Photo by: NASA

NASA

The New Warp Drive Idea Isn’t Very Warpy

Headline after headline is sharing the exciting news: a pair of theoretical physicists have realized that our sci-fi dreams may be real: it may be possible to build an actual, operational warp drive. One problem: it doesn’t go all that fast.

March 19, 2021

Let’s start with the physics (such as they are) of warp drives. In 1994, Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre figured out how to make a warp drive (sort of) possible. In physics, we understand the nature of gravity through Einstein’s theory of general relativity. General relativity (or just “GR” is you’re feeling brief) tells us that space and time bend, warp, and flex in the presence of matter of energy. In turn, that bending and warping and flexing of spacetime instructs matter how to move.

As Alcubierre discovered, the upshot of all this is that by carefully manipulating spacetime around a spacecraft (say, by compressing the space in front of the craft and stretching it out behind you), you can move without…moving. The space in front of you pulls, the space behind you pushes, and while standing perfectly still you get to move forward as fast as you want…even faster than the speed of light, hence the “warp drive” moniker.

Photo by: Twitter/Miguel Alcubierre

Twitter/Miguel Alcubierre

One problem: An Alcubierre “drive” requires a giant ball of material with negative mass. As in, literally something weighing negative pounds. That’s what you need to make spacetime warp the way you want it to for a…warp drive.

That stinks. Negative mass doesn’t really exist, so you can’t build an Alcubierre drive.

According to the pair of theoretical physicists, however, you can still build a warp drive, it just won’t be as fun. They demonstrated that an incredibly dense shell of matter (as in, taking the entire mass of the Earth and compressing it to make an eggshell), you can affect spacetime in another way.

Remember, “spacetime” includes both space and time, and general relativity allows you to manipulate both. You can slow down or speed up the passage of time just as easily as you can bend and warp space.

Artist's Concept of Warp Drive

Photo by: NASA

NASA

Artist's Concept of Warp Drive

A shell of super-dense material bends both space and time – for any passengers inside the shell, the experience time at a slower rate than the outside the universe. That means that for a few seconds or minutes on their watch, they can appear to travel for hundreds or thousands of years, which is plenty of time to hop from star to star.

The warp drive is here! Almost. The physicists found that this “drive” still needs to be accelerated by a normal propulsion system; the time-bending effects only work when it’s already traveling at constant speed. And no matter what, you can never bend spacetime enough to achieve faster-than-light speeds. To do that still requires matter with negative mass.

So it’s not much of a warp drive, but more of a time-distortion bubble. Which is still a cool thing, theoretically. If you jumped inside one (and used a regular rocket to get you moving), by the time you finished your lunch you could be arriving at a distant solar system. We don’t have any hopes of making one of these in the near future, however, because of the enormous amounts of mass needed to construct the bubble.

Photo by: NASA/Chandra X-ray Observatory Center

NASA/Chandra X-ray Observatory Center

In the meantime, enjoy your life on Earth and keep on dreaming.

Paul M. Sutter

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of How to Die in Space.

Next Up

The Milky Way Broke its Arm (But is Totally Okay)

The Milky Way is a giant, magnificent, truly transcendently beautiful spiral arm galaxy. It’s too bad we can’t get a decent picture of it. The problem is that we live inside it, and so astronomers have to work extra-hard to construct an accurate map.

When Did the First Stars Shine?

Our universe is home to up to two trillion galaxies, with each galaxy hosting hundreds of billions of stars. That’s…a lot of stars. Each one a ball of fearsome energies, powered by the nuclear fusion of fundamental elements in their hearts. Each one pouring out light into the empty cosmos, illuminating our universe for our wonder and delight.

The Nobel Prize Fell Into a Black Hole (and That’s a Good Thing)

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics is being awarded to scientists to have dedicated their careers to the study of black holes.

Watch the Super Flower Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse

Those located in the Americas, Europe, or Africa can see this rare total lunar eclipse during the night of May 15, 2022.

28 Billion Light-Years Away: The Most Distant Star Ever Discovered

On Wednesday, NASA announced the Hubble telescope broke a new record– detecting the most distant star ever seen.

This All-Civilian Space Mission Wants to Achieve the Highest Human Orbit Ever

Last year marked a fascinating turning point in the history of spaceflight. For the first time ever, more civilians went into space than professional ones. The private companies Virgin Galactic, Blue Origins, and SpaceX all offer seats for sale, with missions as brief as just a few minutes to as long as a few days.

When We’ll Know if NASA’s Asteroid Impact Test was a Success

Recently NASA’s DART mission succeeded in its primary goal, which was to slam a spacecraft face-first into an asteroid. For science. The intention of the mission was to test if we could actually redirect an asteroid and send it into a different orbit. But how and when will we know if it worked?

What Screaming Black Holes are Telling Us

In 2002, NASA’s orbiting X-ray observatory, the Chandra telescope, mapped out the movements of hot gas in a cluster of galaxies sitting 250 million light-years away.

Want to Name a Planet? Now’s Your Chance

Read on to learn about this rare opportunity to name a distant world observed by the James Webb Telescope.

Watch NASA's Asteroid-Crashing DART Mission Make Impact

NASA sent a spacecraft on a mission to crash into an asteroid, so how did it go?Updated 9/26/22

Related To: