http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/science/space/18starship.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Is Low Power Warp Drive Possible?


Jack Sarfatti


Abstract of my paper to be presented at the DARPA/NASA Orlando meeting Sept 30-Oct 2, 2011

 
All conventional forms of spacecraft propulsion are unlikely to motivate large-scale private capital because the time scales for interstellar travel even to the nearest exo-planet are simply too long for practical commerce, the habitat problems are likely to be too difficult, and the cost in our declining world economy on the brink of financial if not environmental collapse in 2011 appear to be too great. Recent discoveries in the slowing of the speed of light in Bose-Einstein condensates and the negative electric permittivity and magnetic permeability in metamaterials suggests a low power speculative possibility for warp drive based on Einstein’s orthodox field equation for gravity coupled to the electromagnetic field. If we hope to reach the stars we must not fear to dream what at first seems impossible.


also in Nature this week - review of David Kaiser's "How the Hippies Saved Physics" with my photo