Harold G. "Sonny" White (born October 8, 1965) is a mechanical engineer, aerospace engineer, and applied physicist who is known for proposing new Alcubierre drive concepts and promoting advanced propulsion projects.

Educational

White obtained a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from University of South Alabama, an M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Wichita State University in 1999, and a Ph.D. degree in Physics from Rice University in 2008.Icarus Interstellar
"Dr. Harold 'Sonny' White"
, ''Project Icarus''.

Alcubierre "warp" drive

White attracted the attention of the press when he began presenting his ideas at space conventions and publishing proposals for Alcubierre drive concepts. In 2011, he released a paper titled ''Warp Field Mechanics 101'' that outlined an updated concept of Miguel Alcubierre's faster-than-light propulsion concept, including methods to prove the feasibility of the project. Alcubierre's concept had been considered infeasible because it required far more power than any viable energy source could produce. White re-calculated the Alcubierre concept and proposed that if the warp bubble around a spacecraft were shaped like a torus, it would be much more energy efficient and make the concept feasible. White has stated that "warp travel" has not yet seen a "

Chicago Pile-1 Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the world's first artificial nuclear reactor. On 2 December 1942, the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated in CP-1, during an experiment led by Enrico Fermi. The secret development of t ...

" experiment, a reference to the very first nuclear reactor, the breakthrough demonstration that paved the way for nuclear power.White, Harold
"Warp Field Mechanics 101"
''NASA'', Houston, TX. To investigate the feasibility of a warp drive, White and his team have designed a warp field

interferometer Interferometry is a technique which uses the ''interference'' of superimposed waves to extract information. Interferometry typically uses electromagnetic waves and is an important investigative technique in the fields of astronomy, fiber op ...

test bed to demonstrate warp field phenomena. The experiments are taking place at NASA's

Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory The Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory or "Eagleworks Laboratories" at NASA's Johnson Space Center is a small research group investigating a variety of theories regarding new forms of spacecraft propulsion. The principal investigator is Dr. ...

("Eagleworks") at the Johnson Space Center. White and his team claim that this modified Michelson interferometer will detect distortion of spacetime, a warp field effect. In May 2021 White and his team announced that they might have found the right configuration required to test a "chip-scale" Alcubierre drive.

EmDrive

In April 2015, the space enthusiast website NASASpaceFlight.com announced, based on a post on their site's forum by NASA Eagleworks engineer Paul March, that NASA had successfully tested their

EM Drive The EmDrive is a concept for a thruster for spacecraft, first written about in 2001. It is purported to generate thrust by reflecting microwaves inside the device, in a way that would violate the law of conservation of momentum and other laws o ...

in a hard vacuum – which would be the first time any organization has claimed such a successful test. In November, 2016, Harold White, along with other colleagues at NASA's Eagleworks program published their findings on the proposed EM Drive. The proposed principle of operation for this device was shown to be inconsistent with known laws of physics, including conservation of momentum and

conservation of energy In physics and chemistry, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be ''conserved'' over time. This law, first proposed and tested by Émilie du Châtelet, means th ...

. No plausible theory of operation for such drives has been proposed. In March 2021, physicists at the Dresden University of Technology published three papers claiming that all results showing thrust were false positives, explained by outside forces.

Other works

White and his team are also working on several other "breakthrough space technology" projects, including a new thruster concept, another concept White claims works by utilizing effects predicted by quantum mechanics. To support this research, White's team also is developing a "micro-balance" that is capable of measuring the extremely small forces predicted to be produced by this thruster. To calibrate this balance the team plans to repeat an unsuccessful 2006

Woodward effect James F. Woodward (born 1941) is a professor emeritus of history and an adjunct professor of physics at California State University, Fullerton. He is best known for a physics hypothesis that he proposed in 1990, later expanded, that predicts several ...

experiment, this time using the new micro-balance.

Awards

In 2006, White was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal by the NASA administrator for his role in getting the Thermal Protection System robotic inspection tools built, delivered, and certified during the Space Shuttle's return to flight. White has also received the Silver Snoopy Award from the NASA crew office for "his actions in the discovery and disposition of critical damage to the robotic arm prior to the Space Shuttle STS-121 mission."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:White, Harold 1965 births 21st-century American physicists American aerospace engineers Living people NASA people Rice University alumni University of South Alabama alumni Wichita State University alumni