:: OSEL.CZ :: - How to build a warp drive without exotic physics?

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Will we ever see each other? Credit: Gianni Martire (Applied Physics).

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Hand on heart, who wouldn’t want to travel among the stars? Or at least send our ships there? It’s all about cosmic science fiction. But the distances in space are monstrous. Modern technologies cannot handle them. For decades, humans have been admiring the cosmic drives of Start Trek, Star Wars, and similar stories that make heroes bounce between star systems as if nothing had happened.

Alexey Bobrick.

Credit:

Lund University.

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Thanks to Star Trek, warp propulsion, ie technology for traveling at “super-light speeds”, became known. This drive is described in some episode and story in some detail, including the “warp core,” the “warp reactor,” which draws energy from the annihilation of antimatter matter, regulatory “dilithium crystals,” and extreme magnetic fields. From the warp core, the warp plasma flows into the warp gondolas, which create a warp field. This bends space-time around the spaceship in question, which can move a great distance, as if flying at super-light speeds, even though the ship is actually moving at a fairly normal speed, only flying short.

So much science fiction. In 1994, Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre Moya, an expert on Einstein’s relativity, bent Einstein’s equations during his doctoral studies to design a real warp propulsion with which a spacecraft would fly in a bubble of twisted space-time, de facto at super-light speed. And yes, he was inspired by Star Trek, which he loved from an early age. The creators of the fantastic stories have had and still have a tremendous influence, probably greater than they realize.

Miguel Alcubierre Moya (2013). Kredit: Zid Moisey / Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0

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Alcubierr’s drive does not contradict Einstein’s equations and could very theoretically work. But it has a significant hook. It would need a huge amount of negative energy to operate, which is not even clear if it can exist at all. Not to mention where to take it. Negative energy is a lot of exotic physics. However, as it turns out, there are other options, a little less exotic and more practical, although it will probably take a long time before they are feasible.

American physicists Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire of New York’s Advanced Propulsion Laboratory took Alcubierre’s drive and devised a new mechanism that could drive it. They suggest that instead of negative energy, it would be possible to use massive gravity to bend the space in the warp drive. Just to give you an idea, it would like to compress a planet-sized mass into the size of a spaceship. That, true, is not exactly within the reach of our technologies, but at least there is no exotic physics and substance that may not even exist. We probably won’t fly into the galaxy in the foreseeable future, but it doesn’t seem to be absolutely hopeless. And that’s what’s going on here.

Video: Warp Drive News. Seriously!