The concept of traveling across space is one that has piqued the interest of people from every corner of the world. The concept of racing across space at breakneck speeds is featured prominently in many of our greatest works of science fiction, including both films and television shows. To a considerable extent, however, this concept has been consigned to the domain of fantasy up until this point.
According to recent reports, scientists working for NASA have finally succeeded in developing a revolutionary Helical Engine that defies the physical rules. Let’s investigate this brand-new engine to see if it holds the key to the future of space flight. Investigating the Cosmic Landscape Since ancient times, when people first learned that every star visible in the night sky is a Sun exactly like our own — maybe complete with its own solar system, planets, and even life — the human race has dreamed of traveling the vast astronomical distances that stand between us and the ultimate alien destinations.
Even the closest star is more than four light-years away, yet the fastest speed that a human-created spacecraft has ever traveled at is only 46 miles per second, which was achieved by NASA’s Juno mission. Even traveling at that rate, it would take more than four thousand years to get to the nearest star. There are two things that can be considered limiting: the existing boundaries of our technological capabilities and the laws of physics. technical advances in areas such as laser sails, nuclear propulsion, or the production and control of either antimatter or dark matter could bring a technical breakthrough that completely changes the game, although these kinds of developments look to be very far off in the long future.
However, technologies that transcend the laws of physics are essentially defective, despite the fact that they are frequently hailed as the future. The gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force are the four fundamental forces in the universe. The first of these forces is explained by General Relativity, which is the most successful explanation of gravity that we have ever devised. This theory has also been validated by every observational and experimental test that we have ever carried out. The Standard Model is able to perfectly describe all of the known particles as well as their interactions, passing every classical and quantum test that has ever been developed by humankind. The latter three are able to be explained by the Standard Model.
In spite of the fact that advances in technology may one day make it possible to harness the power of nuclear forces for space travel — whether through fission, fusion, or even the annihilation of exotic particles by the everyday, stable matter that is abundant in the universe — all of our currently available conventional propulsion technologies rely on some kind of chemically- or electromagnetically-based interaction or reaction.
The Helical Combustion Engine
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; this is the fundamental idea behind how space rockets work, which involves firing propellant in one direction in order to move in the other direction. But one of NASA’s engineers is confident that he can get us to the stars without the use of any kind of fuel. The “helical engine” was developed by David Burns at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. It takes use of mass-altering processes that are known to occur when traveling at near-light speeds.
Burns acknowledges that his idea has been met with some degree of skepticism, but he is confident that it should be pursued. Imagine a box resting on a smooth floor in order to grasp the fundamental idea behind Burns’s engine. A rod is contained within that box, and it can be used to move a ring along it. If a spring located inside the box were to push the ring in a certain direction, it would move along the rod in one direction while the box would recoil in the opposite direction. When the ring hits the bottom of the box, it will rebound in the other direction, and so will the box’s recoil in the opposite direction.
This concept is known as action-reaction, and it is also referred to as the third rule of motion proposed by Newton. Under typical conditions, it limits the movement of the box to a back-and-forth rocking motion. But, as Burns points out, what if the mass of the ring is significantly different depending on which way it slides relative to the other? If this happened, one side of the box would be given a more powerful kick than the other. Because action would be greater than reaction, the box would speed up and move ahead.
The laws of physics don’t preclude this shift in mass at all
According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, objects gain mass as they are propelled closer and closer to the speed of light. This effect must be accounted for in particle accelerators because it causes objects to accumulate mass. It would be possible to execute Burns’s idea in a straightforward manner by substituting the ring with a circular particle accelerator. During one stroke of the accelerator, ions would be rapidly accelerated to relativistic speeds, and during the other stroke, they would be decelerated. But Burns thinks it would make more sense to abandon the box and rod and employ the particle accelerator for the lateral as well as the circular movement. In this instance, the accelerator would need to be configured like a helix in order to accommodate both types of movement.
Space Devoid of All Friction
It would also need to be powerful, requiring 165 megawatts of power to generate only 1 newton of thrust, which is about equivalent to the force you use to write on a keyboard. It would need to be enormous as well, measuring approximately 200 meters in length and 12 meters in diameter. Because of this limitation, the engine would only be able to achieve relevant speeds in the zero-gravity and zero-resistance environment of space. Burns claims that the engine on its own would be capable of traveling at a speed that is 99.9 percent that of light if given sufficient time and power.
Propellant-less proposals aren’t new
An American inventor by the name of Robert Cook received a patent for an engine in the late 1970s that was purported to transform centrifugal energy into linear motion. Then, in the early 2000s, a British inventor by the name of Roger Shawyer came up with the idea of the electromagnetic drive (EM drive), which he claimed could turn trapped microwaves into thrust.
Both ideas have failed to be convincingly verified, and most people believe they are implausible since they contradict the principle of momentum conservation, which is one of the fundamental laws of physics. Martin Tajmar, a researcher at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany who has conducted experiments on the EM Drive, feels that the helical engine will most likely experience the same issue. He claims that none of the inertial propulsion systems that he has ever investigated have ever functioned properly in an atmosphere free of friction. Burns has worked on his notion in his spare time, without any financing from NASA, and he is the first to confess that it is extremely inefficient.
On the other hand, he claims that there is the possibility of recovering a significant portion of the energy that the accelerator wastes as heat and radiation. In addition to this, he offers some suggestions as to how momentum might be preserved, such as by preserving the spin of the propelled ions. He argues that he is willing to be ashamed if he is wrong, but if he is not, humanity will have discovered something that is genuinely revolutionary. This has not stopped him from continuing, though; he says that he is prepared to be embarrassed if he is wrong. SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk.
There are a number of other organizations outside NASA who are investigating quicker ways to travel across space. Elon Musk is bringing science fiction one step closer to being able to be experienced in the real world. His business, SpaceX, claims that it has successfully developed and tested a propulsion system that defies the laws of physics. With the help of electrically charged gas, the rocket propulsion system is capable of reaching speeds of up to 65 kilometers per second, which is equivalent to over 135 thousand miles per hour.
The fuel tanks of the engine are constructed out of ultra-lightweight carbon fiber, and it utilizes cold gas thrusters. Since it does not utilize any kind of propellant, this means that it does not release any byproducts into space. Instead, the engine generates thrust by accelerating superheated plasma with magnetic fields, which also implies that there are no exhaust emissions coming from the combustion process. These types of engines are known as electric thrusters, although they operate in a manner that is completely dissimilar to that of the engines used in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets. Electric thrusters generate a charged plasma that produces ions to propel a vessel forward, whereas these thrusters generate thrust by propelling pressurized gas.
According to reports, the electric engine that was built by SpaceX is more powerful than traditional gridded ion thrusters. This engine has the potential to power manned expeditions to Mars and beyond. Because it uses less propellant, which may be an expensive component to launch into orbit, it might also shorten the amount of time it takes for goods destined for space to make its journey. Before the technology can be used for space travel, it must first pass additional evaluations and go through additional stages of development. At least on paper, NASA scientists believe it has potential, and it has been submitted for examination by other professionals in the field. Even though it has been demonstrated that it is impossible to travel at great speeds through space, Elon Musk continues to assert that he will be able to do it.
His plan is to build a machine that can travel at the speed of light and get us to Mars in under a week and a half. A machine with such a motor defies the laws of physics and would allow for travel at a rate more than 186,000 kilometers per second. There are a few different methods that we might be able to travel at the speed of light, but first and foremost, we need to comprehend how light behaves. Every atom that it passes through has some kind of interaction with it as it moves through space. This causes it to move more slowly and, if there is no matter in the way, even causes it to come to a complete halt.
Because of these interactions, light has a maximum velocity of 186,000 miles per second, which means that is the fastest that it can go through space. Given that nothing can travel faster than light without violating the rules of physics, if we want to catch up with a distant star in our lifetime, we will need to find another way to get there besides traveling directly towards it.
How Close Are We to Traveling at the Speed of Light?
The distance traveled over a given amount of time is the standard unit of measurement for speed today. You would need to accelerate past that velocity until your speed was 186,000 MPs, then maintain that speed for an endless length of time in order to travel at light speed, which is equivalent to 186,000 miles per second. This speed is denoted by the letter c, and Albert Einstein gave it its definition in the theory of special relativity that he developed. Although we have not yet achieved what the vast majority of people perceive to be light speed, several studies and ideas predict that we may one day be able to go close to it or possibly surpass it during our lifetimes.
Up until very recently, it was generally accepted that nothing that could even begin to move at a velocity close to what we consider light speed could be accomplished with the technology that we have at this point in time. According to some calculations, we are still thousands or even tens of thousands of years away from ever accomplishing this goal. In spite of this, we are frequently taken aback by the achievements that can be made through the application of science and technology. Recently, researchers have succeeded in developing an engine that is capable of traveling at a speed that is just 10% of the speed of light. This discovery challenges the notions that were previously held regarding the limitations of our current technological capabilities. If we had an engine that was capable of reaching such high speeds, we would be able to travel through space far more quickly and efficiently than we could have in the past.
