Historical research guide · 0044 · 2017
The possibility of FTL space travel by using the quantum tunneling effect through the light barrier
Takaaki Musha
In one minute
Takaaki Musha starts where chapter 4's warp-drive papers stop. Alcubierre's metric works on paper, but the integrated energy density needed to hold it open is out of reach, so Musha asks whether there is a different way past the light barrier — and proposes tunnelling. In quantum mechanics a particle can pass through a barrier it does not have the energy to climb over. Musha treats the light barrier as exactly that kind of barrier, writes the wave function for a violently accelerated particle, and estimates the tunnelling probability with the standard WKB approximation. For a whole spaceship the probability shrinks with every particle in it, and his own number is stark: a hundred-tonne ship would need an acceleration above 10⁶⁰ metres per second squared. His proposed way round that is Puthoff's zero-point-field account of mass — lower the cut-off frequency of the vacuum spectrum around the ship, and the ship's mass falls with it.
Connection
Chapter 4 keeps two things in view at once, the mechanism and the number the mechanism has to reach, and Musha supplies both — his own arithmetic names the acceleration and the negative energy the scheme would require, which is the shape a what-to-watch claim should have. It is also a clear published statement that inertial-mass reduction and faster-than-light travel are one problem rather than two.
From the source
Musha proposes faster-than-light travel not by warping spacetime but by quantum tunnelling: the light barrier is treated as a potential barrier, and a sufficiently violently accelerated particle has a non-zero probability of tunnelling through it into a superluminal state.Abstract; Possibility of Tunneling Through the Light Barrier
Solving the wave equation for an accelerating particle gives wave functions on both the subluminal and superluminal sides, and a WKB estimate of the tunnelling probability; for a ship made of N elementary particles the probability falls exponentially with N and with the inverse of the proper acceleration.Equations 3 to 7
By Musha's own arithmetic the scheme needs an acceleration above 10⁶⁰ metres per second squared for a spaceship of 100 tonnes proper mass, which no conventional propulsion system can supply.Following Equation 7
The proposed way round that number rests on Puthoff's zero-point-field account of mass: if rest mass depends on the cut-off frequency of the ZPF spectrum, then reducing that cut-off around the ship reduces its mass, and a mass changing at zero net force produces an enormous acceleration.Acceleration generated by the manipulation of the cut-off frequency of ZPF spectrum; Equations 8 and 9
Depleting the local zero-point field means generating negative energy, for which Musha names the two established routes — the Casimir effect and the squeezed vacuum, including the Davis and Puthoff scheme of ultrahigh-intensity lasers with a fast rotating mirror system — so that the craft would fly inside a bubble of energy-depleted vacuum.Possibility to manipulate ZPF field around the spaceship; Equation 12
With the cut-off frequency for a 100-tonne ship taken at about 10⁴ hertz, Musha estimates a superluminal travel distance of about 1.5 × 10²⁴ metres, beyond the nearby galaxies — but the negative energy needed to cancel the positive ZPF field within a 50-metre radius comes to about 4.1 × 10⁴¹ joules, an equivalent mass of roughly half the Earth.Equations 19 and 20; Figures 3 and 5
The way in
https://www.tsijournals.com/articles/the-possibility-of-ftl-space-travel-by-using-the-quantum-tunneling-effect-through-the-light-barrier.htmlHow to cite it
Takaaki Musha (2017) The possibility of FTL space travel by using the quantum tunneling effect through the light barrier https://www.tsijournals.com/articles/the-possibility-of-ftl-space-travel-by-using-the-quantum-tunneling-effect-through-the-light-barrier.html