Harold G. "Sonny" White (born October 8, 1965) is a

mechanical engineer Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations o ...

aerospace engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

, and applied

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...

who is known for proposing new

Alcubierre drive The Alcubierre drive () is a speculative warp drive idea according to which a spacecraft could achieve apparent faster-than-light travel by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, under the assumption that a configurable ...

concepts and promoting advanced

propulsion Propulsion is the generation of force by any combination of pushing or pulling to modify the translational motion of an object, which is typically a rigid body (or an articulated rigid body) but may also concern a fluid. The term is derived from ...

projects.

Educational

White obtained a

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree in

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

from

University of South Alabama The University of South Alabama (USA) is a public research university in Mobile, Alabama. It was created by the Alabama Legislature in May, 1963, and replaced existing extension programs operated in Mobile by the University of Alabama. The first ...

, an

M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

degree in mechanical engineering from

Wichita State University Wichita State University (WSU) is a public research university in Wichita, Kansas, United States. It is governed by the Kansas Board of Regents. The university offers more than 60 undergraduate degree programs in more than 200 areas of study in ...

in 1999, and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

degree in

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

from

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universit ...

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

concepts. In 2011, he released a paper titled ''Warp Field Mechanics 101'' that outlined an updated concept of

Miguel Alcubierre Miguel Alcubierre Moya (born March 28, 1964) is a Mexican theoretical physicist. Alcubierre is known for the proposed Alcubierre drive, a speculative warp drive by which a spacecraft could achieve faster-than-light travel. Personal life Alcubie ...

faster-than-light Faster-than-light (also FTL, superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light (). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero ...

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 In geometry, a torus (plural tori, colloquially donut or doughnut) is a surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three-dimensional space about an axis that is coplanar with the circle. If the axis of revolution does not ...

, 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 A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat from nu ...

, the breakthrough demonstration that paved the way for

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced ...

.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 o ...

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. H ...

("Eagleworks") at the Johnson Space Center. White and his team claim that this modified

Michelson interferometer The Michelson interferometer is a common configuration for optical interferometry and was invented by the 19/20th-century American physicist Albert Abraham Michelson. Using a beam splitter, a light source is split into two arms. Each of those ...

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 Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) a ...

, including

conservation of momentum In Newtonian mechanics, momentum (more specifically linear momentum or translational momentum) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. If is an object's mass ...

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 tha ...

. No plausible theory of operation for such drives has been proposed. In March 2021, physicists at the

Dresden University of Technology TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...

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 Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, q ...

. 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 sev ...

experiment, this time using the new micro-balance.

Awards

In 2006, White was awarded the

NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal The NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal is an award of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration established in 1991. The medal is awarded to both civilian members of NASA and military astronauts. To be awarded the medal, a NASA employee ...

by the

NASA administrator The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the highest-ranking official of NASA, the national space agency of the United States. The administrator is NASA's chief decision maker, responsible for providing clarity to ...

for his role in getting the

Thermal Protection System Atmospheric entry is the movement of an object from outer space into and through the gases of an atmosphere of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite. There are two main types of atmospheric entry: ''uncontrolled entry'', such as the entr ...

robotic inspection tools built, delivered, and certified during the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...

's return to flight. White has also received the

Silver Snoopy Award The Silver Snoopy award is a special honor awarded to NASA employees and contractors for outstanding achievements related to human flight safety or mission success. The award certificate states that it is "In Appreciation" "For professionalism, d ...

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