• DeepThought42@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    50
    ·
    6 months ago

    While the concepts outlined in the team’s new paper pave the way toward making travel through space nearing light speed a reality, constructing such an engine is likely something that will only be feasible far in the future, as the present state of technology would not allow for such a device.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      45
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      … by an astounding margin.

      The paper is paywalled and I am too lazy to look for a free/open link, but the shown graphs indicate many squared meters of energy concentrations of 1 - 10 * 10^39 joules.

      The entire energy output of the Sun, in a year, is around 10^34 joules. 6.6 * 10^39 joules is apparently the estimated total mass energy of the Moon, if you basically perfectly E = mc^2 transformed it into pure energy.

      In 2010 the estimated total energy consumption of humans on Earth was 5 * 10^20 joules.

      So we just need something around ten billion * ten billion more joules than that, presumably generated by something i dont know, naval frigate sized?

      Yeah. Faaaaaar off indeed.