Time travel

Lockheed Martin and the University of Arizona are building a super-sensitive Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) with the hope of being able to take pictures of the dawn of time.

The Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), including this optics module, was developed by Lockheed Martin and the University of Arizona and will be launched with the aim of taking pictures of the dawn of time

NIRCam will be launched into space aboard the James Webb Space Telescope in October, 2018 from French Guiana on a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket. It works by detecting light using coronagraphs, instruments that allow astonomers to take pictures of very faint objects around a central bright object. It will be able to create detailed images of the earliest stars and galaxies in the process of formation.

NIRCam’s coronagraphs work in a similar way to shielding the sun from your eyes with an upraised hand, which helps to focus on the view.

“Through spectrometers [special filters] we’ll be able to understand a lot about the incoming light, such as the chemical compositions at the time, and see the gaseous clouds beginning to form,” says Jolly. “ That will inform the science of the beginnings of the universe.”

NIRCam will help us understand dark matter and dark energy, which are currently hidden from our telescopes – although we know it’s there – and help us to understand how space and time work on a fundamental level.

“We believe time works in one direction but the fabric of space does not appear to be the way we think it is,” says Jolly. “There are dimples in space caused by large objects like the sun, for example. Could this lead to discoveries around time travel? I wouldn’t rule anything out.

"The old Star Trek series had so many of these technologies and my dad, who is a physicist, laughed at all of them. Now they're becoming reality."

The data gathered by NIRCam could have a profound impact on the world, not only for cosmologists, who study of the creation of the universe – but on mankind’s religions and belief systems.

"By understanding the origins of the universe, we will be able to explain all kinds of phenomena that we do not currently understand," says Jolly.

Travel five times faster than the speed of sound

The idea of hypersonic space travel is not a new one. The term has been around since the 70s and refers to speed above Mach 5, which is five times the speed of sound.

There are a number of different commercial ventures hoping to crack hypersonic – one German project for a Hypersonic SpaceLiner that could travel from Europe to Australia in 90 minutes will be ready by 2030, according to its makers. Lockheed Martin is now developing Mach 20 – more than 15,000 miles per hour – and Mach 30 technologies. That could take a flight from the UK to Australia down to less than an hour.

Attempts to reach Mach 20 consistently have been thwarted by a lack of robust materials that can withstand the temperatures generated at these speeds, which is why the next generation of hypersonic materials are as unusual as they are deeply complex. “We have a material that cools itself by shedding electrons like the human body cools itself by sweating,” says Fouse.

Lockheed Martin is working alongside Imperial College London, which owns a hypersonic gun tunnel, which is used to test these materials. “They’re at the cutting edge,” says Fouse.

Hypersonic flight has applications beyond consumer travel. In defence, it could give governments the upper hand over enemies and, in the event of a humanitarian crisis, it could eventually allow aid to reach victims much faster although the cost of travel will be very high in the early years.

Hypersonic materials will be used alongside other innovations, such as carbon nanotubes, to create these machines of the future. These tiny tubes –50,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair – are making leaps in battery innovation and nanotechnology.

“From the way we design spacecraft to aircraft to cars and wearables [tiny computers in our clothing or jewellery], carbon nanotubes are changing the paradigm,” says Jolly. “Now, we have sensors with their own power source that can turn themselves on and off, without any wires. This can make extremely small and sophisticated satellites – about one thousandth of the size they are now – butthink what a car might look like in the future. At the moment, who knows?”

Hypersonic materials and time travel? Could the DeLorean from the cult film Back to the Future finally become a reality?