Harold White
Harold "Sonny" White is an American physicist and aerospace engineer who led NASA's Advanced Propulsion Team at Johnson Space Center, where he developed theoretical modifications to the Alcubierre warp drive metric that dramatically reduced the estimated energy requirements, and is the founder and CEO of Casimir, a deep-technology startup focused on breakthrough power-generating nanotechnology derived from Casimir effect principles.
NASA career
White proposed a modification to Miguel Alcubierre's 1994 warp metric — originally estimated to require a mass-energy equivalent to the planet Jupiter — by oscillating the warp field's bubble configuration, reducing the required exotic matter energy by multiple orders of magnitude to a potentially manageable quantity. At Johnson Space Center, White led the Eagleworks Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory — a small but formally institutionalized NASA research team that simultaneously investigated warp drive, the EmDrive (a claimed reactionless microwave thruster), and related exotic propulsion concepts. White and colleagues designed and operated a precision laser interferometer (the "White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer") intended to detect microscopic spacetime distortions consistent with warp field formation. His work on warp metrics, Casimir-effect propulsion implications, and experimental warp bubble research is documented in the Alcubierre drive and Casimir effect articles.
Casimir and nanotechnology
After departing NASA, White founded Casimir to commercialise power-generating applications of the Casimir effect. In 2025 White appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience (episode #2318) and demonstrated a prototype Casimir-effect power chip — reportedly inviting Rogan to hold the device and explaining that a chip of this type, if miniaturised, could power a smartphone indefinitely without recharging.
Recognition in the exotic technology community
White has been identified by researchers including Jesse Michels and Ashton Forbes as among the physicists most likely to have knowledge of classified or advanced technology programs, alongside figures such as Charles Chase of Lockheed Martin and Hal Puthoff. His trajectory from NASA's Eagleworks to a Casimir effect-effect startup — combined with his documented contact with the UAP physics research community — has led to characterisations of him as operating on the boundary between acknowledged aerospace science and classified knowledge of non-human propulsion principles.