Richard Obousy
Richard Obousy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Residence | United States |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Baylor University |
| Known for | Warp drive theory, Casimir energy in extra dimensions, Project Icarus |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
Richard Obousy is a British theoretical physicist known for his research on the Casimir effect in compactified extra dimensions, on the relationship between vacuum energy and dark energy, and on theoretical concepts for faster-than-light "warp drive" propulsion. He is a co-founder of the interstellar research organization Icarus Interstellar and of the starship design study Project Icarus.
Biography
Obousy is originally from the United Kingdom. Before beginning his doctoral studies he worked as a radar physicist for the British Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA).
He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Baylor University in 2008. His dissertation, Investigation into Compactified Dimensions: Casimir Energies and Phenomenological Aspects, was supervised in the university's high energy physics group and examined the nature of the quantum field theory vacuum in higher-dimensional spacetimes.
Outside of physics, Obousy founded and leads the shipping marketplace company CitizenShipper.
Scientific contributions
Obousy's doctoral and post-doctoral research concentrated on the Casimir effect, the small attractive force that arises between conducting surfaces from fluctuations of the quantum vacuum. He investigated whether the Casimir energy associated with compact extra dimensions of space could account for the observed dark energy that drives the accelerated expansion of the universe, and showed that Casimir energy in a fifth dimension can act to stabilize that dimension at a fixed radius.
Building on this work, Obousy and Gerald Cleaver proposed in 2008 a warp drive mechanism based on higher-dimensional models. In their paper Warp Drive: A New Approach, published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, they argued that a sufficiently advanced civilization able to manipulate the radius of a compact extra dimension could locally adjust the value of the cosmological constant, thereby generating an expansion of spacetime behind a spacecraft and a contraction in front of it. Because the expansion of spacetime itself does not violate special relativity, the authors argued that such a scheme could in principle permit effective faster-than-light travel. The paper also estimated the energy requirements involved and derived an ultimate speed limit set by Planck-scale constraints on the size of the extra dimension.
Obousy later co-authored, with Eric W. Davis, the report Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions, one of the Defense Intelligence Reference Documents commissioned by the United States government.
Interstellar research
In 2009 Obousy and Kelvin F. Long co-founded Project Icarus, a theoretical engineering design study for an uncrewed, primarily fusion-powered interstellar probe, undertaken as a collaboration between the British Interplanetary Society and the Tau Zero Foundation. Project Icarus was conceived as a successor to the Society's 1978 Project Daedalus study, revisiting that design using the science and technology developed in the intervening decades.
In 2011 Obousy co-founded Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit research foundation dedicated to technologies enabling interstellar flight, and served as its president from 2011 to 2013. He has also served the organization as a senior scientist for primary propulsion.
Selected publications
- Obousy, R. and Cleaver, G., "Warp Drive: A New Approach", Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (2008), arXiv:0712.1649.
- Obousy, R., Investigation into Compactified Dimensions: Casimir Energies and Phenomenological Aspects, Ph.D. dissertation, Baylor University (2008), arXiv:0901.3640.
- Obousy, R. and Cleaver, G., "Casimir Energy and the Possibility of Higher Dimensional Manipulation".
- Long, K. F., Obousy, R. K., et al., "Project Icarus: Son of Daedalus – Flying Closer to Another Star", arXiv:1005.3833.
- Obousy, R. and Davis, E. W., Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions, Defense Intelligence Reference Document.