Remember that time, two years ago, when our own Dan Seitz wrote about the actual possibilities of a warp drive one day existing? Well, if you didn’t, allow me to give you a quick summary. Science has come far enough that it seems something resembling a “warp drive” could actually be invented. Essentially, a sort of slingshot to propel certain objects at a very high rate of speed, if you will. Seems one man from Omaha has decided to take the theory one step further by actually attempting to create a warp drive of his own (in his garage). Dave Pares is like the garage band version of a physicist. You can’t even be mad at that.
On average, Pares spends a couple of hours a day here almost every day of the week. To bend the fabric of space, he sits in front of a tray of instruments, twisting knobs and glancing every now and then into a Faraday cage, where a 3.5-pound weight hangs inside an electrically isolated case. Outside the case hangs a strange instrument made up of V-shape panels with fractal arrays on the surfaces. The instrument is the latest version of what Pares believes is the world’s first low-power warp drive motor.
He turns around and points to the back of his garage door, where a red laser — beamed at the weight and reflected back against the door to demonstrate the movement happening in the case — drifts from its original spot. Slowly, in incremental amounts, the weight is drawn toward the V-shape motor.
“You’re not supposed to be able to do this,” Pares says.
At just 100 watts of power, he claims an electrical field created by his arrays is ever so slightly condensing space in front of the motor, the way you’d squeeze coils on a Slinky. (Via the Omaha World Herald)
Believe it or not, the craziest part here is not the man supposedly building an actual warp drive in his garage in so much as it is some genuinely intelligent people think the man may actually be onto something. I say we start placing bets on how long until this guy mistakenly creates a black hole in his garage that eats the whole universe. Regardless, that would still be impressive minus the bleak outcome.
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