Warp drives and their nacelles, plasma conduits and dilithium crystals and
subspace processor cores... those things are just storytelling devices
ways for fiction writers to create a realistic seeming world in which humans explore
broad swaths of the galaxy, ways to go where no one has gone before
on a TV show, not in real life. Right?
Now, I'm not gonna lie. The physics and math involved here... kind of mind-boggling
and it's all theoretical anyway, so consider this the most basic of primers
regarding device that will probably not ever exist. But if it does...
Oh, if it does. It's all about exploiting a kind of a loophole in Einstein's
theory of relativity, which handling proves that nothing can move faster than light.
But what if, instead of moving the object, we moved the space around it.
The idea is to manipulate space-time. For the purposes of theoretical physics
space and time are two parts of the same thing. While it is impossible for any
object to move faster than light scientists do not believe that there is
any speed limit when it comes to the ability of spacetime itself to expand
and contract. So, the idea of a warp drive – as first seriously suggested in 1994 by
Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre – is that an object remains still inside
something called a warp bubble and then space moves around it. The warp in "warpdrive"
refers to the theory that such a device would use gravity to compress
spacetime ahead of it and expand spacetime behind it. As the empty space
behind the vehicle expands rapidly it would push the craft forward anyone on
the vehicle would perceive this is crazy fast movements. But yeah, about that warp
bubble, spacetime, it turns out to be pretty sturdy stuff
expanding and contracting it requires an enormous amount of negative energy and
on Alcubierre's model initiating such a device meant coming up with the energy
equivalent of the mass of Jupiter. And that right there explains why we didn't
hear much about this idea for the next 18 years. Jump ahead the last September
where at the 100 year starship symposium NASA scientists Harold White – seen here
holding a fancy sciency looking thing – saw that his team may have discovered a more
practical method to build a warp drive by changing the geometry of the bubble.
In an interview with Io9, White said: "I suddenly realized that if you made the
thickness of the negative vacuum energy ring larger like shifting from a belt
shape to a donut shape – and oscillate the warp bubble,
you can greatly reduce the energy required – perhaps making the idea
plausible". Reason models are suggested that a craft pushed along by such a
system could reach 10 times the speed of light fast enough to get to Alpha Centauri
in six months using only 65 exajoules of energy.
Yeah, that's... that's a lot of energy, isn't? It's like roughly the amount of
energy that's consumed by all of America every year. So, yeah, but at least it's an
amount of energy that we're capable of creating. At the Eagleworks Lab, where
NASA investigates advanced propulsion systems, White and his colleagues are
using laser interferometry to try and measure whether or not they can create
minuscule but detectable warp bubbles. And if they prove that it can work even
on a small scale, practical applications might not be far away, though
65 exajoules is not an easy amount of energy to come by. And it's not just
normal energy either its theoretical weird
wibbly negative energy. On the other end, everybody knows that Zephram Cochrane didn't
pilot the first warp drive until 2063, so we shouldn't be surprised that there's
still quite a lot of work to do. But NASA stated: "Goal is to build interstellar spacecraft before 2100".
So, if you're lucky – and maybe a little younger than me – you may indeed be around
to see it. Thank you for watching this episode of SciShow. If you have any
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