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

Jerry Han wrote
> > In the January 2000 (not March 2000 issue, as I erroneously reported
earlier) there is an interesting article on negative
> > energy and warping space. They suggest that with enough negative
energy
you COULD produce a space warp field
> > sort of like Star Trek. However, they also suggest that you would
need
some sort of outside help to create the warp
> > bubble (sort of like B5 jump gates) and you wouldn't be able to
turn,
just move straight ahead. This has me thinking
> > about a few things for one of my own homegrown universes.
>
> Now the problem is, what the heck is 'negative energy'?   (8-)
>
> JGH

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