Can we travel faster than light?
Are we capable of inventing and building such type of technology?
If we can build something like this, what level of understanding do we need and how would it help in the evolution of mankind??
Let’s Speculate about one of the most fascinating topics which is depicted by Science Fiction,
What if we build a working Warp Drive?
in today’s video of DiscoverZen.
Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre first published the concept of Warp drive as the name Alcubierre Drive or Warp Drive.
But this idea became famous after the Star Trek series used the Warp Drive for their spaceship.
In the show, it was depicted that it can reach a maximum speed of 0.73 light-years per hour, which is about 6,395 times the speed of light.
The current man-made spacecraft with the highest velocity is NASA’s Juno probe which clocked around 266,000 kilometers per hour or 165,000 miles per hour while slipping from the orbit of Jupiter.
This speed is quite high from the earth’s perspective but too slow when compared to the perspective of our Galaxy or Universe.
The speed of the Juno probe is 0.00024 times the speed of light, which is nowhere close to warp drive speed.
If we can create this technology in reality, we will see cheap and insanely fast Interstellar travel to any part of our galaxy.
If we enhance this technology, we can even explore our universe and it’s sheer size.
Just think of traveling from one galaxy to another just like you go from one room to another.
But the technology will take years of refinement and safety to use for humans.
Now let’s look at some of the technical aspects of Warp Drive
Warp Drive works by bending the space-time continuum.
The equations involved works by manipulating some equations of Einstein’s general relativity.
Einstein showed that gravity is nothing but a consequence of the curvature of space-time caused by the uneven distribution of mass.
Note that the equations which Miguel Alcubierre got for the working of Warp Drive were consistent with the Einstein General Relativity.
So, it’s not ruled out.
Now you would say that traveling in space faster than the speed of light violates the General theory of relativity.
There are some explanations here.
If you can compress the space in front and expand space behind any spaceship, it will move in space by warping it.
Technically, you are not moving but doing the trick to glide through space.
Einstein’s equation implies that nothing can travel faster than light but there are no restrictions on moving the space itself.
It’s like moving over a wave on a surfboard where water is expanded behind you pushing you from behind in the water which is compressed in front of you.
It’s easy to compress space.
I mean anything having mass can do it.
But expanding space behind a spaceship seems quite hard.
For that, you will need a negative mass that can produce antigravity, which in turn, expands space in front of you.
Now if we need negative energy, we need negative or exotic matter. So, easy right?
Get the exotic matter and warp through space.
No, Not Really!!
Negative or exotic matter is just a theory for now and we have not seen any proof of negative matter what-so-ever in our observation till today.
It should not be confused with antimatter, antimatter has a positive mass and positive gravity.
Antimatter differs from normal matter just by their charge i.e. electrons which are antimatter, they have a positive charge whereas protons have a negative charge.
So, what are the other things which can expand space?
We might be able to understand the dark matter in the future which can help in negative gravity.
As we know that our universe is expanding, the real culprit for that can be Dark matter.
Now let’s look at some other points of the theory.
In some calculations done by many scientists, they found that it’s nearly impossible to reach the kind of speed we were seeing in movies even if we will use all the matter of our universe.
But for a fair-sized spaceship, we might be able to reach up to 10 percent of the speed of light.
Now that itself is too impressive considering our current speeds of rockets.
We first thought that the Warp Drive is just a random theory and it is impossible to exist.
But after doing some research, we found that there is some real physics in play with the
Warp Drive.
It’s impossible to build for us for now as we are limited by the current technology but it provides a solid option for humans to expand in space faster than ever.
We don’t know what we can do in the far future.
At the end of the day, physics is all about extreme theoretical possibilities and then trying to prove or disprove the same.
Do you think that Warp Drive needs too much physics understanding and impossible to build in the 21st century?
What if we try something that is possible with our current technology?
Like, What Happens if we Terraformed Mars?
That sounds like a different Scenario to speculate and investigate on DiscoverZen.