The original question was: Is this f’real?
Astronomer: The Alcubierre spacetime metric is named after a Miguel Alcubierre, a physicist who was also a Star Trek fan. It describes a type of bubble in space, where you could put, for example, a spaceship named USS Enterprise. Within the bubble space is isn’t doing anything weird, but in front of the bubble you scrunch up space and behind the bubble you stretch it out. If you could create space that was warped in this particular way, you could sit in your spaceship inside the bubble and move space around you faster than light in a way that would make it seem like you’d traveled at speeds faster than light. In reality, only the space itself would have travelled faster than light, which doesn’t break the speed limit rules imposed by relativity.
Bend some space like this and you can head for the second star to the right, and go straight on till morning!
The Alcubierre metric is a real solution to Einstein’s equations, which describe the ways in which space is allowed to bend or warp. There is no theoretical reason to think space couldn’t bend in this way, except for one very major problem. In the equations that describe the Alcubierre metric, one of the mass terms has to be negative for things to work out.
Know where I can get some negative mass? Didn’t think so. Negative mass, which is fundamentally different than anti-matter, would experience gravity as a repulsive force. Too bad nobody has ever discovered any negative mass floating around out there or made any substantial amount it. You can make really tiny amounts of negative mass/energy for very short periods of time in the lab, by “borrowing energy from the uncertainty principle,” but it’s not clear this could be scaled up to the macroscopic level like it would need to be to create a useful warp bubble.
It’s probably best negative mass doesn’t exist, because it’s incredibly creepy! For example, imagine you had a chunk of normal mass and a chunk of negative mass in space. The negative mass would fall towards the regular mass, but at the same time create “repulsive gravity” which would then push the normal mass away. Lather, rinse, repeat, and you could theoretically accelerate those two chunks off into the stars forever. This smells suspiciously like perpetual motion, and would break the well established principle of conservation of energy. Given that, it’s understandable that we’re not packing the SPF 5000 for our super fast trip to Alpha Centauri Bb.
Physicist: It is for real, but don’t go reserving flights. There has been some theoretical research into Warp drives for about 20 years starting, not surprisingly, within months of the end of TNG. Back in the day Einstein figured out how mass/energy and the curvature of spacetime relate to each other with the narcissistically named “Einstein field equations“. These equations tell you how spacetime will be stretched and curved in the presence of a distribution of matter (for example, put a bunch of matter in one place, and spacetime will “pucker” in such a way that we get gravity). But these equations can be turned on their head; if you want spacetime twisted up in a particular way, you can find out how matter and energy need to be arranged to make that happen.
By bending spacetime in a particular way you can make it so that locally you move slower than light, but that the overall effect is faster-than-light travel. The arrangement of matter and energy that allows for this is unfortunately impossible. This diagram is from page 145 of “Gravity”, by Hartle.
Warp drive research always hinges on the idea that we should be able to arbitrarily manipulate stunning amounts of energy, and moreover, that a hell of a lot of that energy can be negative (essentially, “magical freeze-ray” powered warp drives). To date, we haven’t been able to isolate negative energy independent of a burst of positive energy (in any form), and there have been a few arguments (not proofs) that there may be an uncertainty-principle sort of thing that forces this to always be the case. Negative energy and matter carry with them an amazing array of fundamental issues. For example, if you bring matter and anti-matter together you get a big boom, resulting in a big increase in entropy (as light and new particles fly in every direction), but if you bring matter and negative-matter together they just quietly blink out, resulting in a big decrease in entropy (which is a thermodynamic no-no).
But! Assuming that negative energy can be harvested (even in theory), and very carefully controlled and manipulated in spectacular ways, and if a number of very fundamental theoretical issues can be ironed out, then this is totally a way to travel faster than light in a very Star Trek kind of way (as opposed to a BSG “jump drive“). Warp drives have been in the news a bit recently because it was shown that there are “spacetime geometries” that require less of the very-probably-impossible negative-matter than was originally thought (presumably, also because warp drives are awesome). This is a little akin to saying “my unicorn powered wish-making machine is now more feasible, because the unicorns can be any color, not just blue”.
For most physicists the Alcubierre drive is a cute tool for teaching general relativity, but in application smells a lot more like perpetual motion and anti-gravity machines than a device we’re ever likely to see.
There are some hopeful legit physicists, but not many.
Why would a clump of negative mass fall towards something with positive mass? I’d think that negative mass and positive mass would just repel each other, since for both masses your m_1*m_2 term would be negative in the gravity equation.
What would appear to be going on from the perspective of an outside observer witnessing a ship using an alcubierre warp drive?
Since when did an astronomer join this blog?
I’ve never heard of the Alcubierre warp drive before, and that is one of the reasons why I pop in here to get myself up to speed on such matters.
So if matter and antimatter explode, and matter and negative-matter zero sum, what would negative-antimatter do?
It would “sum to zero” with anti-matter.
Where does negative matter and negative anti-matter exist….?????
In my opinion, you can’t have “negative matter.” You can compare it to apples- you either have (for example) one or more apples, or no apples. You can’t have a negative apple!
An Alcubierre warp drive could contradict existing laws, like relativity (and its connection to time travel), and thermodynamics (in terms of conservation of energy). Besides, how could you amass enough energy to power this sort of device for a practical amount of time, say, a few days, or even for one minute?
Even if the warp drive were theoretically possible, the amount of finances and energy needed to make it possible would probably be too impractical for it to be actually built.
The momentum of a mass is mass * velocity. With negative mass and positive velocity, the momentum is negative.
The momentums of the positive mass and the negative mass would cancel out, so there would be no net energy change.
So they would accelerate “without limit” (excepting decay of various sorts), but it doesn’t violate conservation of energy, because the net energy of the system remains the same.
Work through the equations if you doubt. 🙂
This is so cool! One of my classmates worked with Dr. White at an internship with NASA, looking at (from what I recall) the basics of getting a high enough energy density for this to work. Still a long ways off, but warp drives in the making.
So how would you build it? With the exotic matter on the top or the bottom? Maybe left of the box of tachyons?
As far as I know there are no serious ideas behind how to build it at all.
Casimir effect is caused by a device consisting of two surfaces that are separated by a distance that defines the energy height of the quantum fluctuation in the vacuum. By placing many (>10**23) such mirrors together you would have a stiff sponge like material that would have to form a donut several miles across to contain the 1900 pounds of the resulting negative energy. Actually there was an example of a craft with that consistancy found by an air force pilot in pursuit of a UFO. The craft described by the pilot was that of fine spongelike appearance. This was reported about the 1990’s.
Whoa, Cashme no reason to bring UFO’s into this. For the small % of UFO sightings that cannot be easily explained many of them come in all shapes and sizes and appearance, including sponges.
It is not what these objects look like it’s what they DO that makes them enigmatical. There are equations that suggest these objects use energy in a similar way to us except it is produced within a very much smaller volume (and therefore that much more advanced). But the real problem is the enveloping ‘energy field’ that is needed to protect the occupants (and the craft) from both radiation and maneuvers but even here negative mass isn’t the answer because of the (reported) positive, and sometimes destructive, effect on surroundings.
Never mind, Cashme, let us know when you’ve constructed all those mirrors!
Would it be a simpler problem to use the drive to increase the power and efficiency of a reaction engine by using it to increase the speed of the propellent? Move the propellent faster, the more difficult problem of moving the entire ship can wait until the technology matures.
@Bob
I thought the amount of energy required to power it up would be all one required.. that is unless acceleration of mass is used to increase the warping effect by increased mass. Either way I would have thought that you would only need as much energy required to compensate for resistance in the accelerated mass and therefore the only real energy problem comes from powering the thing up.. or rather ‘engineering’ the negative mass and accelerating it (if required) (as well as the positive mass) which apparently merely 1,600 pounds worth of mass/energy for something the size of voyager. I cannot recall how much uranium that is but yeah.. sounds better than scooping up a whole Jupiter to just squeeze into a reaction chamber. Or so I’m led to believe.. :/
the kinetic energy of the accelerating negative matter would be just as negative as the KE of the positive matter is positive.
the energies (sp. ?) would cancel out.
that is, in Newtonian physics.
I don’t know what it would do in general or special relativity, or in Quantum mechanics.
but yeah it doesn’t violate conservation of energy is Newtonian physics.
the accelerations will be the same (provided they have the same magnitude of mass, and there is no other masses in the system), so if they start at 0 velocity, they will always have the save velocity.
KE – 1/2 m v^2, so plug in the values and you get the energies being negative of the other,
and it sums to zero.
oh, someone already posted that.
nvm then.
What kind of gravity will you have inside the bubble? The original gravity when you initiated the ‘trip’ or you can generate your own gravity? and another question , as the ship deformates the space I understand that it won’t be affected by any asteroids or radiations in its way while in the bubble so…can the ship traverse the core of a planet , a star, dump into the oceans without being affected by the deep, even enter inside an active volcano?…
Just run the sumbitch on good ole diesel. Space diesel, that it. Anti-diesel.
Then spool up that 7.2 billion litre Cummins Duramax.
All you need is a ZPM (zero point module)
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What Klatu says, would explain why some UFOs just travel through objects with no problems.
Whenever I read a story about the Alcubierre drive I have to roll my eyes. The preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that while the creation of a “warp bubble” is theoretically possible in a non-relativity breaking sort of way, it still requires more energy and non-descript super stuff than we could ever feasible create.
Theories about FTL travel in general are rife with this sort of wishful thinking and the borderline pseudoscientific assertion that if we just try hard enough anything is possible . The likelihood that this or any other species has, is or will ever travel faster than light is so impossibly small as to be virtually zero. We just have to accept the fact that there are some things science can do and our species is doomed to die when our star engulfs the solar system – and probably long before then.
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Whenever the need arises for a for a seemingly endless amount of negative energy – just add a sceptic
This probably won’t go faster than light because the particles ‘communicate’ using photons. I may have got this incorrect because I’m only eleven but there is a video called: Will This Go Faster Than Light? by Veritasium which explains this phenomena.
There are other reasons why but they are explained in the video.
thing is making warp drive to come to reality come to sciencetests dream for long time but making it possible hopefully in next 20 or 50 years or 100 years or more maybe antimatter and matter is key maybe i dont no with help with dilithium it might help also with antimatter we havnt created antideuterium yet so maybe next 20 or 50 or 100 years we might its slow going progress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX4m88lhuQ8
The above is a nice short summary: it seems that whatever it is, it’d have to be made out of atoms/compounds… of a particular configuration… though it’d probably take an alcubierre machine to make an alcubierre machine (by the way, its Iron 2 and Iron 3 Ions, haha! depends on the star, but these and a few trace nuclear particles can’t be broken by the sun!). Its all sorta like the physics behind superman’s punch, or how Santa can get to all the kids in one night.
Essentially, if you look at M-Theory also and how Alcubierre’s work might interact with that framework… it seems more improbable that such a drive could work. This is because of what occurs when trying to simultaneously resolve particular elements at different surface intersections…
A proponent of the drive is essentially saying:
we’re looking for a combination/configuration of compounds that defies the natural laws of reality.
Its a longshot, but you’ve gotta admire that determination to find the “needle in a haystack” set of options — if they exist.
You’d have a better chance of somehow “beaming” across the universe, than building a ship to physically travel: I mean, think about it, you’re just one combination of a genome…
http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/13665/biodiversity-is-restricted-by-genome-combinatorics
Theres loads out there. And as with the Drake Equation, its just based on life as we know it here on Earth: there could be even more and different bases of stuff out there (lifeforms from different dimensions etc), and regions of the universe with different local laws etc…
Trying in one instance to travel faster than light might also take more start resources and consequently an environment that is not conducive to the evolution of life.
Perhaps phasing matter to some other dimension could make travel times and distances easier… perhaps the spatial dimensions of higher dimensions are less problematic, and you can traverse or induce effects (I’m thinking some sort of ‘roller’ through those dimensions)…
; though this ideas are STILL ERoEI dependent, so we’d need to solve the energy problem beforehand, and the societal problem too. Unscientific/nonsupportive society = darkages.
You’d probably also be subjected to lethal energies/energies that stop the neurobiology that underpin the brain from working.
Negative matter possibly will not be able to be seen, but might actually exist in quantities far more larger than anybody could guess.
This gives the possibly of examining the effects of what negative matter will have on the Universe. Hummm… If matter condenses the Universe, negative matter would expand the Universe. We have a term of some unseen ‘force’ that is expanding the Universe. It’s called Dark Energy. Nobody knows what Dark Energy truly is, but makes sense that it could be negative matter.
Would there be any time dilation effects, like differential aging or the experience of the flow of time?
Would the contracted or expanded space create any unwanted effects on planetary bodies in our solar system?
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
There are undoubtedly ways to bend and manipulate rules and laws of science, and just because we cannot conceive these now does not mean we cannot or will not in the future.
You really sound like Albert Einstien
Well I think the biggest flaw is that the surrounding matter outside the bubble is destroyed to get the bubble moving. The matter in front is crushed and the matter behind is stretched. Which means building some kind of tunnel to protect the surrounding matter from point A to B. But building that tunnel would require some kind of energy/matter unaffected by the warping. Essentially a negative bubble outside the bubble to keep the surroundings intact. I guess once building these bubbles is easy then putting them all over the universe will be easy too! haha
Dear Sir;
reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
On the face of it just seems to be a gravity-wave generator;
put a ‘vehicle’ in the ‘ flat ‘central section of the space-time bounded by the warped sections; the vehicle just see’s flat space-time so it does nothing and
the ‘gravity-wave’ or space-time warp which is not locked to the
vehicle (ie not generated by the vehicle);
as the ‘gravity wave’ is described as “carrying the vehicle along “; so I can’t:
1/ see why the wave doesn’t just run into the vehicle and
destroy it with high tidal forces (ie a radius of curvature less than the vehicle) ;
when the vehicle encounters intense rear trough curvature
2/ why as a gravity wave, we can have any expectation it would ever travel
faster than light anyway ?
Interestingly (for me) as the idea I am trying to get someone to investigate mathematically; because it seems the least problematic anti-gravity drive
-no violation of conservation of:
momentum or energy
-no suggestion of faster than light
is
Concerning the Feasibility of Anti-gravity Drives of the First-kind.pdf
at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MhV26WitsQooCyi5mw9l0cCCuO-DyTv2JrOhD48uxTA/edit?usp=sharing
What is encouraging (for me) in the above wikipedia article is the way;
the General Relativity Tensor Relation can be used in two ways
1/ From a particular mass / energy distribution the resulting surrounding space-time curvature can be calculated or
2/ from a desired space-time curvature the required mass/ energy;
distribution can be calculated; which is what Alcubierre did.
Because this calculation is precisely what I am requesting !
It would go some way to answering; just how feasible the very simplest (I think);
possible anti-gravity drive is.
regards Rohan McLeod
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This sounds like an ingredient for faster than light travel that may have to come from the bowels of our galaxy. If that’s the case, maybe we will be visited by a friendly fast talking salesman selling negative matter and a faster than light vehicle design. That fun aside, someone please find this solution for faster than light travel in our lifetimes!:)
http://www.andersoninstitute.com/alcubierre-warp-drive.html
“The ship would ride this wave inside a region known as a warp bubble of flat space. Since the ship is not moving within this bubble, but carried along as the region itself moves, conventional relativistic effects such as time dilation do not apply in the way they would in the case of a ship moving at high velocity through flat spacetime. Also, this method of travel does not actually involve moving faster than light in a local sense, since a light beam within the bubble would still always move faster than the ship; it is only “faster than light” in the sense that, thanks to the contraction of the space in front of it, the ship could reach its destination faster than a light beam restricted to travelling outside the warp bubble. Thus, the Alcubierre drive does not contradict the conventional claim that relativity forbids a slower-than-light object to accelerate to faster-than-light speeds.”
Thus the fact that we are riding a “gravity wave” inside the warp bubble means that we can go faster than light rather than the other way around as some are suggesting. The theories of relativity state that matter cannot accelerate to or past the speed of light, but the matter would not be what was accelerating. The only way to explain the movement would be to say that you are moving the rest of the universe around you. You’re not actually moving inside your bubble of space-time. The only problem I can see is that humans have yet to find (or at the very least access) a way to construct the warp bubble. We have theories and equations that would allow us to control the bubble or at least create the drive, but how would we initiate the gravity wave to begin with?
I did read an article about substances in a lab at below absolute zero have a negative energy effect, just Google below absolute zero. So how can that be if you’re not so math proof explains away the idea altogether.
A Skeptic says:
December 6, 2013 at 5:49 am
“Whenever I read a story about the Alcubierre drive I have to roll my eyes. The preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that while the creation of a “warp bubble” is theoretically possible in a non-relativity breaking sort of way, it still requires more energy and non-descript super stuff than we could ever feasible create.”
Of course the idea is not mature yet and may turn out to be impossible (at least for humans) but there is no end of folks who like to give up too soon on new ideas with talk of how hard, how impossible, how unlikely it is to ever amount to anything real. I call these folks Physics Cops and many like to build their reputations doing that. They think they are doing science a service and maybe occasionally they do but more often I fear they steer people away from taking new ideas seriously and thus hinder progress. One example is the recent controversy over the NASA results of the Cannea drive data. After the NASA article there was a spate of “debunking” articles attempting to shame NASA and shut down interest because the results appear to not fit into our well established paradigms. Similarly, Drexler’s work on Molecular Manufacturing was sidelined by those who wanted to redefine “nanotechnology” into whatever they were doing at the moment, Sheehan’s Second Law work is marginalized and Mills’ work on lower levels of the Hydrogen atom (with extraordinary technological applications) at BlackLight Power is consistently attacked by the editors at Wikipedia and several well known Physics Cops in spite of abundant evidence including several independent replications.
I like this train of logic to get to go FTL
1) nothing can travel faster than light
2) A hole is by definition, nothing
3) therefore, for example, black holes can travel faster than light
4) accelerate a spaceship to .999 light speed (ish), at which point relativistic mass increase and Lorentz contraction combined, turn it into a black hole
5) travel faster than light to your destination
6) slow down to re-emerge from your black hole.
7) take a bow
“For most physicists the Alcubierre drive is a cute tool for teaching general relativity, but in application smells a lot more like perpetual motion and anti-gravity machines than a device we’re ever likely to see.”
Yes, that is consistent with human nature. There is a tendency to be embarrassed by radical new ideas for the expert and a desire to marginalize the ideas into a safe little nook that cannot threaten careers. The more an idea captures the public imagination the more the experts react against it. I think it is about maintaining control. In the end I believe most physicists do not want FLT travel to be possible because it threatens their carefully established reality.
The analogy with water and air seems to make this make sense. A ship, air or ocean, makes the water in front more dense, the water behind less so. A propeller is even a better example – Bernoulli’s law indicates a lower air/water pressure in front, greater in back, thus movement in the direction of less pressure. All we need to do is to figure out how to do that.
The thoughts of alcubierre is very interesting,but is wrong.because is impossible generate for much time the negative energy that would permit the warp of the space time,as if was a superspace or structure space time foam,that would be a structure next the Planck’s scales ,that is near at the length limit measured by the string theories .the way only one to travel with speeds greater than the speed of light is consequence of the PT symmetry breaking that implies the existence of Is interesting that all the paradoxes as of Turing or godet are relationed with the ideas of large infinity(continuum) and the small infinitesimal as placed by Newton and Leibniz ,but think that the idea of Newton of the fluxions contained the idea of the discrete space and time.It is his thought in the conceit of discontinuity,where the non commutative property gave the conceit of motion to the space and time.was some dynamics,while the of Leibniz was static. But the o paradoxes of yodel and Turing is connected at the Infinity,as Cantor’s sets that implies that the proper infinities has different story potential.the infinities of classQ has different potential than the continuum C.then some infinities are finities in theirs potential.but exist some class greater than Q and minor than C.think that exist ‘holes” in the space that can explain those completed infinities.that are associated that the curves has a potential of “holes’ and the straight lines has not.then the variable of space and time is intrinsically linked to the discontinuities generated by the movements.aantiparticles as holes of energy in the quantify vacuum.these concepts would explain the time dilatation ,the contraction of the space,the spacetime given by the breakdown of CP to the asymmetries of particles and antiparticles,and the breakdown of PT,that implies the existence of infinities curvatures of spacetime that are 4 dimensional manifolds.the fourth dimension is produced by non Euclidean geometry(elliptical and hyperbolically) derived the breaks of mirror symmetry.
Doesn’t that mean if you shoot a laser pointer out the window you could see it stretch and turn to go behind you, or at least look like it was, because that could be fairly entertaining. Also, if the above statement is true, what happens if you shoot a vehicle that passed into the warp field exactly on the edge point where the bubble forms? The bullet would technically still be moving faster than light into a stopped object. (assuming this is the exact moment that the vehicle enters the warp field)
…
But why bother trying to go faster-than-light? I love this!
A speed that just barely reaches light-speed should be enough. Since time slows down, finally reaching zero event precisely at light-speed, a ship only at light-speed (relative to it’s destination) could go anywhere in no time at all. Getting back home in a timely manner may seem to be another conundrum, but remember relative to us, the rest of the universe does not age either, since clocks in it too, seem to stand still as our ship moves/or they move, depending on ones relative perspective.
Traveling twins paradox be darned, we are only going to relatively accelerate but then relatively decelerate, canceling age differences out. Acceleration and deceleration are both absolute, but different you see. We could say, “in front of the ship we scrunch up relative space and behind the ship we stretch it back out”. Then reverse the process on the way back.
But then, how to “just barely” reach light-speed? Where would all the needed immense energy come from? The best option is to use an ingenious trick used in an old movie I once watched. The characters desperately needed to get out of Dodge and return home with a wooden steamship, but they had limited amounts of coal. The emergency solution was to leave quickly, burn all the coal, then start to burn parts of the ship.
Burning the ship had a two-fold advantage. First it produced steam. Secondly, the ship got ever lighter as it sailed. The characters just barely made it home. The ship had become nothing but a floating deck with many of the floorboards already missing. But most importantly they made it home.
Well then… I propose a ship with conventional rocket fuel in the beginning, ending in atomic drive powered only by the energy of disassembled ship atoms. Of course once approaching close to light-speed, the ships mass will increase phenomenally as per Special Relativity. But by burning mass, it will ever decrease at the same time. Faster and faster.
Problem: Eventually the “atomic furnace” will have to burn itself for fuel. It is highly recommended that the last few ship atoms have an extremely short half life and will disintegrate themselves. With the last burnt (converted) atom, the “former” ship will then be exactly at light-speed, with time only lost getting there. Once at light-speed, the ship will now consist entirely of electromagnetic light itself, a mathematical certainty.
To return home, one must carefully aim the ship (the light beam?) to sling-shot around a very distant huge black hole (the destination, of course) and joyously return to earth, friends and family, which as I say, have not seemed to age since the ship reached light-speed and time thereafter stood still. No need to gradually slow down, because the sudden mellow impact with earth will do the job. I say mellow because it won’t hurt, photons don’t weigh much. Finally, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to develop a Replicator/Transporter previous to the trip… to facilitate reassembling the scattered particles of crew.
Just in fun of course…
Wes 😉
…
If there is Dark Matter, might there not be Dark Anti-Matter ?
I meant to say If Dark Energy may be isolated, might one find Dark Negative Energy?
If all of the money and talent wasted on Deep Space research for the beginning of the Universe, which without FTL capability is USELESS, was put to work researching and developing FTL travel capabilities, then we would arrive at that point much sooner than with the way it is going. Kip Thorne and company is at least trying and going against the stronger flow of those Physicists too lazy to even think about it. Content to point at some distant speck and claim it is an earth-like exo-planet, however much no one will ever be seeing in person. Dreemers.
Some of histories greatest discoveries were, at some point, thought to be impossible. I mean, just look at star trek. The only thing we really have yet to develop is a holo-deck and a warp drive.