New Insights into Warp Drive Possibilities
Understanding the Basics
A team of physicists has discovered that it’s possible to build a real warp drive. However, the vessel doing the warping can’t exceed the speed of light, so you’re not going to get anywhere interesting anytime soon. This research still represents an important advance in our understanding of gravity.
Einstein’s Relativity and Warp Drives
General relativity is a tool kit for solving problems involving gravity that connects mass and energy with deformations in spacetime. These deformations instruct the mass and energy on how to move. Typically, physicists use relativity to predict how objects like planets or black holes will move. However, it’s also possible to reverse this process by imagining a desired motion and asking what kind of spacetime deformation can make it possible. This is how Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre discovered the physical basis for a warp drive, a concept popularized by the Star Trek franchise.
Challenges with Alcubierre’s Design
Alcubierre’s warp drive avoids violations of the speed-of-light limit because it never moves through space; instead, space itself is manipulated to bring the spacecraft’s destination closer. However, his design has a fatal flaw: it requires exotic matter with negative mass. Negative mass has conceptual problems that defy our understanding of physics, such as violating conservation of momentum. Moreover, no object with negative mass has ever been observed in the real universe.
Energy Conditions and Their Role
To address the issues with negative mass, physicists have proposed various “energy conditions” as supplements to general relativity. These conditions are not part of relativity itself but are added to prevent the existence of negative mass and other non-observable phenomena. While not experimentally proven, these conditions align with all observations of the universe, making them widely accepted among physicists.
Recent Breakthroughs
New Research Findings
An international team of physicists led by Jared Fuchs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, affiliated with the Applied Propulsion Laboratory of Applied Physics, has found a way around these energy conditions. In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, the researchers explored if any version of a warp drive could work within the constraints of general relativity.
Numerical Solutions and Their Implications
The equations of general relativity are notoriously difficult to solve, especially for complex cases like a warp drive. The team used software algorithms to explore solutions numerically, ensuring they conformed to the energy conditions. They discovered a warp drive solution that allows travel without acceleration or overwhelming gravitational forces, but with the caveat that the vessel cannot travel faster than light.
The Future of Gravity Research
Implications and Next Steps
While the inability to travel faster than light is disappointing, this new development is still significant. We don’t fully understand gravity, and Einstein’s theory is incomplete. Exploring how a warp drive might work under certain conditions helps us understand gravity better. Whether or not we achieve superluminal travel, this research will advance our knowledge of gravity and potentially revolutionize our understanding of it.
Conclusion
Exploring warp drives and their feasibility is a step toward a deeper understanding of gravity. This new research shows a possible way around previous limitations, opening the door to future discoveries. As we continue to investigate, we may uncover new insights that could change our perception of the universe.
“This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.”
4 Comments
Are we ready for lightspeed commutes or just more reruns of ‘Star Trek’?
So when do we get holodecks and replicators?!
I can’t decide if this means faster pizza delivery or the end of privacy.
Coral: Warp drive, huh? Now we just need dilithium crystals!