Dr. Harold “Sonny” White is a physicist and aerospace engineer specializing in advanced propulsion, particularly warp drive physics. Formerly leading NASA’s Advanced Propulsion Team at Johnson Space Center, he is now the founder and CEO of Casimir, a deep-tech startup focused on developing breakthrough power-generating nanotechnology. Casimir’s innovations have the potential to transform sustainable energy on Earth and may lay the groundwork for future advancements in interstellar propulsion systems.www.casimirspace.com Get a free welcome kit with your first subscription of AG1 at drinkag1.com/joerogan This episode is brought to you by Visible. Join now at visible.com/rogan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: How did Harold 'Sonny' White become interested in advanced propulsion?
My pleasure. Well, as soon as I saw the subject, I was like, oh yeah.
Like, what are you doing? Right, right, right. Advanced power and propulsion. Kind of been a passion of mine for the last 20 some odd years. I suppose if I kind of look back through the annals of my life, right, I've been thinking about advanced power and propulsion ever since I was a teenager.
What do you think inspired that? Was it space missions? Did you look at it and go, I think we can do better? Like what was it?
Well, you know, I grew up in Washington, D.C., and so I got a chance to spend a lot of time in the air and space Smithsonian. I don't know if you've ever had a chance to go to that. But growing up in D.C., getting a chance to go to the air and space Smithsonian, I got to see all these – Awesome examples of people working together to try and accomplish amazing things. Right.
And, you know, you might walk into the Air and Space Smithsonian and you just think about, wow, this is full of a bunch of stuff. But it's not just about the stuff. Right. It's about the people that worked together to do all these amazing things. Right. Like the Bell X-1 rocket. I mean, if you really want to go back, the Wright Flyer rocket.
That's something where two guys worked together that made bicycles for a living that decided to go create something that flew. And then in less than 50, 60 years from when they flew that Wright Flyer, we're putting human beings on the surface of the moon. And so all that really resonated with me as a kid. And I think –
tended to make me gravitate towards a technical field, although it wasn't a straight line, right? I'd like to say, you know, I knew at an early age what my calling was and what I was going to do, but I bounced around for a little bit until I finally got on a path that, you know, I really connected with.
And so I think I knew very early on in my journey in university, right, when I was going and getting my degree that that I wanted to work in advanced power and propulsion. And so at that point, everything I did kind of worked towards how do I get the skills, how do I get the math and physics training that helps me kind of work in this domain?
Because I was thinking about the idea of space warps very early on.
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Chapter 2: What is E=MC² and why is it significant?
And that kind of acceleration so rapidly inside of a lifetime to see just world-changing events and the internet all happening simultaneously, right?
Absolutely. You know, there's another interesting story, right? So my background is I've got a PhD in physics. a master's in mechanical engineering, so I'm both a scientist and an engineer, so I have, you know, deep appreciation for both disciplines.
But within the discipline of science, right, you know, we just talked about the right flyer and then going to the surface of the moon, and that's more of a kind of an engineering story. On the topic of science, you know, think about E equals MC squared. You Probably heard that or saw it on a coffee cup.
I don't really honestly know what it means. It's a theory of relativity. It's theory of relativity. I could say it to people like, come on, man. Right. E equals MC squared.
Whatever.
What is the theory of relativity?
So E equals MC squared, right, is an equation that relates energy to mass. If you were to take some modest piece of mass, say you've got some tidbits here of The mass that's in this pen right here. If you take the mass that's in this pen and you convert it to energy, that equation helps you understand exactly how much energy you can potentially release.
1911.
Somebody will look it up on the Internet and correct me if I'm wrong. Comes up with the equation in 1911. They split the first atom in 1928, 1932 time frame. I can't remember the exact time frame. 1942, we have the first nuclear reactor exploded. Underneath the squash court at University of Chicago, they did things very differently in the 1940s, Joe. Under a squash court? Yeah, right.
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Chapter 3: What are the current limitations of human space travel?
as well right uh is that the same thing it's the same thing so that the two lasers intersect they ionize the air which creates a plasma and they can do this over long distances as well right i don't know about long distances i know they can do it over short distances and so that for a while there i wondered if that might be something that that could explain some of what that makes sense what david traver and the group saw the only problem would be the radar
Because I don't know if you wouldn't pick up that on radar, would you? Because it's not a mass, right?
Well, the plasma would certainly absorb a radar signal, right, because it's going to polarize any electromagnetic wave that tries to go through it. So it would show up? It might. It might. It might.
Would it be possible to make something that big that's 20 feet long?
It's hard for me to imagine that. But so I think there's one piece of data that just came out in the last few weeks. I think David Fravor's wingman, Alex, I think her name is Alex Dietrich. I can't remember the name. I think you're right. So she came out. And so in all the things associated with that particular encounter,
One of the things I've been trying to figure out is how do they describe the specular surface of the tic-tac, right? Because if it's these plasma pixels that I'm talking about that kind of creates a volumetric display, I would speculate it might be kind of a glowy-looking thing. But I think Alex, in her account, described it as kind of a flat type of – Like matte, yeah.
Yeah, so that kind of torpedoed my working theory. But, again, while it's amazing and incredible and it's something that people want to go think about and go try and collect more data, it doesn't help me do what I'm doing in the lab. And so I think I kind of keep, you know, my eyes dart every once in a while over to that particular topic. Oh, what's that about? That's interesting, right?
Yeah, I mean, I'm honestly agnostic as well. I bounce back and forth from being really excited about it to feel like I'm being duped all the time. Jamie and I talk about it all the time. I'm back in. Jamie's back in, and Jamie will find something. He's like, I think I'm back in.
How are you right now? I'm looking through the article about the Navy laser that can do this and trying to figure out how big the objects are that they can make move. But they're definitely designed to trick heat-seeking missiles, so they've got to be big enough for that. Whoa.
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Chapter 4: What is the theory behind warp drives and space warps?
It's interesting, you know, I get a chance to go do a bunch of discussions with students all over the globe, right, and talking about... space exploration, specifically advanced power and propulsion. I really kind of get into this whole difference between to space and through space. And so as part of that narrative, I always spend a little bit of time
Telling them, right, we live in a society where everybody likes to pretend like we got all this stuff figured out, right? There's nothing left to figure out, right? You know, we got cell phones and internet and airplanes and all different kinds of stuff. There's really nothing left. Just maintain what we have. Right. Well, yeah, exactly.
And so I like to remind them, right, when I talk about, well – Let's talk about that. What do we know? And then I kind of take him through that little thought process of the Venn diagram just to say, hey, look, right – These two models are not compatible. That says there's a bigger circle, right, that connects the dots between all this stuff.
And I highly doubt we'll ever come up with a single step that goes from just the two circles on the Venn diagram to a final one, some grand unified theory. I don't think we'll ever take like one single step. I think it's going to be a series of a bunch of different steps by a bunch of different people over many generations. And it's like there's so much stuff to go figure out.
Come help us figure out. Push back against the darkness. Help us, you know, forever hunting the edge of the map, if you will.
Right.
And so I think sometimes in today's society, we get lulled into this sense of security that we got it all figured out. I mean, we got AI says all kinds of neat, helps us out, you know, all these different things. And so we get lulled into this sense that we've got it all figured out. And there's just there's so much mystery out there for us to go figure out.
Also, there's a lot of people that are full of shit that are muddying up the water, so it's very difficult to know what is exactly true at any current moment.
I mean, just in the UAP world, there's a ton of grifters. There's a ton of people that are just putting sensational nonsense out to get a bunch of clicks.
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Chapter 5: How does quantum mechanics relate to exotic matter?
Are you going to force people to carry children?
Yeah, yeah. Or they might be frozen like – what's that movie with the blue aliens? I can't remember. Right.
Imagine if they're debating a woman's right to choose while they're in space.
Oh, my gosh. You know what I'm saying? Oh, my gosh.
Right. It gets weird.
Yeah, yeah.
We need to keep civilization.
Right.
If you all commit – but I didn't commit. My grandparents did. But you're still on this thing forever.
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Chapter 6: What is the potential of Casimir research in propulsion technology?
And then you imagine you have a vacuum chamber that you put these two small plates in. And then you turn on the vacuum pumps and you pull all of the air out. So there's nothing in there, right? At least that's the way we would think about it. So now we're going to conduct a little thought experiment.
We're going to imagine that Jamie has superhero powers and he can shrink himself down to being a wee tiny little atomic person. And we're going to ask him to go into the vacuum chamber. And we're going to ask him to measure the pressure on the outside of the plates and and we're going to ask him to measure the pressure in between the two plates.
And so we're going to expect, based on the normal way we exist, he's going to say zero, zero on the outside, and he's going to say zero in between the two plates. But what he's going to report back is he's going to say zero pressure on the outside, like we expect, but he's going to say there is a negative pressure between the two plates. Well, what the hell is going on?
Well, the quantum field is full of fluctuating fields and forces. Matter is both a particle and a wave. You may have heard that statement at some point in your life. And so all these little bits of energy, right, they have wavelengths associated with them. And so any wavelength that is bigger than the physical gap of the cavity – it won't be able to manifest between the cavities.
So when we add up all the bits of energy on the outside, that's our zero reference, when we add up all the bits of energy on the outside, And then we add up all the bits of energy in between the two plates. There are less bits of energy because all the bigger wavelengths are excluded. And so there is a deficiency of vacuum energy that manifests between the two plates.
And that results in that negative pressure that wants to pull those two plates together. That's called the Casimir force. A guy by the name of Casimir was a guy that derived that back in 1948. But it took us until the late 90s to actually measure this in the lab to the physics community's satisfaction. And so it's been studied.
hundreds of times since measuring forces at different regimes, if you will. And there's also something called the transverse Casimir force. So when you try and slide those two plates relative to one another, the vacuum wants to resist you sliding them. those two plays. And so this is a very real phenomenon.
And it's a wonderful illustration of the peculiar nature of reality at the microscopic level, right? So, you know, the theory was worked out in the late 40s. The experimental stuff was started in the 90s. And then there's been a bunch of work since then. And I think they're even looking at trying to use the Casimir force in MEMS devices. But all that- What is a MEMS device?
Microelectromechanical machines, some small gears that you can't see with your eyes, but they serve different purposes that people are trying to come up with for sensors, maybe some things in your car, some future chips that might be in your phone or something like that, things where they make micromechanical systems that they make them with light because you can't even see those kinds of things.
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Chapter 7: How has private space exploration influenced technological advancements?
Right. In the grand scheme of things, I would speculate that as we add circles to the physics Venn diagram, we may actually be able to change some of that narrative, right? So maybe some – and so this gets into – You know, now we're getting into, like, the philosophical history of physics and some of the debates that have gone on for the better part of a century.
But, you know, maybe as we continue to move forward and we add more circles to the physics Venn diagram, you know, instead of having this narrative or this framework where we talk about – probabilities and chances and entanglement and the cat is alive and the cat is dead, right?
Maybe there is a deeper level of understanding that we have yet to uncover, right, beyond what we know in quantum mechanics today that helps us understand things at a more fundamental level. There is a sub-quantum dynamics, right, that explains the The randomness, the stochasticity that we see, and there'll be a much more satisfactory explanation for things where it's not like this.
I would almost play back some of what you just said. If you think about it, it actually has kind of a bit of a metaphysical kind of sound to it, if you will, right? The collapse of the wave function. Well, what does that really even mean, right? Right.
Maybe as we continue to move forward and we add – we get deeper understandings, we'll have answers that are much more compelling and logical in some way we don't currently understand yet.
Well, when you try to explain to people the double slit experiment – Try to explain that to people, the waves and particles. Like, what are you even saying?
Yeah, yeah. You have one slit. You get a nice Gaussian distribution around a center point. Then you open up two slits, and you've got this weird interference pattern, right? And that's the whole matter is both a particle and a wave, right? That's how you kind of see that. if you will. But how do you explain that?
And so actually, there are thought processes that people have to explain that type of stuff in some of the stuff that's out in the literature today. Bohmian trajectories is specifically one of the things, but...
It's almost frustrating because I know we're going to crack it one day. It's like, damn, I wish I was born in 2090. You know what I mean?
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