What You’ll Discover in This Article:
- A revolutionary paper presents a feasible warp drive model.
- This new concept steps away from the need for impossible negative energy.
- While promising, warp speed is still likely decades or even centuries away.
In a groundbreaking research paper, scientists have shared an intriguing model of a warp drive. For years, we’ve thought that achieving warp speed depended on some wild, negative forces, but this research turns that idea on its head.
To appreciate this achievement, let’s quickly review the wild concept of traveling through folded space.
Generally, the term “warp drive” got popularized through science fiction, especially in the legendary series Star Trek. Within that universe, the Federation’s faster-than-light travel happens thanks to colliding matter with antimatter to create explosive energy for motion. This incredible force feeds the ship’s ability to zoom past light speed.
For decades, scientists have been on the search for ways to make faster-than-light travel happen. One pivotal reason behind this quest is practicality: without a warp drive, traveling to neighboring star systems is just impossible. Our closest trip at light speed would take about four years.
The foundation of our current warp theory comes from 1994, rooted in the work of the prominent theoretical physicist, Miguel Alcubierre, who introduced what we know as the Alcubierre drive.
This historic model abides by Einstein’s general theory of relativity to allow travel beyond light speed. Alcubierre described it as “a local expansion of spacetime behind the ship and an opposite contraction in front of it,” enabling motion faster than light from the viewpoint of external observers.
In basic terms, achieving an Alcubierre drive would demand a colossal amount of energy—potentially more than exists in the universe—to contract and twist the space-time ahead of it and generate a bubble. Interestingly enough, passengers inside this bubble wouldn’t experience any direct acceleration while still playing by the laws of physics, as the ship would be outside of normal space-time.
To visualize, think of conducting that classic “tablecloth and dishes” trick: the spaceship sits atop the spacetime tablecloth, while the drive creatively pulls the fabric beneath, making it seem as if the ship has moved.
Alcubierre illustrated spacetime’s extension on one side of the ship while collapsing it on the other, which requires that immense energy, plus some mysterious exotic matter—essentially negative energy.
Critics of the Alcubierre drive argue that the high mass and negative energy needed make a warp propulsion system an unattainable task for humans. While NASA has been pursuing the construction of a notable warp drive through Eagleworks Laboratories over the last decade, tangible results are still elusive.
This brings us to the fresh study released by scientists from the Advanced Propulsion Laboratory (APL) at Applied Physics, published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity. In their report, the APL team has introduced what could be known as the first-ever concrete model for a physical warp drive that entirely skirts the concept of negative energy.
Understandably, the paper is quite dense (check it out here), but here’s the essence of their new model: previous theories lean heavily on negative energy—those elusive exotic materials we have yet to unravel. Meanwhile, APL’s idea instead instills the vision of floating bubbles of spacetime rather than complex obstacles in spacetime.
In this innovative model, almost no reliance on negative energy exists, focusing instead on behaving bubbles within spacetime. And this is just one of various possibilities for how warp speeds might operate. Establishing a vision that we can actually wrap our heads around is a notable advancement.
Interestingly enough, Alcubierre himself has endorsed this new approach. That’s a monumental compliment, akin to receiving a thumbs-up from the legendary Albert Einstein.
Check out this informative video by Sabine Hossenfelder, a Professor and Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, as she explains the findings:
However, it’s crucial to recognize the enormous caveat: this idea still lurks in the “far-off future” category, discussed in the realm of scientific imagination. As the APL scientists put it, “While the mass requirements needed for such modifications are still enormous at present, our work suggests a method of constructing such objects based on fully understood laws of physics.”
Even if the practical realization of a physical warp drive isn’t just around the corner—whether tomorrow, next year, or even in a hundred years—this thrilling fresh model means that warp speed travel suddenly feels a lot more possible than we dared to hope before!
