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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 29 March 2010 and prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It uses a metric tensor approach from general relativity to catalog the physical effects of engineering spacetime, such as altered time, mass, light speed and antigravity. It concludes that such concepts, including warp drives, are consistent with physics, but that the energy requirements remain daunting.
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UNCLASSIFIED/ /f81il 8ffllltlit '11815 tH•tY REFRACTIVE INDEX EFFECTS When considering metric-engineered spacetime associated with exotic propulsion, a number of corollary side effects associated with refractive index changes of the vacuum structure emerge as possibilities. Expected effects would mimic known refractive index effects in general and can therefore be determined from known phenomena. Indistinct boundary definition associated with "waviness" as observed with heat waves off a desert floor is one example. As another, a light beam may bend (as in the GR example of the bending of starlight as it grazes the sun; see Figure 2) or even terminate in mid-space. Such an observation would exhibit features that under ordinary circumstances would be associated with a high- refractive index optical fiber in normal space (well-defined boundaries, light trapped within, bending or termination in mid-space). Additional observations might include apparent changes in size or shape (changes in lensing magnification parameters). Yet another possibility is the sudden "cloaking" or I \ \ ~------Figure 2. Light-Bending in a Spacetime-Altered Region "blinking out," which would at least be consistent with strong gravitational lensing effects that bend a background view around a craft, though other technical options involving, for example, the use of metamaterials, exist as well. EFFECTIVE MASS IN SPACETIME-ALTERED REGIONS As noted in the preceding sections, spacetime alteration of energy and light-speed measures leads to an associated alteration in the effective mass of an object in a spacetime-altered region as viewed from an external (unaltered) region. Of special interest is the case in which the effective mass is decreased by application of spacetime metric engineering principles as might be expected in the case of metric engineering for spaceflight applications (reference last column in Table 1). Effective reduction of inertial mass as viewed in our frame of reference would appear to mitigate against untoward effects on craft occupants associated with abrupt changes in movement. (The physical principles involved can also be understood in terms of associated coordinate transformation properties as discussed above.) In any case, changes in effective mass associated with engineering of the spacetime metric in a craft's environs can lead to properties advantageous for spaceflight applications. 9 UNCLASSIFIED/ }EiOAt OEiEiIGIPk IP&'i Ollk¥
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 17 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.