Warp drives' may actually be possible someday, new study suggests

[Atlan0001]

Yes, there are things we don't understand but don't hold your breath on that "c" thing.

A horizon is a horizon, is a horizon, is a constant of horizon. You don't travel around in light, you travel around in geometric scalar soliton wave-bubble space(s) and time(s). The constant of the speed of light is irrelevant when closing in (when narrowing) the gridlines of SPACETIME. We do it all the time, just not big time, yet!

 

[MasterOgon]

I got the same thing in a water analog warp drive model where I used a vibrating boat. It seemed to squeeze through the water, compressing it in front and expanding it behind in the form of waves of different lengths. In my simple mechanical model, mass growth was also necessary and it was created due to the acceleration of the pendulum, and the hydrodynamic body interacted with the water. But how can this be done in space in practice, and not in theory using coordinate systems? What method of physical interaction is needed for this?

 

[billslugg]

All "warp" drives achieve their goal through the warping of spacetime. We already know how to do it, but the mechanics are far beyond our technology. In order to create a compression of space one must simply place a lot of mass, energy or charge near that area. The best candidate is a black hole but they can't be touched, they can only be drawn towards by gravity, attracted or repelled by charge. That's where the difficulty comes in.

 

[MasterOgon]

Yes, but I can't imagine how it can be used. The mass will bend space in all directions and for this to lead to the movement of the ship, the mass must be in front of it. And at the same time, some kind of force must move the mass so that the gravity well is always in front of the ship. Is this similar to moving a magnet with a stick or am I missing something?

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Repeating:

This paper acknowledges the problem of accelerating and decelerating a "warp drive" craft. It suggests "focusing gravity emissions" as a conceptual solution. That is not the same as hauling a black hole around. It would require us to prove the existence of "gravitons" as the 'force carriers" of gravity and discover some way to create and emit them in a focused manner that is divorced from black holes created by extreme concentrations of mass. It is a concept that hinges on hypotheses about gravity that we have not proven, much less learned to control.

So, yes, I am not holding my breath waiting for such a "breakthrough".

But, I am also not calling it "impossible". With our most accepted theory of the universe telling us that we don't understand 95% of its contents, I accept that there are a lot of potentially useful things yet to be discovered.

 

[MrReality]

We’ve been launching stuff beyond Earth’s atmosphere for 67 years now and haven’t gotten beyond 0.064c thus far. This warp thing is still only one team’s theory. It’ll likely be generations before we get even a subatomic particle into this warp speed thing, if ever. If it ever does become practical, it could be used to send small probes to local stars in a reasonable timeline. Anything manned will not likely be practical. The article doesn’t mention if warp drive actually negates relativistic effects.

Isn't the whole point that it is the warp that is actually moving and not the ship? The warp is not bound by the speed limit, and the ship is not moving so no relativistic effects are experienced.

 

[Atlan0001]

Isn't the whole point that it is the warp that is actually moving and not the ship? The warp is not bound by the speed limit, and the ship is not moving so no relativistic effects are experienced.

No, the ship is moving and it isn't. Meaning, the ship's driving in a constant of acceleration creates the soliton wave to begin with. Then as the wave builds (shrinking space ahead, narrowing time zones ahead, squeezing gravity's gridlines, before the ship) the ship will grow in 'surfing', in easier riding, its own creation of the soliton (warp bubble) wave. Think of the accelerating expansion of the universe being locally caught up to and reversed to a localized accelerating contraction of the local universe. The power surf, the easier and every easier ride because the soliton (warp bubble) wave created, is doing more and ever more of the work . . . thus the ship needs less energy instead of more to keep accelerating (to keep riding the surf in the shrunken local distances of the universe ahead).

I write and keep seeing an aircraft powering to reach altitude, then having reached cruising altitude and velocity pulling back on power, easing up on acceleration somewhat, so to cruise . . . so to surf a wave. So it will be with constant power created soliton waves dealing in gravity's flexible gridlines narrowing light's coordinate points past-future time zones of SPACETIME.

 

[George²]

It would be very strange if we mastered warp right after the chemical rocket engines and there was nothing in between. Its will probably never come true in reality.

 

[Atlan0001]

It would be very strange if we mastered warp right after the chemical rocket engines and there was nothing in between. Its will probably never come true in reality.

It would be miracle to skip levels of steps, but miracles have been known to happen. We will still need the steps (such as in-space colonization) to be taken, though, for other very important, imperative, local closer to home, Solar Systemic expansionist reasons.

 

[Dav_Daddy]

This isn't the first positive energy warp drive solution. Erik Lentz published a paper in the same publication in 2021 proposing a soliton warp drive solution which did away with the need for negative energy.

Isn't that the one that required 9 times the energy output of the sun focused down to basically a plank length?

 

[Dav_Daddy]

All of the theories that would have us go FTL are based on solutions to Einstein's field equations. That they solve the equations does not necessarily mean they can exist in reality. Here is an example: The area of a square is given by x^2. Two negative numbers can solve the equation just as well as two positive numbers. But there is no such thing as negative length. Headline: "Scientists find solution to area problem that involves negative length, thus it must exist".

Another reason we can't go FTL. If one goes FTL, one must necessarily pass through c. At that point, the item would require all of the mass in the universe be converted into its kinetic energy. In other words: "You can't get there from here".

That's the beauty of a warp drive. You are moving at basically a walking pace yet covering superluminal distances.

Or you could say it's not you moving but everything else moving around you. It's very similar to how the universe is 49 billion lyr across yet has only been around for over 14.

 

[Hardcrunchyscience]

A new study provides some theoretical underpinning to sci-fi warp drives, suggesting that the superfast propulsion tech may not forever elude humanity.

Warp drives' may actually be possible someday, new study suggests : Read more

Gee, I just found my retirement career. Put together a bunch of sentences and paragraphs that sound good, plausible, and above all wishy-washy so you can't be pinned down. Submit (With some money?) to a non-peer-reviewed "journal" with a modern, cool sounding name, and voila!!! Instant credibility and believability. No need for those pesky undergrad classes, let alone the impossibly complicated grad classes. Social media "science", the wave of the future.

 

[Atlan0001]

You thrust under constant of powering to climb the hill a ways, to climb to the crest in just getting in motion, an equality of motion to the faster than light universe, then fall in acceleration, still under continuous power, the rest of the way in an accelerating universe, into the universe, until you have to reverse course, cutting power to turn on a dime, than reacquiring the constant of acceleration, to slow down and get relative to your previously invisible (previously asymptotically un-observable) destination.

You have to love that accelerating dark energy universe, and the invisibly ever straighter lines of it (SPACETIME's past-future histories light cones), that will do so much of your work for you! So much of your work for you that you will have to begin minimizing your power input into accelerations so as NOT to overshoot destinations observably speeding up in space and time to catch up to you and rendezvous with you at a combined point of asymptote rendezvous.

**Reminder!** The "observable universe" is NOT the universe ("The map is NOT the territory")!