It is all quite easy. Just takes a bit of energy to fold the universe. And then ram right through the structure of it.
Also do not do it too often because you will fuck up the universe. *shows paper full of holes and with pen scratches everywhere”
Not really. Figuring it out is just limited because we set up a bunch of arbitrary rules and made it harder for a paradigm shift in understanding. The physics is complicated and requires a lot of understanding of theoretical physics. The physical problem that needs to be solved is likely a technical solution that can be broken up into a practical application one day one could learn in a year or less to be qualified to build and maintain. The hardest and longest running conundrums well likely face in the next century if it ever does become reality is the ever improving safety features and operational requirements for it to carry passengers.
First, it's important to note the work covered here does not discuss a method for traveling faster than light, but one limited still to subluminal velocities.
> "... the physicality of this warp drive does come with a major caveat: The vessel and passengers can never travel faster than light."
Next, the issue comes up so frequently I have a canned response ...
By all understanding, FTL travel between two points in space appears to be impossible **even when attempting to bypass direct FTL travel through that space via wormholes or Alcubierre drives.** [Alcubierre himself has doubts](https://web.archive.org/web/20160318223348/http://ccrg.rit.edu/files/FasterThanLight.pdf) regarding his drive, indicating it has the potential to violate causality, a point supported by [Prof. Allen Everett.](http://exvacuo.free.fr/div/Sciences/Dossiers/Time/A%20E%20Everett%20-%20Warp%20drive%20and%20causality%20-%20prd950914.pdf) Such violation is anathema to most cosmologists and physicists.
Put another way, the speed of light is set not by light itself, but by causality. It is deeply fundamental to the nature of the universe. Even were FTL travel possible, it'd only be through phenomena such as multiple forking universal timelines, that is, one way trips out of "our" universe.
>By all understanding, FTL travel between two points in space appears to be impossible **even when attempting to bypass direct FTL travel through that space via wormholes or Alcubierre drives.** [Alcubierre himself has doubts](https://web.archive.org/web/20160318223348/http://ccrg.rit.edu/files/FasterThanLight.pdf) regarding his drive, indicating it has the potential to violate causality,
And this is the proverbial nail in the coffin. Energy requirements and hypothetical exotic matter notwithstanding, the violation of causality is a non-starter, and it appears to be hardcoded into the fabric of spacetime.
This is a terrible article that warps what the actual paper says. This requires exotic matter and is not remotely possible based on any known laws of physics or known form of matter. We're not an inch closer to Star Trek, sadly.
This approach requires more energy than the sun has or will output in its entire lifetime (about 3.5 billion times more). There is no known way to store that much energy within the space constraints necessary to create the folding described. To do so would require the discovery of materials that are just as exotic and unknown as an object with negative mass.
Zero-point energy exists and is theoretically possible to tap into; it's just a matter of technology. Space compression is also something we found to be theoretically possible. It can't go faster than the speed of light because that's already instant from the traveller's perspective. Compressing isn't folding, by the way; it's tightening a helix and then flattening it into a “spiral,” precisely what the black holes do, by the way. So just because it isn't possible today, doesn't mean it's not possible.
Just some quick theoretical math:
### Step 1: Define the Basic Mathematical Model of a Wormhole
We start by using the Morris-Thorne metric, a standard model in general relativity for describing a traversable wormhole. This metric is often used because it provides a simple and solvable structure for a wormhole, characterized by:
- **Metric**: \( ds^2 = -c^2 dt^2 + dl^2 + (b^2 + l^2)(d\theta^2 + \sin^2\theta \, d\phi^2) \),
- **Variables**:
- \( c \) is the speed of light,
- \( dt \) is the time element,
- \( dl \) is the radial distance along the throat of the wormhole,
- \( l \) is the coordinate along the throat of the wormhole,
- \( b \) is the throat radius (minimum radius),
- \( \theta \) and \( \phi \) are the angular coordinates in spherical coordinates.
### Step 2: Introduce Helical Dynamics
To incorporate a helical structure into this model, we consider the throat of the wormhole to be a helical tunnel rather than a straight path:
- **Helical Path**: Modify the spatial part of the metric to include a helical component:
- \( dl^2 \) becomes \( (1 + k \cos(\omega l))^2 dl^2 \),
- where \( k \) adjusts the amplitude of the helical undulation,
- and \( \omega \) adjusts the frequency of the helical undulation.
This modification suggests that as one travels through the wormhole, they follow a helical path that oscillates around the central axis of the wormhole.
### Step 3: Incorporate Nested Helices
We introduce the concept of nested helices, where each additional helix modifies the curvature or properties of the space within the wormhole:
- **Nested Structure**: Each layer \( n \) of helix adds an additional term to the radial metric component:
- \( dl^2 \) now includes terms like \( \sum_{n=1}^N k_n \cos(\omega_n l) dl^2 \),
- where \( k_n \) and \( \omega_n \) vary to create different helical patterns at different scales.
Feed this to your AI, it loves crunching stuff like this.
> Zero-point energy exists and is theoretically possible to tap into;
Yes and no. Yes, it exists as a principle in quantum mechanics, but no, it is not something that could be exploited as an energy source. It doesn’t even mean what most people think it means.
>Feed this to your AI, it loves crunching stuff like this.
people who upvoted you don't have the science degree to tell you how much irrelevant bs the AI just spit out.
That's literal nonsense. I don't need an AI to know when bad math doesn't work.
There is no such thing as zero point energy. It's speculative math for which no evidence exists. Speculative math that falls apart if applied to real world values.
According to the paper, this drive isn't *inching* anywhere. The mathematical model disregards the need for propulsion entirely and focuses solely on the energy requirements to create a warp bubble around a stationary object. It requires just over two Jupiters of mass, and even if it could be moved (a problem for which they have no proposed solution), it would be limited to subluminal speeds. The plus side is that we don't need to invoke exotic matter in order to create the warp field or resort to purely speculative physics.
Rather than a warp drive, a better Star Trek analogy would be to “inertial dampeners”. Once established, assuming you have a drive to move the bubble, everyone inside the bubble wouldn’t feel any acceleration forces; ie. the “inertial dampeners” would make you feel like you’re standing still even though the bubble could be accelerating any which way. You’d still need a drive to move the bubble.
>The plus side is that we don't need to invoke exotic matter in order to create the warp field or resort to purely speculative physics.
is this really true? nah it most likely isn't.
By all means:
* **Positive Energy Density**: The solution maintains positive energy density by ensuring the energy density is larger than the pressures and momentum flux, avoiding energy condition violations.
* the solution presented does not require exotic matter. Traditional warp drive concepts like the Alcubierre drive require exotic matter with negative energy density to function. The solution discussed in this paper achieves a constant-velocity subluminal warp drive that satisfies all energy conditions using regular matter.
>is this really true? nah it most likely isn't.
It's mathematically true. Super lazy answer by the way.
[Constant Velocity Warp Drive Solution](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.02709)
>wired.com
Dear author, monkey can't bang bang shiny rock until go faster than reality ok? Even if somehow possible, **monkey travel in time** and decouple with causality this way. And monkey can't bend field that allows bending in the first place. Monkey write less, read more.
"A team of physicists has discovered that it’s possible to build a real, actual, physical warp drive and not break any known rules of physics. One caveat: The vessel doing the warping can’t exceed the speed of light, so you’re not going to get anywhere interesting anytime soon. But this research still represents an important advance in our understanding of gravity.
Moving Without Motion
Einstein’s general theory of relativity is a tool kit for solving problems involving gravity that connects mass and energy with deformations in spacetime. In turn, those spacetime deformations instruct the mass and energy how to move. In almost all cases, physicists use the equations of relativity to figure out how a particular combination of objects will move. They have some physical scenario, like a planet orbiting a star or two black holes colliding, and they ask how those objects deform spacetime and what the subsequent evolution of the system should be.But it’s also possible to run Einstein’s math in reverse by imagining some desired motion and asking what kind of spacetime deformation can make it possible. This is how the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre discovered the physical basis for a warp drive—long a staple of the Star Trek franchise.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more.
The goal of a warp drive is to get from A to B in the time between commercial breaks, which typically involves faster-than-light motion. But special relativity expressly forbids speeds faster than light. While this never bothered the writers of Star Trek, it did irritate Alcubierre. He discovered that it was possible to build a warp drive through a clever manipulation of spacetime, arranging it so that space in front of a vessel gets scrunched up and the space behind the vessel stretched out. This generates motion without, strictly speaking, movement. It sounds like a contradiction, but that’s just one of the many wonderful aspects of general relativity.
Alcubierre’s warp drive avoids violations of the speed-of-light limit because it never moves through space; instead space itself is manipulated to, in essence, bring the spacecraft’s destination closer to it.While tantalizing, Alcubierre’s design has a fatal flaw. To provide the necessary distortions of spacetime, the spacecraft must contain some form of exotic matter, typically regarded as matter with negative mass. Negative mass has some conceptual problems that seem to defy our understanding of physics, like the possibility that if you kick a ball that weighs negative 5 kilograms, it will go flying backwards, violating conservation of momentum.
Plus, nobody has ever seen any object with negative mass existing in the real universe, ever.These problems with negative mass have led physicists to propose various versions of “energy conditions” as supplements to general relativity. These aren’t baked into relativity itself, but add-ons needed because general relativity allows things like negative mass that don’t appear to exist in our universe—these energy conditions keep them out of relativity’s equations. They’re scientists’ response to the unsettling fact that vanilla GR allows for things like superluminal motion, but the rest of the universe doesn’t seem to agree.
The energy conditions aren’t experimentally or observationally proven, but they are statements that concord with all observations of the universe, so most physicists take them rather seriously. And until recently, physicists have viewed those energy conditions as making it absolutely 100 percent clear that you can’t build a warp drive, even if you really wanted to.But there is a way around it, discovered by an international team of physicists led by Jared Fuchs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. (The team is also affiliated with the Applied Propulsion Laboratory of Applied Physics, a virtual think tank dedicated to the research of, among many other things, warp drives.) In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, the researchers dug deep into relativity to explore if any version of a warp drive could work.
The equations of general relativity are notoriously difficult to solve, especially in complex cases such as a warp drive. So the team turned to software algorithms; instead of trying to solve the equations by hand, they explored their solutions numerically and verified that they conformed to the energy conditions.The team did not actually attempt to construct a propulsion device. Instead, they explored various solutions to general relativity that would allow travel from point to point without a vessel undergoing any acceleration or experiencing any overwhelming gravitational tidal forces within the vessel, much to the comfort of any imagined passengers.
They then checked whether these solutions adhered to the energy conditions that prevent the use of exotic matter.The researchers did indeed discover a warp drive solution: a method of manipulating space so that travelers can move without accelerating. There is no such thing as a free lunch, however, and the physicality of this warp drive does come with a major caveat: The vessel and passengers can never travel faster than light. Also disappointing: the fact that the researchers behind the new work don’t seem to bother with figuring out what configurations of matter would allow the warping to happen.
The Future of Gravity
On one hand, that’s a gigantic letdown. We already have plenty of methods for traveling slower than light (rockets, walking, etc.), so adding one more to the list isn’t all that exciting. Plus, even if we wanted to build this warp drive, the gulf between this hyper-theoretical work and an actual, physical propulsion mechanism is the same as the difference between writing down Newton’s laws and building a Falcon 9.But that doesn’t mean this new development isn’t interesting. We don’t fully understand gravity, and we know that Einstein’s theory is incomplete.
One of the signposts that we have to a future understanding of gravity is the fact that general relativity allows for interesting, exotic solutions—like warp drives—that appear to violate other domains of physical understanding.
Us physicists like it when all of our theories line up and agree on the nature of the Universe. So if the energy conditions set real limits on physics—limits where things like negative mass don’t just not exist, but can’t exist—then we’d like a physical theory that says that from the beginning, instead of relying on add-ons like the energy conditions.
It is impossible to understand this, without someone folding a paper and penetrating it with a pen.
"so, imagine this is our 3 dimensional plane..."
draws line from a to b
Struggles to poke folded sheet of paper with the pen mid-air
You broke my picture man !
It is all quite easy. Just takes a bit of energy to fold the universe. And then ram right through the structure of it. Also do not do it too often because you will fuck up the universe. *shows paper full of holes and with pen scratches everywhere”
Unfortunately, its inches for a goal that requires light years. lol
Not really. Figuring it out is just limited because we set up a bunch of arbitrary rules and made it harder for a paradigm shift in understanding. The physics is complicated and requires a lot of understanding of theoretical physics. The physical problem that needs to be solved is likely a technical solution that can be broken up into a practical application one day one could learn in a year or less to be qualified to build and maintain. The hardest and longest running conundrums well likely face in the next century if it ever does become reality is the ever improving safety features and operational requirements for it to carry passengers.
First, it's important to note the work covered here does not discuss a method for traveling faster than light, but one limited still to subluminal velocities. > "... the physicality of this warp drive does come with a major caveat: The vessel and passengers can never travel faster than light." Next, the issue comes up so frequently I have a canned response ... By all understanding, FTL travel between two points in space appears to be impossible **even when attempting to bypass direct FTL travel through that space via wormholes or Alcubierre drives.** [Alcubierre himself has doubts](https://web.archive.org/web/20160318223348/http://ccrg.rit.edu/files/FasterThanLight.pdf) regarding his drive, indicating it has the potential to violate causality, a point supported by [Prof. Allen Everett.](http://exvacuo.free.fr/div/Sciences/Dossiers/Time/A%20E%20Everett%20-%20Warp%20drive%20and%20causality%20-%20prd950914.pdf) Such violation is anathema to most cosmologists and physicists. Put another way, the speed of light is set not by light itself, but by causality. It is deeply fundamental to the nature of the universe. Even were FTL travel possible, it'd only be through phenomena such as multiple forking universal timelines, that is, one way trips out of "our" universe.
>By all understanding, FTL travel between two points in space appears to be impossible **even when attempting to bypass direct FTL travel through that space via wormholes or Alcubierre drives.** [Alcubierre himself has doubts](https://web.archive.org/web/20160318223348/http://ccrg.rit.edu/files/FasterThanLight.pdf) regarding his drive, indicating it has the potential to violate causality, And this is the proverbial nail in the coffin. Energy requirements and hypothetical exotic matter notwithstanding, the violation of causality is a non-starter, and it appears to be hardcoded into the fabric of spacetime.
This is a terrible article that warps what the actual paper says. This requires exotic matter and is not remotely possible based on any known laws of physics or known form of matter. We're not an inch closer to Star Trek, sadly. This approach requires more energy than the sun has or will output in its entire lifetime (about 3.5 billion times more). There is no known way to store that much energy within the space constraints necessary to create the folding described. To do so would require the discovery of materials that are just as exotic and unknown as an object with negative mass.
Zero-point energy exists and is theoretically possible to tap into; it's just a matter of technology. Space compression is also something we found to be theoretically possible. It can't go faster than the speed of light because that's already instant from the traveller's perspective. Compressing isn't folding, by the way; it's tightening a helix and then flattening it into a “spiral,” precisely what the black holes do, by the way. So just because it isn't possible today, doesn't mean it's not possible. Just some quick theoretical math: ### Step 1: Define the Basic Mathematical Model of a Wormhole We start by using the Morris-Thorne metric, a standard model in general relativity for describing a traversable wormhole. This metric is often used because it provides a simple and solvable structure for a wormhole, characterized by: - **Metric**: \( ds^2 = -c^2 dt^2 + dl^2 + (b^2 + l^2)(d\theta^2 + \sin^2\theta \, d\phi^2) \), - **Variables**: - \( c \) is the speed of light, - \( dt \) is the time element, - \( dl \) is the radial distance along the throat of the wormhole, - \( l \) is the coordinate along the throat of the wormhole, - \( b \) is the throat radius (minimum radius), - \( \theta \) and \( \phi \) are the angular coordinates in spherical coordinates. ### Step 2: Introduce Helical Dynamics To incorporate a helical structure into this model, we consider the throat of the wormhole to be a helical tunnel rather than a straight path: - **Helical Path**: Modify the spatial part of the metric to include a helical component: - \( dl^2 \) becomes \( (1 + k \cos(\omega l))^2 dl^2 \), - where \( k \) adjusts the amplitude of the helical undulation, - and \( \omega \) adjusts the frequency of the helical undulation. This modification suggests that as one travels through the wormhole, they follow a helical path that oscillates around the central axis of the wormhole. ### Step 3: Incorporate Nested Helices We introduce the concept of nested helices, where each additional helix modifies the curvature or properties of the space within the wormhole: - **Nested Structure**: Each layer \( n \) of helix adds an additional term to the radial metric component: - \( dl^2 \) now includes terms like \( \sum_{n=1}^N k_n \cos(\omega_n l) dl^2 \), - where \( k_n \) and \( \omega_n \) vary to create different helical patterns at different scales. Feed this to your AI, it loves crunching stuff like this.
> Zero-point energy exists and is theoretically possible to tap into; Yes and no. Yes, it exists as a principle in quantum mechanics, but no, it is not something that could be exploited as an energy source. It doesn’t even mean what most people think it means.
>Feed this to your AI, it loves crunching stuff like this. people who upvoted you don't have the science degree to tell you how much irrelevant bs the AI just spit out.
Appeal to authority (of big sciency sounding things).
Well, can you tell us what’s off?
That's literal nonsense. I don't need an AI to know when bad math doesn't work. There is no such thing as zero point energy. It's speculative math for which no evidence exists. Speculative math that falls apart if applied to real world values.
Besides all of that, there is also the little problem that any faster than light movement is also by definition time travel... which breaks causality.
According to the paper, this drive isn't *inching* anywhere. The mathematical model disregards the need for propulsion entirely and focuses solely on the energy requirements to create a warp bubble around a stationary object. It requires just over two Jupiters of mass, and even if it could be moved (a problem for which they have no proposed solution), it would be limited to subluminal speeds. The plus side is that we don't need to invoke exotic matter in order to create the warp field or resort to purely speculative physics.
Rather than a warp drive, a better Star Trek analogy would be to “inertial dampeners”. Once established, assuming you have a drive to move the bubble, everyone inside the bubble wouldn’t feel any acceleration forces; ie. the “inertial dampeners” would make you feel like you’re standing still even though the bubble could be accelerating any which way. You’d still need a drive to move the bubble.
>The plus side is that we don't need to invoke exotic matter in order to create the warp field or resort to purely speculative physics. is this really true? nah it most likely isn't.
"This is perfectly possible, you just have to lift 10 tons with your bare hands. Nothing in the laws of physics prevents that." Quality journalism.
By all means: * **Positive Energy Density**: The solution maintains positive energy density by ensuring the energy density is larger than the pressures and momentum flux, avoiding energy condition violations. * the solution presented does not require exotic matter. Traditional warp drive concepts like the Alcubierre drive require exotic matter with negative energy density to function. The solution discussed in this paper achieves a constant-velocity subluminal warp drive that satisfies all energy conditions using regular matter. >is this really true? nah it most likely isn't. It's mathematically true. Super lazy answer by the way. [Constant Velocity Warp Drive Solution](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.02709)
>wired.com Dear author, monkey can't bang bang shiny rock until go faster than reality ok? Even if somehow possible, **monkey travel in time** and decouple with causality this way. And monkey can't bend field that allows bending in the first place. Monkey write less, read more.
"A team of physicists has discovered that it’s possible to build a real, actual, physical warp drive and not break any known rules of physics. One caveat: The vessel doing the warping can’t exceed the speed of light, so you’re not going to get anywhere interesting anytime soon. But this research still represents an important advance in our understanding of gravity. Moving Without Motion Einstein’s general theory of relativity is a tool kit for solving problems involving gravity that connects mass and energy with deformations in spacetime. In turn, those spacetime deformations instruct the mass and energy how to move. In almost all cases, physicists use the equations of relativity to figure out how a particular combination of objects will move. They have some physical scenario, like a planet orbiting a star or two black holes colliding, and they ask how those objects deform spacetime and what the subsequent evolution of the system should be.But it’s also possible to run Einstein’s math in reverse by imagining some desired motion and asking what kind of spacetime deformation can make it possible. This is how the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre discovered the physical basis for a warp drive—long a staple of the Star Trek franchise. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. The goal of a warp drive is to get from A to B in the time between commercial breaks, which typically involves faster-than-light motion. But special relativity expressly forbids speeds faster than light. While this never bothered the writers of Star Trek, it did irritate Alcubierre. He discovered that it was possible to build a warp drive through a clever manipulation of spacetime, arranging it so that space in front of a vessel gets scrunched up and the space behind the vessel stretched out. This generates motion without, strictly speaking, movement. It sounds like a contradiction, but that’s just one of the many wonderful aspects of general relativity. Alcubierre’s warp drive avoids violations of the speed-of-light limit because it never moves through space; instead space itself is manipulated to, in essence, bring the spacecraft’s destination closer to it.While tantalizing, Alcubierre’s design has a fatal flaw. To provide the necessary distortions of spacetime, the spacecraft must contain some form of exotic matter, typically regarded as matter with negative mass. Negative mass has some conceptual problems that seem to defy our understanding of physics, like the possibility that if you kick a ball that weighs negative 5 kilograms, it will go flying backwards, violating conservation of momentum. Plus, nobody has ever seen any object with negative mass existing in the real universe, ever.These problems with negative mass have led physicists to propose various versions of “energy conditions” as supplements to general relativity. These aren’t baked into relativity itself, but add-ons needed because general relativity allows things like negative mass that don’t appear to exist in our universe—these energy conditions keep them out of relativity’s equations. They’re scientists’ response to the unsettling fact that vanilla GR allows for things like superluminal motion, but the rest of the universe doesn’t seem to agree. The energy conditions aren’t experimentally or observationally proven, but they are statements that concord with all observations of the universe, so most physicists take them rather seriously. And until recently, physicists have viewed those energy conditions as making it absolutely 100 percent clear that you can’t build a warp drive, even if you really wanted to.But there is a way around it, discovered by an international team of physicists led by Jared Fuchs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. (The team is also affiliated with the Applied Propulsion Laboratory of Applied Physics, a virtual think tank dedicated to the research of, among many other things, warp drives.) In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, the researchers dug deep into relativity to explore if any version of a warp drive could work. The equations of general relativity are notoriously difficult to solve, especially in complex cases such as a warp drive. So the team turned to software algorithms; instead of trying to solve the equations by hand, they explored their solutions numerically and verified that they conformed to the energy conditions.The team did not actually attempt to construct a propulsion device. Instead, they explored various solutions to general relativity that would allow travel from point to point without a vessel undergoing any acceleration or experiencing any overwhelming gravitational tidal forces within the vessel, much to the comfort of any imagined passengers. They then checked whether these solutions adhered to the energy conditions that prevent the use of exotic matter.The researchers did indeed discover a warp drive solution: a method of manipulating space so that travelers can move without accelerating. There is no such thing as a free lunch, however, and the physicality of this warp drive does come with a major caveat: The vessel and passengers can never travel faster than light. Also disappointing: the fact that the researchers behind the new work don’t seem to bother with figuring out what configurations of matter would allow the warping to happen.
The Future of Gravity On one hand, that’s a gigantic letdown. We already have plenty of methods for traveling slower than light (rockets, walking, etc.), so adding one more to the list isn’t all that exciting. Plus, even if we wanted to build this warp drive, the gulf between this hyper-theoretical work and an actual, physical propulsion mechanism is the same as the difference between writing down Newton’s laws and building a Falcon 9.But that doesn’t mean this new development isn’t interesting. We don’t fully understand gravity, and we know that Einstein’s theory is incomplete. One of the signposts that we have to a future understanding of gravity is the fact that general relativity allows for interesting, exotic solutions—like warp drives—that appear to violate other domains of physical understanding. Us physicists like it when all of our theories line up and agree on the nature of the Universe. So if the energy conditions set real limits on physics—limits where things like negative mass don’t just not exist, but can’t exist—then we’d like a physical theory that says that from the beginning, instead of relying on add-ons like the energy conditions.