Erik W. Lentz's Personal Website Blog - on warp drive, dark matter, and more

 Hello all, An article about my warp drive paper came out recently, and I wanted to share it here. The article provides some further commentary made by other physicists about my paper, so it gives a better sense for where the topic stands among physicists. I was interviewed for this article and thought it was well done. Here you go: https://academictimes.com/this-design-for-a-faster-than-light-warp-drive-is-making-waves-but-physicists-disagree-on-whether-its-possible/ Happy Saturday, Erik

Hello all, I have received quite a few requests by email, interview, reddit, social media, and even this blog for a response to the paper "Introducing Physical Warp Drives" (IPWD) by Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire (https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/abdf6e). There has also some confusion about the difference between the papers. This paper came out very near to my own 'warp drive' paper (Hyper-Fast) and in the same journal, Classical and Quantum Gravity .  This post addresses questions I have received about IPWD and its reference to an unfinished version of my own paper. Suffice it to say, I am somewhat disappointed in their assessment. For ease of access, I will be working from the most recent  arXiv version of IPWD (https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.06824v2). For disclosure, I have been in contact with the authors since July 2020 when I gave a virtual seminar on my own paper to CENTRA (Center for Astrophysics and Gravitation) in Lisbon, Portugal ( https://tecnico.ulisboa....

 Hello all, As mentioned in an earlier post, on March 9 there was some activity on /r/science on the press release for my warp drive paper ( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/m1gyyi/breaking_the_warp_barrier_for_fasterthanlight/ ). Several questions  came up that I thought required some follow-up. So instead of outing myself on Reddit, I will address here those questions that I can answer quickly. Others might appear in their own posts in the future. 1) Phonons as a source of negative mass: Theories of phonons (essentially density waves in a medium) can be described as an effective (quasi-)particle field with negative mass in the sense that they are repelled by gravitational fields of massive bodies such as the Earth. Examples of phonons include the sound waves in air, or most any other pressure/density waves over a massive, elastic, and nearly homogeneous medium. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon ). However, phonons are not likely to provide the "exotic matter" ...

Hello all,  I wanted to write a short post to acknowledge the first online article I found to talk about my hyper-fast soliton work. Back in November, long before the press release while my manuscript was still under peer review, Dr. John Cramer wrote a perspective on my paper in his long-standing science column "The Alternate View" in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact Magazine . John also happens to be professor emeritus at my own Ph.D. institution, the University of Washington. You can find the article in the archives of the Analog website ( https://www.analogsf.com ). John also keeps a repository of his past articles at UW where the "The Lentz Soliton FTL Drive" can be found  ( https://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw209.html ). While there, you can also check out his other columns ( https://www.npl.washington.edu/av/av_index.html ). Have a good Sunday. Erik

Hello all, As mentioned earlier, I was invited a few months ago  by a colleague at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott to give a live talk about my work. This is my alma mater, and I am happy to "be back", even if it is just virtually. Here is a summary of my upcoming talk: Solitons in space–time capable of transporting time-like observers at superluminal speeds have long been tied to violations of the weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions of general relativity. The negative-energy sources required for these solitons must be created through energy-intensive uncertainty principle processes as no such classical source is known in particle physics. This talk presents an approach for overcoming this barrier, explicitly constructing a class of soliton solutions that are capable of superluminal motion and sourced by purely positive energy densities. Location: Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium (virtually through YouTube) Time: 12:00 PST (please check the link for y...

Hey all, Exciting morning for me: I found out that my warp drive paper was the top subject on the /r/science subreddit at one point today (for the published version that requires a subscription to access go here:  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/abe692/meta  or for a draft version on the arXiv go here:  https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.07125v2 ) . Reddit link (top one) Here is the main Reddit link:  https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/m1gyyi/breaking_the_warp_barrier_for_fasterthanlight/ I have gotten a lot of great comments and plan to respond to some of them soon-ish. It is a really exciting to see all this interest! Response to some questions Also I have had quite a few questions about my response to another recent article ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.06824.pdf ), which is critical of my work as of a pre-print I made available in the summer of 2020. I plan to dedicate an entire to post to this, since I have spoken to the group behind the paper...

 Hello all,  This first post is made on the date of this blog's creation. More posts are soon to follow, including Upcoming online talk to be given on 18 March 2021 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time (please check the YouTube page for your local time) for the Science Speaker Series at the Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium :  https://youtu.be/6O8ji46VBK0 Upcoming paper "Breaking the warp barrier: Hyper-fast solitons in Einstein-Maxwell-plasma theory" accepted to the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/abe692/meta For now, check me out on LinkedIn . Back to my busy week! Erik