Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions: full transcription

Defense Intelligence Reference Document. Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions. Prepared under the Defense Intelligence Agency Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. April 2, 2010. For Official Use Only. 34 pages.

If one is to realistically entertain the notion of interstellar exploration in timeframes of a human lifespan, a dramatic shift in the traditional approach to spacecraft propulsion is necessary. It has been known and well tested since the time of Einstein that all matter is restricted to motion at sublight velocities, and that as matter approaches the speed of light, its mass asymptotically approaches infinity. This mass increase ensures that an infinite amount of energy would be necessary to travel at the speed of light, and, thus, this speed is impossible to reach and represents an absolute speed limit to all matter traveling through spacetime.

In recent years, however, physicists have discovered two loopholes to Einstein's ultimate speed limit: the Einstein-Rosen bridge (commonly referred to as a "wormhole") and the warp drive. Fundamentally, both ideas involve manipulation of spacetime itself in some exotic way that allows for faster-than-light (FTL) travel.

Essentially, the wormhole involves connecting two potentially distant regions of space by a topological shortcut. Theoretically, one would enter the wormhole and instantaneously be transported to the exit located in a distant region of space. Although no observational evidence of wormholes exists, theoretically they can exist as a valid solution to general relativity.

The idea that a sufficiently advanced technology may interact with, and acquire direct control over, the higher dimensions is a tantalizing possibility, and one that is most certainly worthy of deeper investigation. Control of this higher dimensional space may be a source of technological control over the dark energy density and could ultimately play a role in the development of exotic propulsion technologies; specifically, a warp drive.

Of course, this may not be actualized until many years in the future, but consider the many spectacular physical phenomena that are believed to be true at this early point in the 21st century. One believes that an energy field called the Higgs boson permeates spacetime and that the interaction of matter with this field is what is responsible for particles acquiring mass. One believes that an exotic ubiquitous energy source, unimaginatively named dark energy, is responsible for the current accelerated expansion of the universe based on observation of supernova in galaxies billions of light years from Earth. One also believes that the universe may not consist of the three spatial dimensions of length, breadth, width, and one of time, but that, in fact, there may be as many as seven additional compactified dimensions assuming the topology of a Calabi-Yau manifold, and that the fundamental building blocks of the universe are, in fact, extended string-like entities.