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The world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), could be used to test the principles behind hyperdrive, a possible future form of spacecraft propulsion that could drive spacecraft at a good fraction of the speed of light.
The idea of a hyperdrive propulsion system arises from the work of an influential German mathematician, David Hilbert, in the 1920s. Hilbert studied the interactions between a stationary mass and a relativistic particle moving away from it. He calculated that if the particle was moving faster than around half the speed of lightm an inertial, distant observer would see the particle as being repelled by the mass.
Now a physicist in the U.S., Franklin Felber, has taken Hilbert's almost forgotten proposal and reversed it, calculating the repulsion should be mutual, with relativistic particles also repelling the stationary mass. Felber suggests this hypervelocity propulsion could be used to propel a stationary mass to a sizeable proportion of the speed of light.
Felber likens the idea to an elastic collision between two objects of very different mass. If a heavy mass collides with a light stationary mass, the lighter mass rebounds at around twice the speed of the larger mass. In the hypervelocity propulsion drive a relativistic particle would repel a stationary mass at a speed greater than its own.
phys.org
The idea of a hyperdrive propulsion system arises from the work of an influential German mathematician, David Hilbert, in the 1920s. Hilbert studied the interactions between a stationary mass and a relativistic particle moving away from it. He calculated that if the particle was moving faster than around half the speed of lightm an inertial, distant observer would see the particle as being repelled by the mass.
Now a physicist in the U.S., Franklin Felber, has taken Hilbert's almost forgotten proposal and reversed it, calculating the repulsion should be mutual, with relativistic particles also repelling the stationary mass. Felber suggests this hypervelocity propulsion could be used to propel a stationary mass to a sizeable proportion of the speed of light.
Felber likens the idea to an elastic collision between two objects of very different mass. If a heavy mass collides with a light stationary mass, the lighter mass rebounds at around twice the speed of the larger mass. In the hypervelocity propulsion drive a relativistic particle would repel a stationary mass at a speed greater than its own.
Large Hadron Collider could test hyperdrive propulsion
(PhysOrg.com) -- The world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), could be used to test the principles behind hyperdrive, a possible future form of spacecraft propulsion that could drive spacecraft at a good fraction of the speed of light.
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