Warp Drive: Space-Time Hypersurfing

From SpaceTime Hypersurfing by Michael Szpir,

In some future history, 1994 may be remembered as the year that the warp drive was first conceived to be a physical possibility. Long a cliche' of science- fiction writing, the warp drive has transported countless fictional characters through light-years of interstellar space in the time it takes for you or me to travel to the market. Unfortunately for real-world travelers, the warp drive has always been thought to be inconsistent with the laws of physics.

But all this has changed. In the May 1994 issue of Classical and Quantum Gravity, Miguel Alcubierre, a physicist at the University of Wales describes a space-travel scenario that bears an uncanny resemblance to the warp drive of science fiction. With Alcubierre's warp drive, we could reach any place in the universe in as short a time as we please!

Excerpt from Miguel Alcubierre's original paper
Class. Quantum Grav. 11 (1994), L73-L77.

It is shown how, within the framework of general relativity and without the introduction of wormholes, it is possible to modify a spacetime in a way that allows a spaceship to travel with an arbitrarily large speed. By a purely local expansion of spacetime behind the spaceship and an opposite contraction in front of it, motion faster than the speed of light as seen by observers outside the disturbed region is possible. The resulting distortion is reminiscent of the "warp drive'' of science fiction. However, just as it happens with wormholes, exotic matter will be needed in order to generate a distortion of spacetime like the one discussed here.

More recent work suggest that this warp drive could be created without exotic matter in Hyper-fast travel without negative energy.

And another paper by Hal Puthoff discussing the possibility of using Zero-point energy fluctuations to do the same thing.

What's interesting about this is that Miguel Alcubierre came up with this idea in his spare time! So ask yourself this, if one humble guy can figure this out on his time off, what do you think minds thousands or millions of times more intelligent will think up and implement?

Posted by paul at April 17, 2004 12:52 PM | TrackBack