Is this plausible? (Warp Drive)

[ihwip]

http://www.daviddarling.info/encycloped ... drive.html

Basically instead of travelling faster than the speed of light, this theoretical warp drive would involve compressing space-time in front of a craft and expanding it behind the craft while leaving the craft itself in a neutral bubble of unwarped space.

It sounds kinda implausible so I figured I'd check to see what everybody thinks here.

 

[RiddleBox]

Apparently, it is possible. However current technology does not provide us with a way to create the massive amounts of energy needed to warp space time (somewhere near 3 solar masses would be needed for just the slightest warp i think).
This may be possible in the future, but not at the moment

 

[ihwip]

Bringing this topic back from the dead for a related question. Wouldn't a space ship cruising at more than light speed create a wake similar to a sonic boom? What kind of properties are we looking at? I would image this would be one heck of a gravity wave.

Can we rule out any major celestial civilizations using this technology due to the fact that we have not detected any of these?

 

[MeteorWayne]

A space ship can't travel faster than the speed of light. Nothing with mass can even reach the speed of light. And no shock wave would form because light would always be traveling at the speed of light away from any object no matter how fast it's moving.

 

[a_lost_packet_]

Bringing this topic back from the dead for a related question. Wouldn't a space ship cruising at more than light speed create a wake similar to a sonic boom? What kind of properties are we looking at? I would image this would be one heck of a gravity wave.

Can we rule out any major celestial civilizations using this technology due to the fact that we have not detected any of these?

Uh... look at it this way :

A mass bearing ship can not travel in normal space faster than the speed of light. Period.

If you find one that does then it's no use asking us what the effects might be because our knowledge has just been demonstrated to be wrong.

I say that giant purple and plaid flowers are left in its wake along with the tantalizing and frightening sounds a set of bagpipes would make if it was strapped to a train and was repeated pelted with airborne hamsters... But, don't quote me on that.

 

[ihwip]

The answer to the original question was that you can go faster than c if you simply stretch space time rather than use traditional propulsion. If that is possible, shouldn't there be a warp cone observable to people outside the localized distortion?

I am still not sure stretching space time is even possible because it would usurp too many common concepts.

 

[MrUniverse]

I am still not sure stretching space time is even possible because it would usurp too many common concepts.

Like what? We know that space can expand at faster than light speed. This happened in the cosmic inflation period within the first second after the big bang. It is believed by scientists . The universe is larger than 150 billion light years in diameter. This would be impossible if space (and matter within that space) could only expand slower than light speed.

True, we currently have no idea how to do this without more energy than is in our sun. However, when they first calculated the energy needed it looked like it would require something like a thousand times more energy than exists in the universe. Maybe in the future someone even smarter than MeteorWayne will come along and decide to tackle the problem.

Nothing with mass can even reach the speed of light.

I say that relativity doesn't negate the possibility of massive objects traveling faster than light speed as long as they aren't exceeding light speed relative to the space they occupy. How else could matter be spread so far apart only 13.7 billion years after the universe came into being?

Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive is pretty informative and interesting. According to it relativistic effects like increase in mass and time dilation wouldn't effect an object traveling this way.

Stay inquisitive, friend!
p.s. I have no idea about the bow shock.

 

[SteveCNC]

While I believe it may be possible to control time/space , however , I also believe in order to do that you would have to control roughly the same amount of gravitational power of a small black hole say like the one in the center of our galaxy 2.6 billion solar masses . While that is far beyond our ability at present I'm always optimistic about the distant future (beyond my lifetime and in this case WAY beyond) .


*edit: added the word gravitational to clarify what I mean by power .