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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:48 | Votes:108

posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 30 2020, @11:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the 2021-looks-better-already dept.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down on January 20

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will step down from his post on January 20, the day President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated, he announced Monday.

The announcement means that the FCC could reach a Democratic majority sooner than it would otherwise be able to. Pai's term was slated to expire in June 2021, though Biden will be able to choose a Democrat to chair the commission once in office. Commissioners must be confirmed by the Senate.

[...] Pai's decision to step down could have significant implications on net neutrality, an issue that helped define his term as chairman. In 2017, Pai voted with his fellow Republican commissioners to remove rules that prohibited internet providers from from blocking or slowing traffic to particular sites and offering higher speed "lanes" at higher prices. Many major internet providers have not yet taken advantage of that rule change, however.

Also at 9to5Mac.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Monday November 30 2020, @09:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the Colonel-mustard-in-the-kitchen-with-the-lead-pipe dept.

Seemingly Ordinary Fossils May Be Hiding Some Major Clues to the Past:

Paleontologists are lucky to find complete sets of fossilized bones. Sometimes, they get even luckier, finding preserved impressions of delicate features like feathers. Beyond those clues, though, most of the biology of extinct species—their DNA, internal organs, and unique chemistry—has been totally destroyed by the many millions of years that separate us. Except, what if it hasn't? Some scientists now claim they can tease much more complex biological information out of apparently mundane fossils, including things that most paleontologists don't expect to survive over millions of years, such as skin and eggshell.

Molecular paleobiologist Jasmina Wiemann has been on the forefront of this exciting research since 2018, co-authoring papers that reveal elements of fossils that cannot be immediately seen with our eyes but can be detected through a series of complex chemical and statistical analyses. Her recent paper, published this summer with Jason Crawford and Derek Briggs, builds upon other, similar research from the past two years. She and her co-authors claim they can determine the chemical signatures of skin, bone, teeth, and eggshell. Even better, they can train anyone else in the field within approximately 20 minutes to find these ancient traces using their techniques. It's an opportunity they hope will be widely used within museum collections the world over.

Consider that most museums only display a small percentage of the fossils they have in their collection. Those fossils chosen for display are either partially complete skeletons or fossils that are readily recognizable to the general public. What remains in many collections' storage rooms are shelves upon shelves of the rest: the less-flashy fossils that nonetheless offer insight into ancient life. What if they all could be tested for hidden biomarkers? Fossilized dinosaur cells, blood vessel, and bone matrix.

[...] In other words, rather than search for a specific molecule on one particular fossil, they wanted to determine what molecules—if any—were on the sample set of fossils they explored. What they consistently discovered was that traces of certain ancient molecules survived, chemically altered but still distinct. The team could identify different types of molecular fossils, and they could interpret their biological meaning.

[...] Wiemann brings a different perspective to paleontology. At the age of 15, she won a scholarship in Germany to study chemistry, which enabled her to complete degrees in geosciences and evolutionary biology before attending Yale University, where she is currently a PhD candidate. In the past two years, she has discovered egg color in dinosaurs, contributed to research offering further evidence that the Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum) is a vertebrate, and helped reveal evidence that soft-shelled eggs evolved in dinosaurs before calcified eggshells. Translating the ancient chemical properties associated with those fossils was her role. As she explained, "I develop molecular proxies for all kinds of evolutionary topics to unlock information otherwise inaccessible to paleontologists."

Journal References:
1.) Victoria E. McCoy, Jasmina Wiemann, James C. Lamsdell, et al. Chemical signatures of soft tissues distinguish between vertebrates and invertebrates from the Carboniferous Mazon Creek Lagerstätte of Illinois, Geobiology (DOI: 10.1111/gbi.12397)
2.) Aude Cincotta, Thanh Thuy Nguyen Tu, Julien L. Colaux, et al. Chemical preservation of tail feathers from Anchiornis huxleyi, a theropod dinosaur from the Tiaojishan Formation (Upper Jurassic, China), Palaeontology (DOI: 10.1111/pala.12494)


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Monday November 30 2020, @07:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-luck-with-that dept.

OneWeb exits bankruptcy and is ready to launch more broadband satellites

OneWeb has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy under new ownership and says it will begin launching more broadband satellites next month. Similar to SpaceX Starlink, OneWeb is building a network of low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites that can provide high-speed broadband with much lower latencies than traditional geostationary satellites.

After a launch in December, "launches will continue throughout 2021 and 2022, and OneWeb is now on track to begin commercial connectivity services to the UK and the Arctic region in late 2021 and will expand to delivering global services in 2022," OneWeb said in an announcement Friday.

[...] OneWeb previously launched 74 satellites into low-Earth orbits and said it plans a launch of 36 more satellites on December 17, 2020. The Friday announcement also said OneWeb plans "a constellation of 650 LEO satellites," but that could be just the beginning. OneWeb in August secured US approval for 1,280 satellites in medium Earth orbits, bringing its total authorization to 2,000 satellites.

Previously: SpaceX Approved to Deploy 1 Million U.S. Starlink Terminals; OneWeb Reportedly Considers Bankruptcy
OneWeb Goes Bankrupt, Lays Off Staff, Will Sell Satellite-Broadband Business
OneWeb Seeks Permission to Launch 48,000 Satellites Despite Bankruptcy
UK Government and Indian Mobile Operator Acquire OneWeb and its Broadband Satellites


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Monday November 30 2020, @05:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the ownership-as-a-service dept.

Microsoft Pluton is a new processor with Xbox-like security for Windows PCs

Microsoft is creating a new security chip that's designed to protect future Windows PCs. Microsoft Pluton is a security processor that is built directly into future CPUs and will replace the existing Trusted Platform Module (TPM), a chip that's currently used to secure hardware and cryptographic keys. Pluton is based on the same security technologies used to protect Xbox consoles, and Microsoft is working with Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm to combine it into future CPUs.

[...] Just like you can't easily hack into an Xbox One to run pirated games, the hope is that it will be a lot more difficult to physically hack into a Windows PC in the future by integrating Pluton into the CPU.

Windows 10: Microsoft reveals Pluton security chip – 'Expect Patch Tuesday-type updates'

Microsoft promises Pluton will make it easier to keep system firmware up to date, for example, in cases when TPM firmware for separate security processors is required.

In Intel's case, the Pluton processor will ship with future chips but will be isolated from their cores. However, at present there's no precise timeline for the appearance of the first Intel chips containing the Pluton security processor.

Pluton will be integrated with the Windows Update process on Windows 10 PCs, according to Microsoft. The chip is an up-dateable platform for running firmware that implements end-to-end security that is authored, maintained, and updated by Microsoft.

The firmware updates will follow the same process that the Azure Sphere Security Service uses to connect to IoT devices.

"Microsoft Pluton Hardware Security Coming to Our CPUs": AMD, Intel, Qualcomm

What the Pluton project from Microsoft and the agreement between AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm will do is build a TPM-equivalent directly into the silicon of every Windows-based PC of the future. The Pluton architecture will, initially, build an emulated TPM to work with existing specifications for access to the current suites of security protocols in place. Because Pluton will be in-silicon, it severely reduces the physical attack surface of any Pluton-enabled device.

Also at TechCrunch.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Monday November 30 2020, @03:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the acts-of-kindness dept.

She could have stopped at saving her husband. Instead they joined a 5-way kidney swap.:

When Tara Berliski learned her husband needed a kidney, she did what she said any spouse would do: She offered him her own. And they were a match. But John "HB" Berliski, it turns out, could match with just about anyone.

John Berliski has type AB blood, which makes him a universal recipient.

[...] "AB blood types can receive from any donor. And we have AB donors as well, but they're very hard to match because they can only give to AB patients," said Valerie Jackson, the living donor coordinator at Houston Methodist hospital. "So when John said, 'Yes, I'll go ahead and help whomever,' because of the power of his to receive from anybody, we were really able to move people who were not able to get moved and match up for years."

According to npr:

Justin Barrow, a 40-year-old youth pastor in Longville, La., has a rare kidney disorder, and had a transplant when he was 15; it was beginning to falter. A cousin offered to donate their kidney, but doctors said it wasn't a good match. A kidney from Tara Berliski would be.

Returning to our original story:

[...] Paula Gerrick, 51, had signed up as a potential donor for her sister years ago. Like John Berliski, she is type AB. But while that blood type works well for recipients, it's more limiting for donors — they can only give to other AB recipients. So despite wanting to save her sister, Diane Poenitzsch, they weren't a match. And Poenitzsch lingered on the donor list, from January 2017 until this month. Her kidney was the final organ in the transplant chain, which necessitated 10 surgeries over two days.

[...] But it wasn't just Barrow she helped. The Berliskis were the missing pieces needed to set off a chain reaction: Barrow's cousin, Samantha Barrow, donated a kidney to Misael Gonzalez. Gonzalez's mother, Teresa Salcedo, who matched her son, but entered the swap so he could find a donor with a younger kidney, donated to Debra Lewing. Lewing's boss, Dawn Thomas, first learned of Lewing's failing kidney health at the beginning of the pandemic when Lewing requested to work from home because she was at-risk. "If you need a kidney, just take one of mine," Thomas told her employee then. When they weren't a match, they entered the swap program; Thomas donated to Diane Poenitzsch.

And Poenitzsch's sister Gerik, with the AB blood rounded out the circle, donating to John Berliski.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 30 2020, @12:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the stacking-exercise dept.

SLS: Nasa 'megarocket' assembly begins in Florida:

Nasa has started assembling the first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on a launch platform ahead of its maiden flight next year.

The SLS is the giant rocket that will send US astronauts back to the Moon this decade - with the first crewed landing targeted for 2024.

Engineers in Florida have begun stacking the segments that make up the vehicle's two solid rocket boosters.

[...] Teams at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida lowered the first of 10 booster segments into place on a structure known as the mobile launcher on 21 November. The process is taking place inside the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy.

The boosters will burn six tonnes of solid, aluminium-based propellant each second when the SLS launches. They provide 75% of the vehicle's thrust at lift-off.

The mobile launcher they're being stacked on is a 115m (380ft) -tall structure that's used to process and assemble the SLS before moving it to the launch pad.

It's a huge symbolic step, not only for the SLS - which has been under development for a decade - but also Nasa's plan to send the next man and the first woman to the lunar surface by 2024, known as Artemis.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 30 2020, @10:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the pointy-bits dept.

6,000 years of arrows emerge from melting Norwegian ice patch:

Archaeologists in Norway have discovered dozens of arrows—some dating back 6,000 years—melting out of a 60-acre ice patch in the county's high mountains.

Expeditions to survey the Langfonne ice patch in 2014 and 2016, both particularly warm summers, also revealed copious reindeer bones and antlers, suggesting that hunters used the ice patch over the course of millennia. Their hunting technique stayed the same even as the weapons they used evolved from stone and river shell arrowheads to iron points.

Now the research team is revealing the finds in a paper published today in the journal Holocene. A record-setting total of 68 complete and partial arrows (and five arrowheads) were ultimately discovered by the team on and around the melting ice patch–more than archaeologists have recovered from any other frozen site in the world. Some of the projectiles date to the Neolithic period while the most "recent" finds are from the 14th century A.D.

Also at:

Ice melt reveals ancient reindeer-hunting arrows. - Thanks Runaway1956!

Journal Reference:
Lars Holger Pilø, James H Barrett, Trond Eiken, et al. Interpreting archaeological site-formation processes at a mountain ice patch: A case study from Langfonne, Norway: [open], The Holocene (DOI: 10.1177/0959683620972775)


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 30 2020, @08:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the burning-for-you dept.

Laser fusion reactor approaches 'burning plasma' milestone:

In October 2010, in a building the size of three U.S. football fields, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory powered up 192 laser beams, focused their energy into a pulse with the punch of a speeding truck, and fired it at a pellet of nuclear fuel the size of a peppercorn. So began a campaign by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to achieve the goal it is named for: igniting a fusion reaction that produces more energy than the laser puts in.

A decade and nearly 3000 shots later, NIF is still generating more fizz than bang, hampered by the complex, poorly understood behavior of the laser targets when they vaporize and implode. But with new target designs and laser pulse shapes, along with better tools to monitor the miniature explosions, NIF researchers believe they are close to an important intermediate milestone known as "burning plasma": a fusion burn sustained by the heat of the reaction itself rather than the input of laser energy.

Self-heating is key to burning up all the fuel and getting runaway energy gain. Once NIF reaches the threshold, simulations suggest it will have an easier path to ignition, says Mark Herrmann, who oversees Livermore's fusion program. "We're pushing as hard as we can," he says. "You can feel the acceleration in our understanding." Outsiders are impressed, too. "You kind of feel there's steady progress and less guesswork," says Steven Rose, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London. "They're moving away from designs traditionally held and trying new things."

[...] With their sharper vision, researchers have tracked down energy leaks from the imploding fuel pellet. One came at the point where a tiny tube injected fuel into the capsule before the shot. To plug the leak, the team made the tube even thinner. Other leaks were traced back to the capsule's plastic shell, so researchers revamped manufacturing to smooth out imperfections of just a millionth of a meter. The improved diagnostics "really helps the scientists to understand what improvements are required," says Mingsheng Wei of the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

National Ignition Facility site and Wikipedia entry.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 30 2020, @06:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the bee-good dept.

Pesticide deadly to bees now easily detected in honey:

Researchers at the University of Waterloo developed an environmentally friendly, fully automated technique that extracts pyrethroids from the honey. Pyrethroids are one of two main groups of pesticides that contribute to colony collapse disorder in bees, a phenomenon where worker honeybees disappear, leaving the queen and other members of the hive to die. Agricultural producers worldwide rely on honeybees to pollinate hundreds of billions of dollars worth of crops.

[...] "It is our hope that this very simple method will help authorities determine where these pesticides are in use at unsafe levels to ultimately help protect the honeybee population," said Pawliszyn.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency tests for chemical residues in food in Canada. Maximum residue limits are regulated under the Pest Control Products Act. The research team found that of the honey products they tested that contained the pesticide, all were at allowable levels.

Journal Reference:
João Raul Belinato, Jonathan J. Grandy, Abir Khaled, et al. Overcoming matrix effects in the analysis of pyrethroids in honey by a fully automated direct immersion solid-phase microextraction method using a matrix-compatible fiber. Food Chemistry, 2021; 340: 128127 DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2020.128127


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 30 2020, @04:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the frobbed-fobs dept.

Tesla Model X gets hacked through new relay attack, Tesla says it is pushing a patch - Electrek:

A hacker managed to develop a new key cloning relay attack for Tesla vehicles and demonstrated it on a Tesla Model X.

Tesla was informed of the new attack and it is reportedly pushing a new patch for it.

Thefts of Tesla vehicles are quite rare in North America, but in Europe, they have some more sophisticated thieves that managed a string of Tesla vehicle thefts through relay attacks, and most vehicles haven't been recovered.

In response to those attacks, Tesla started rolling out extra layers of security with an "improved cryptography" key fob and optional "PIN to Drive" feature.

Now Lennert Wouters, a security researcher at Belgian university KU Leuven, claims to have put together a new series of hacks that can get around the new improved cryptography in the key fob.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Monday November 30 2020, @02:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the will-they-still-call-them-choppers? dept.

U.S. Army looks to use silent technology for next-generation aircraft:

The U.S. Army has announced that its researchers in cooperation with Uber research lab are working on silent and efficient VTOL, or vertical takeoff and landing operation, for the next generation fleet of Army air vehicles.

Currently, stealthily moving of troops and supplies is Army modernization priorities for future vertical lift aircraft.

The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM), Army Research Laboratory, researchers collaborated with Uber and the University of Texas at Austin to investigate the acoustic properties of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, which use distributed electric propulsion to power flight.

According to a recent team's paper published in the Vertical Flight Society 76th Annual Forum Proceedings, these eVTOL vehicles may aid the Army with important tasks such as aerial surveillance and cargo transport; however, they feature smaller rotors than traditional helicopters. As a result, eVTOL rotors may emit a different sound signature that researchers will have to take into consideration.

Initial experimentation of this concept has revealed the potential for stacked co-rotating rotors be significantly quieter than traditional paired rotor approaches and improve performance for a flying craft. To date, stacked co-rotating rotors have not been deployed in existing flying craft.

"The noise you hear from these smaller rotors is generated through fundamentally different physical mechanisms," said Dr. George Jacobellis, Army research engineer at the laboratory's Vehicle Technology Directorate. "Traditional modeling techniques need to be improved to account for all of the noise generated so that vehicle designers can be aware of what will actually be heard."

p>Standard helicopter noise simulations focus primarily on predicting thickness noise and loading noise, because they constitute the dominant noise sources for large helicopters.

Thickness noise stems from the displacement of the air by the rotor blades, while loading noise occurs when lift and drag forces act on the air that flows around the rotary wings. Together, they make up what experts refer to as tonal noise.

In contrast, Army researchers suspected that eVTOL rotors generate more broadband noise, which refers to sounds caused by turbulence, than tonal noise.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 30 2020, @12:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-would-Linus-do? dept.

Linus Torvalds doubts Linux will get ported to Apple M1 hardware:

In a recent post on the Real World Technologies forum—one of the few public internet venues Linux founder Linus Torvalds is known to regularly visit—a user named Paul asked Torvalds, "What do you think of the new Apple laptop?"

If you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, Apple released new versions of the Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, and Mac Mini featuring a brand-new processor—the Apple M1.

The M1 processor is a successor to the A12 and A14 Bionic CPUs used in iPhones and iPads, and pairs the battery and thermal efficiency of ultramobile designs with the high performance needed to compete strongly in the laptop and desktop world.

"I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux," Torvalds replied. "I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new [Macbook] Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS."

[...] In an interview with ZDNet, Torvalds expounded on the problem:

The main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other devices around it, because that's likely what would hold me off using it because it wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up... [that] seems unlikely, but hey, you can always hope.

[...] It's also worth noting that while the M1 is unabashedly great, it's not the final word in desktop or laptop System on Chip designs. Torvalds mentions that, given a choice, he'd prefer more and higher-power cores—which is certainly possible and seems a likely request to be granted soon.

Previously: Apple's New ARM-Based Macs Won't Support Windows Through Boot Camp
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday November 29 2020, @10:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the R.I.P. dept.

Dave Prowse, actor who played Darth Vader, dies at 85:

Dave Prowse, the British weightlifter-turned-actor who was the body, though not the voice, of arch-villain Darth Vader in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, has died. He was 85.

Prowse died Saturday after a short illness, his agent Thomas Bowington said Sunday.

Born in Bristol, southwest England, in 1935, Prowse was a three-time British weightlifting champion and represented England in weightlifting at the 1962 Commonwealth Games before breaking into movies with roles that emphasized his commanding size, including Frankenstein's monster in a pair of Hammer Studios horror films.

Director George Lucas saw Prowse in a small part in "A Clockwork Orange" and asked the 6-foot-6-inch (almost 2-meter) actor to audition for the villainous Vader or the Wookie Chewbacca in "Star Wars."

Prowse later told the BBC he chose Darth Vader because "you always remember the bad guys."

[...] Prowse is survived by his wife Norma and their three children.

David Prowse, Man Behind the Darth Vader Mask, Dies at 85:

David Prowse, the champion English weightlifter and bodybuilder who supplied his 6-foot-7 frame — but not the voice or the deep breathing — to portray Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, died early Saturday morning following a short illness. He was 85.

Prowse's death was confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter by his agent Thomas Bowington. Bowington Management also shared the news on Twitter, announcing his passing with "great regret and heart-wrenching sadness for us and million of fans around the world."

[...] George Lucas had seen him in Clockwork Orange and offered him a part in the first Star Wars(1977).

"Lucas said to me, 'You've got a choice of two characters in the movie,'" Prowse recalled in a 2016 interview. "He said, 'There's a character called Chewbacca, which is like a huge teddy bear, or alternatively, there's the main villain in the piece.' Well, there's no choice, is there? Thank you very much, I'll have the villain's piece."

Prowse didn't realize that his head and face would be covered by that now-iconic Samurai-inspired helmet and mask or that his outfit, made of fiberglass and leather, would weigh 40 pounds and be extremely, uncomfortably hot.

posted by martyb on Sunday November 29 2020, @05:24PM   Printer-friendly

Mystery Of London's 1952 Killer Fog Is Solved:

Londoners are used to a regular dose of fog, drizzle, and cloud in the winter. But in early December 1952, the city's fog took a much deadlier turn.

By the time "the big smoke" had lifted just five days later, it had killed 4,000 people and left 150,000 others seriously ill in hospital with respiratory tract infections. In the long term, it's estimated at least 12,000 people died from the killer fog, along with thousands of animals.

[...] Sulfates were a key component of the London fog. This gave the fog its definitively thick, smelly, and toxic properties. It's always been correctly assumed that the London fog was caused by sulfur dioxide released by the burning of low-quality soft coal from chimneys, industry, and power plants. However, why this sulfur dioxide turned into sulfuric acid remained unknown.

[...] "Our results showed that this process was facilitated by nitrogen dioxide, another co-product of coal burning, and occurred initially on natural fog," lead author Renyi Zhang of Texas A&M University explained in a statement.

"Another key aspect in the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfate is that it produces acidic particles, which subsequently inhibits this process. Natural fog contained larger particles of several tens of micrometers in size, and the acid formed was sufficiently diluted. Evaporation of those fog particles then left smaller acidic haze particles that covered the city."

A similar chemistry is happening right now in the air of rapidly industrializing Asian cities, many of which are in China. [..] High levels of ammonia from China's extensive fertilizer use and road traffic neutralizes the particles. This makes it less acidic, but a still utterly unsavory cocktail of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

Journal Reference:
Gehui Wang, Renyi Zhang, Mario E. Gomez, et al. Persistent sulfate formation from London Fog to Chinese haze [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1616540113)


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Sunday November 29 2020, @12:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the warp-and...weft? dept.

[Ed. note: I was tempted to pass over this article because it beggared believe and I was unfamiliar with the author. Come to find out, Sabine Hossenfelder is a highly-respected researcher in this field.]

Warp Drive News. Seriously!:

As many others, I became interested in physics by reading too much science fiction. Teleportation, levitation, wormholes, time-travel, warp drives, and all that, I thought was super-fascinating. But of course the depressing part of science fiction is that you know it's not real. So, to some extent, I became a physicist to find out which science fiction technologies have a chance to one day become real technologies. Today I want to talk about warp drives because I think on the spectrum from fiction to science, warp drives are on the more scientific end. And just a few weeks ago, a new paper appeared about warp drives that puts the idea on a much more solid basis.

But first of all, what is a warp drive? In the science fiction literature, a warp drive is a technology that allows you to travel faster than the speed of light or "superluminally" by "warping" or deforming space-time. The idea is that by warping space-time, you can beat the speed of light barrier. This is not entirely crazy, for the following reason.

Einstein's theory of general relativity says you cannot accelerate objects from below to above the speed of light because that would take an infinite amount of energy. However, this restriction applies to objects in space-time, not to space-time itself. Space-time can bend, expand, or warp at any speed. Indeed, physicists think that the universe expanded faster than the speed of light in its very early phase. General Relativity does not forbid this.

[...] Let me then get to the new paper. The new paper is titled "Introducing Physical Warp Drives" and was written by Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire. I have to warn you that this paper has not yet been peer reviewed. But I have read it and I am pretty confident it will make it through peer review.

In this paper, Bobrick and Martire describe the geometry of a general warp-drive space time. The warp-drive geometry is basically a bubble. It has an inside region, which they call the "passenger area". In the passenger area, space-time is flat, so there are no gravitational forces. Then the warp drive has a wall of some sort of material that surrounds the passenger area. And then it has an outside region. This outside region has the gravitational field of the warp-drive itself, but the gravitational field falls off and in the far distance one has normal, flat space-time. This is important so you can embed this solution into our actual universe.

[...] I really like this new paper because to me it has really demystified warp drives. Now, you may find this somewhat of a downer because really it says that we still do not know how to accelerate to superluminal speeds. But I think this is a big step forward because now we have a much better mathematical basis to study warp drives.

For example, once you know how the warped space-time looks like, the question comes down to how much energy do you need to achieve a certain acceleration.

[...] Another reason I find this exciting is that, while it may look now like you can't do superluminal warp drives, this is only correct if General Relativity is correct. And maybe it is not. Astrophysicists have introduced dark matter and dark energy to explain what they observe, but it is also possible that General Relativity is ultimately not the correct theory for space-time. What does this mean for warp drives? We don't know. But now we know we have the mathematics to study this question.

So, I think this is a really neat paper, but it also shows that research is a double-edged sword. Sometimes, if you look closer at a really exciting idea, it turns out to be not so exciting. And maybe you'd rather not have known. But I think the only way to make progress is to not be afraid of learning more.


Original Submission