Documents / Report
This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 29 March 2010 and prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It uses a metric tensor approach from general relativity to catalog the physical effects of engineering spacetime, such as altered time, mass, light speed and antigravity. It concludes that such concepts, including warp drives, are consistent with physics, but that the energy requirements remain daunting.
UNCLASSIFIED/ ;<F&lil: 8FFI1il.t.k Wfili &,.kY Figure 3. Alcubierre Warp Drive Metric Structure IV. Discussion This paper has considered the possibility-even likelihood-that future developments with regard to advanced aerospace technologies will trend in the direction of manipulating the underlying spacetime structure of the vacuum of space itself by processes that can be called vacuum engineering or metric engineering. Far from being simply a fanciful concept, a significant literature exists in peer-reviewed, Tier 1 physics publications in which the topic is explored in detail. 3 The analysis presented herein, a form of general relativity for engineers, takes advantage of the fact that in GR a minimal-assumption, metric tensor approach can be used that is model-independent-that is, it does not depend on knowledge of the specific mechanisms or dynamics that result in spacetime alterations but rather only assumes that a technology exists that can control and manipulate (that is, engineer) the spacetime variables to advantage. Such an approach requires only that the hypothesized spacetime alterations result in effects consonant with the currently known GR physics principles. In the metric engineering approach, the application of the principles gives precise predictions as to what can be expected as spatial and temporal variables are altered from their usual (that is, flat space) structure. Signatures of the predicted contractions and expansions of space, slowdown and speedup of time, alteration of effective mass, speed of light and associated consequences, both as occur in natural phenomena in nature and with regard to spacetimes specifically engineered for advanced aerospace applications, are succinctly summarized in Table 1. Of particular interest with regard to innovative forms of advanced aerospace craft are the features tabulated in the right-hand column of Table 1, features that presumably describe an ideal craft for interstellar travel: an ability to travel at superluminal speeds 'See Reference 1 for a comprehensive introduction to the subject with contributions from lead scientists from around the globe. 11 UNCLASSIFIED/ }EiOAt OEiEiIGIPk IP&'i Ollk¥
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 17 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.