a good and quick read. But it made me think. What are the repercussions if we actually build this warp engine.
First of all, space opens up to us. Being able to travel to the nearest stars in a matter of weeks is literally mind blowing. For my entire life, we, the common populace have been living with the assumption that planetary travel is nearly impossible, and could only happen on generational ships. It was the fact that HUGE amounts of time and energy would be involved that we humans were stuck on our little blue planet midway out of one of the spiral arms of the milky way. Were quite far from the galactic center where it might have been possible to get to another solar system within a lifetime.
One implication from the previous statement is that life, if it is out there, would not be able to get to us either. Well, if experiments point to possibility of this working, then maybe we could travel to other planets, and maybe, just maybe, someone else out there has developed this, or a similar, technology, and visited us. Heck, maybe they even visits us now.
I don't want this to turn into an article about little green men, but rather the possibility that we could go to find them (again, if they are out there), or the possibility that they might be able to come to us. I am hoping that this research will turn up some viable solutions that that we will eventually be able to build a rocke that bends space-time. I think the possibilities of travelling to the stars is terrifyingly exciting.
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