Re:

If it turns out to be a 20-diameter distance from the local body then we

should all be buying Marc Miller drinks for the rest of his life.

Randy W. Wolfmeyer wrote:

>I'm pretty sure you're talking about a spacetime metric invented by
>Miguel Alcubierre.  The abstract for his paper is here:
>
>http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0009013
>
>If you check out the full paper, it has a bit of math to get through,
but
>on page 7 there are two equations that give the time from outside the
warp
>bubble (capital T) and from inside (tau) to go some distance D between
two
>star systems.	It even mentions the fact that you need to engage the
drive
>some distance away from the starting star.  It might be useful for
those
>that want some real equations to use in figuring out FTL travel.
>
>The real problems with something like this is that it takes a lot of
mass
>(or energy) to warp spacetime to that degree, and it requires a
negative
>energy density to contract spacetime, something that may or may not be
>achievable in real life.
>
>Randy Wolfmeyer
>Dept. of Physics
>Washington University
>
>
>On Wed, 20 Mar 2002, Allan Goodall wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 20 Mar 2002 13:27:24 +0000, John Lambshead <pjdl@nhm.ac.uk>
wrote:
>>
>>>New Scientist reports on a theoretically not impossible way of
pushing a
>>>space craft FTL.
>>>
>>This was discussed in Scientific American about two years ago. It's a
neat
>>idea, though, and I've been using it as the basis of my own FT
universe.
>>
>>
>>Allan Goodall 		 agoodall@hyperbear.com
>>http://www.hyperbear.com
>>
>>"At long last, the earthy soil of the typical,
>>unimaginable mortician was revealed!"
>> - from the Random H.P. Lovecraft Story Generator
>>
>
>