What's Stopping Us From Building a Warp Drive?
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A faster-than-light (FTL) warp drive would arguably represent the most important invention of all time. In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre gave all of us hope as he found a solution within general relativity that would cause the necessary warping of space. But after nearly 30 years of further study, what does our current understanding of physics say about the feasibility of a warp drive?
Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping. Thanks to Bobrick Martire for clarifications and to John Michael Godier and team for audio from their interview with Alcubierre ( • Can We Travel Faster T... ). Thumbnail image by Zamanday Yolculugunu (www.zamandayolculuk.com)
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THANK-YOU to D. Smith, M. Sloan, L. Sanborn, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, A. Jones, S. Brownlee, N. Kildal, Z. Star, E. West, T. Zajonc, C. Wolfred, L. Skov, G. Benson, A. De Vaal, M. Elliott, B. Daniluk, M. Forbes, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee, Z. Danielson, C. Fitzgerald, C. Souter, M. Gillette, T. Jeffcoat, J. Rockett, D. Murphree, T. Donkin, K. Myers, A. Schoen, K. Dabrowski, J. Black, R. Ramezankhani, J. Armstrong, K. Weber, S. Marks, L. Robinson, S. Roulier, B. Smith, J. Cassese, J. Kruger, S. Way, P. Finch, S. Applegate, L. Watson, E. Zahnle, N. Gebben, J. Bergman, E. Dessoi, C. Macdonald, M. Hedlund, P. Kaup, C. Hays, W. Evans, D. Bansal, J. Curtin, J. Sturm, RAND Corp., M. Donovan, N. Corwin, M. Mangione, K. Howard, L. Deacon, G. Metts, G. Genova, R. Provost, B. Sigurjonsson, G. Fullwood, B. Walford, J. Boyd, N. De Haan, J. Gillmer, R. Williams, E. Garland, A. Leishman, A. Phan Le, R. Lovely, M. Spoto, A. Steele, M. Varenka, K. Yarbrough, A. Cornejo, D. Compos, F. Demopoulos, G. Bylinsky, J. Werner, B. Pearson, S. Thayer, T. Edris, A. Harrison, B. Seeley, F. Blood, M. O'Brien, P. Muzyka, E. Loomans, D. Lee, J. Sargent, M. Czirr, F. Krotzer, I. Williams & J. Sattler.
REFERENCES
► Alcubierre 1994, Class. Quant. Grav. 11, L73 arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0009013
► Everett 1996, Phys. Rev. D 53, 7365 journals.aps.org/prd/abstract...
► Krasnikov 1998, Phys. Rev. D 57, 4760 arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9511068
► Pfenning & Ford 1998, Phys. Rev. D 57, 3489 arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9710055
► Van Den Broeck 1999, Class. Quant. Grav. 16, 3973 arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9905084
► Bobrick & Martire 2021, Class. Quant. Grav. 38, 22 arxiv.org/abs/2102.06824
► Fell & Heisenberg 2021, Class. Quant. Grav. 38, 16 arxiv.org/abs/2104.06488
► Lentz 2021, Class. Quant. Grav. 38, 14 iopscience.iop.org/article/10...
► Santiago et al. 2022, Phys. Rev. D 105, 064038 arxiv.org/abs/2105.03079
► McMonigal et al. 2012, Phys. Rev. D 85, 064024 arxiv.org/abs/1202.5708
► Finazzi et al. 2009, Phys. Rev. D 79, 124017 arxiv.org/abs/0904.0141
► Coule 1998, Class. Quant. Grav. 15, 2523 iopscience.iop.org/article/10...
► Van Den Broeck 1999, arXiv arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9906050
► Gast 2021, Scientific American www.scientificamerican.com/article/star-treks-warp-drive-leads-to-new-physics/
► Hawking 1992, Phys. Rev. D 46, 603 journals.aps.org/prd/abstract...
► Alcubierre & Lobo 2017, Wormholes, Warp Drives and Energy Conditions, Fundam. Theor. Phys. 189, 257 arxiv.org/abs/2103.05610
MUSIC
Licensed by SoundStripe.com (SS) [shorturl.at/ptBHI], Artlist.io, via CC Attribution License (creativecommons.org/licenses/...) or with permission from the artist.
► 0:00 Sid Acharya - Searching for Answers
► 3:18 Falls - Life in Binary
► 5:01 Hill - There is but One Good [open.spotify.com/track/1vlxAs...]
► 9:49 Chris Zabriskie - Cylinder Four
► 11:42 Falls - Ripley
► 14:00 Chris Zabriskie - We Were Never Meant to Live Here
► 17:06 Caleb Etheridge - Always Dreaming
► 18:52 Hill - The Promise of You [open.spotify.com/track/4VDKid...]
► 21:11 Joachim Heinrich - Y
► 23:34 Indive - Trace Correction
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
3:18 Energy
5:01 Exotica
8:26 Blinkist
9:49 Horizons
11:42 Radiation
14:00 Catch-22
17:06 Causality
21:11 Conclusions
23:24 Outro
#astrophysics #warpdrive #ftlfasterthanlight
Thank-you for watching and let me know whether you think a warp drive will ever happen? Thanks to Blinkist for sponsoring - Get a 7-day free trial and 25% off Blinkist Annual Premium by clicking here: www.blinkist.com/coolworldslab
If we were able to warp space-time to create a warp bubble around the ship, wouldn't it make sense to also warp the space inside the bubble to create a gravity well for the travelers? If you could mimic the exact distortion that Earth creates, then wouldn't time "tick" at the same rate as back home regardless of where you go?
I don’t think so especially not after watching riddle channel about the pole shift 😮😂
Not likely. It's just pure science fiction.
@@tonywells6990 Certainly couldn't have occurred to me that that something so speculative might be squarely in the realm of science fiction and unlikely. Thanks. Very enlightening feedback.
I won’t put much past human ingenuity. We went from stone tools to now in 2.6 million+-. The advancements we’ve made in the last 6-7,000 yrs has been exponential by comparison. Who knows what we will achieve! Thank you Dr. Kipping!!!
As an engineer, love engineering challenges. Usually I just say it’s a money problem, but plank length metal isn’t really a money problem lol.
This is the true story of your enslavement, the "elite" exposed 👉 The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
Any sufficiently advanced tech seems impossible ❤
@@dienvidbriedis1184No it's an Engineering problem .
@@dienvidbriedis1184No it's an Engineering problem .
@@jedaaait’s really more of a physics problem still, or a mathematical problem. There are so many physics related issues with warp drives like causality issues, whether or not the bubble is affected by time dilation, hawking radiation destroying the bubble, etc…..
Imagine you use the warp drive to jump to the nearest star. Once you got there you could look through an extremely powerful telescope and see yourself in the past because the light traveled slower than you did. I love this idea
Just like we see light from stars that are long gone, you would just see a light from your spaceship that is no longer there, like a light footprint.
I do believe the technical term for this is “The Picard Manoeuvre”
imagine you travel AT the speed of light. already times and distances are zero, and all travel is instantaneous from your point of view. now what happens if you go faster than instantaneous? i think this drive is supposed to not be subject to relativistic effects though, what i understood anyway, which would be it's big benefit -- you could go far away and come back without being younger than your daughter...
people have been doing that in sci fi to look back and see the disaster or alien attack that happened yesterday since at least the 50's.
Just like if you theoretically sat at the event horizon of a black hole and looked to your left or right, you’d see yourself in the past.
"The problem with space travel isn't reaching your destination: the problem is having the crew survive." --NASA engineers
Thats true but brother just simply send some robots to investigate
Right, I agree NASA engineers are stupid
@@climbam6714 With all due respect, Robots are not always the answer. Space is the new frontier to be explored by the representation of humanity.
@@climbam6714 Outside of the solar system, without FTL travel and/or communication, there's really no point. The amount of time it would take to get to even the closest star, do the investigation, and transmit the data back would just be far too long. If anything goes wrong, we wouldn't even know until the data doesn't come back. Ultimately, the time factor is a big problem with any travel outside our solar system (and even inside for human travel). Think of all the missions before Apollo 11 that tested the various pieces required for a moon landing. There's simply no way to test equipment beyond a certain point and get the information you need to make necessary adjustments and changes. Think of Apollo 13. One small oversight and you're out billions of dollars and will never know what happened or why.
@@climbam6714Today's robots are not able to adapt to new frontiers as fast as humans do.
The fact that a group of people around the world are busy trying to solve some of the most complex problems available, problems that their solutions feel like they are hundreds if not thousands of years ahead of us, makes me feel hopeful for a greater future for our species. I might be wrong, but I am optimistic about things and ideas like this.
same
Pipe dream
@@eithkobbsh1094 just like nuclear reactors to the Ancient Romans.
The fact that a group of so called intelligent people around the world are wasting considerable energy working on a dead end all because it scratches a wish fulfillment itch from their fav sci-fi TV show
@@freedomloverusa3030 And nuclear bombs ?? 🤔
_"...merely engineering issues..."_ When I hear that remark about speculative technology, I frequently think they're saying in a roundabout way - _"...and then magic happens..."_ An excellent video! Clear and without the hype.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic," in other words whether this in particular turns out to be possible or not, whatever does turn out to be possible eventually would have seem just as unlikely or even impossible to us now!
Yea me too. Like that classic cartoon I see this video as a fun video. Edit written before Cool worlds acknowledges the "intellectual playground" at 22:00
Basically what Isaac Newton did to some of the things he couldn't explain "God did this part"
No, if it's an engineering issue that means it's possible. Honestly I don't see how something can be *physically* possible and yet impossible in some other way for a civilization.
@@MrCmon113 How does one manipulate matter on the Planck scale? And not just matter, matter that has to be neutron star level of dense.
I'm tickled by the fact that warp field theory is becoming an actual field of physics.
I my brother we are on the verge of this sort of understanding and knowledge hes so it's not gunna be in our life time I'm thinking what 40 50 years left of my life I wanna see what happens in the 20 years
well it has to because this technology has already been reverse engineered from ET craft that crashed back in the 1940s. its sad we're only now catching up, so that's a century of progress lost.
@@HarisKhan-zf8nk oh come on, stop believing that crap. It's more likely it was humans, a breakaway civilization, the ufos seen in the 20th century look quite human made, bulkheads and windows and such. It is a huge psyop
@@HarisKhan-zf8nkTake your meds that never happened lol.
@@HarisKhan-zf8nk that never happened
We discussed this paper back when I was doing my Ph.D (it was new then). We came to the conclusion that although very interesting (and exciting), some fundamental problems existed with materials (now realised as the Planck length skin lol), energy requirements and we just couldn't get away from the paradoxes, and how quantum mechanics/gravity (if we ever get unification) would play into this. Looks like we've come a long way in understanding, but we young Ph.D students weren't too far off. Brilliant synopsis and Video. Thanks man. PS I'm now a blinkist customer, cheers lad, Dr D (aka Jed)
Glad you enjoyed and thanks for the endorsement!
We need to become robots or cyborgs to ever venture out into deep space
@@TheGecko213 That or perfect animation stasis chambers. We need to study FROGS and other animals and bacteria that slows their metabolism when frozen.
The universe is full of all the energy we would ever need if we would stop fighting over insignificant amounts of resources here on this planet. Classified technology from area S4 that Bob Lazar told us it exists and it needs more minds working on it, then we will figure it out faster.
@@eddiethompson717 No It is the biological carbon based body which prevents us from venturing into deep space . Breathing and blood is what the limits us . Cyborgs is the solution
Okay guys, I’ll build it.
Sorry it took so much convincing
If these scientists can’t build it soon I might have to get involved
@@kevraysame. We can use red stone
Mass relay stations from Mass Effect could be a solution for the horizon issue, that is a launch and catch stations. First trip would be a long one but a needed sacrifice for the ease of the rest. Kinda like a highway, you need years to build it, but hours to travel through it.
I see you're a man of culture as well
At least this is more believable method for all of this limitations. Gateway for distant travels and STL alcubierre drive to travel inside of the system.
the issue is that first trip, even if you're at 0.9999999c, is millions of earth years. By the time you make it to any meaningful distance, all life on earth is dead. We could do travel within our solar system, but not much else.
@@SnW_WolfYes, we will build anything to meet The Consort!
@@chakusekimy man!
Cool worlds and pbs space time are the only channels I re-watch videos multiple times. So information dense. Amazing as always.
you re-watch it only because it is unsolvable 🤣
I'd add PBS eons for those into earths history and past biology🗺🌋🌅🦕🦖
I also like to watch videos from Ash Arvin, he also has a very nice way to explain quantum physics. But like David says in this video: there are so many channels with this kind of information and more than 90% of those is bias, but mixed with real information, which makes it harder to distinct the facts from the fiction. Always stay critical and ask questions, do your own research and never take anything for granted! Like with David Kipper, I googled him, saw that he's an astronomer, an astrophysicist and a writer, which make the channel way more plausible. But even then, physicists also don't know everything, so still stay critical, always!
Yeah Dr.O'Dowd is super cool. Plus he's an Ozzie (sorry can't remember his names spelling offhand)
Anton Petrov is pretty good too.
The interesting thing is that Von Braun had an idea about warp drive. His idea was to use thorium reactors and magnetic fields, according to his theory depending on the strength of the magnetic field the more space you can fold.
Fold space.... Bwahaha
@@eithkobbsh1094 you realize that's a thing right?
@@YunoRiv Any evidence of us doing this, "thing".
@@eithkobbsh1094 humans havent yet but the concept itself exists. for example gravity
@@YunoRiv Gravity isn't a concept, it's a reality.
I could listen to both you and Brian Cox all day long. The two most soothing and informative voices in science. The ability to tell it all as a story is amazing. Awesome!
Despite all of the challenges, it's encouraging to see that this is not just a fantasy, but an actual branch of theoretical research
No, it's not. It's just an idea, already proven impossible.
@@java4653 If you say so, internet stranger
@java4653 what do we know We don't know how the universe works 100% So saying it's impossible forever is navie and ignorant It might be impossible forever , or possible one day
@java4653 so was a microwave at one point in time
@@Zqppymicrowave is a bit of a different scale than this proposition…
Despite all these *extremely* compelling arguments against _warp drive_ I am (somehow silly) convinced that humans, or some other intelligent being around the universe, will crack the code and break the faster than light speed barrier. We just need to keep at it.
The navy filed a patent already. I wonder why the scientific community is not attempting to build the tech outlined in it. Patent # US10144532B2. Skepticism is an impediment to progress if it prevents a person from looking at new ideas or testing them.
Agreed. It may just be as simple as us as a species not being ready to make something like this yet. It's like trying to grow up too fast, while we think it'd be cool, it may just be that we have to wait for technology to evolve even more than it already has before something like this can be done
I mean, we literally found out how to harness the power of sun to make electricity, we split the atom, we fucking launched atoms at each other and made new atoms that were once only theoretical. There's a quote I like to go back to whenever there are discussions on human progress: "(Light speed travel) is hard, but we're good at doing hard things."
The nature of the Universe is why FTL is a problem. Relativity is one of the most tested theories in human history, with, and this is important, many real-life applications that wouldn't work if relativity didn't work (like GPS). So we know it's right, or such a good approximation that it's right for all intents and purposes. The problem FTL is trying to solve is not speed (speed of light is fast enough for anybody - from his point of view, an observer traveling at c arrives to his destination *instantaneously*, you can't ask for faster than that). What it's trying to do is bring back absolute space and time, which we *know* isn't true, othervwise relativity wouldn't work. Time dilation is a bitch. Why try to bring back sbsolute space and time? Because we'd like not ony to travel really really fast, but we'd like everybody else to see us travel as fast as we percieve it, which ain't happening. Let's say you travel to a star 10000ly away at the speed of light. Again, it's instantaneous for you, really cool. But for an observer on the Earth, it takes you 10000 years for the trip. If you decide to come back, it's again instantaneous for you. But for the Earth observer, it took you another 10000 years. So you return from your basically instantaneous round trip, and find out that 20000 years passed on the Earth. Sucks. This is what the problem is, and what most FTL in sci-fi tries to wave away. And it doesn't matter what type of FTL it is (warp, hyperdrive, wormholes, you name it), you can skip the metod entirely, just the fact that your are traveling at or near c will bring out the same result. The only way to avoid this is to have absolute space and time, which we *know* isn't true. Bummer.
@@devi1sdoz3nplease keep in mind that science never settles. General relativity has cracks, the most notable being the incompatibility with quantum mechanics. So far the only field of physics that can actually claim to be perfect is electromagnetism & Maxwell's Equations. As long as humans have the power to dream we will be trying to reach the stars within a human life time, and ideally get home to tell someone we knew before leaving. This is the real goal of the exploration into a hypothetical warpdrive. Its not the warp drive itself, its what it represents, the ability to explore the cosmos in person within a human lifespan and still being able to visit your family without time dialation meaning you're having Christmas Dinner with your brother's great x20 grand kids. So long as humans can dream we will try to achieve them. For the longest time human flight was considered impossible, and then within 100 years we went from the first flight ever, a whopping 14 seconds, to landing on the F-ing Moon. I don't know how long it will take, but humanity will crack fast interstellar travel before the sun explodes killing us all. And we may even get sentimental enough to reverse entropy, or atleast find a way to jump universes. Modern physics is known to be incomplete, the dream isn't impossible, just currently out of reach.
For causality, it does make sense to me that if the chances of you going back in time are null, you shouldn't cause any feedback. But on the other hand, even a low probability should go out of control. The FTL systems must be physically unable to make use of the bubble for time travel, because we can't count on humans and their intrusive thoughts.
"If we have budget as much as the military does, we would have colonized Mars 30 years ago "
I rarely see the Horizon problem the emphasis it deserves, and it is very well described here. This is THE ONE issue which is not just an engineering challenge, but makes it outright impossible. Basically we need another FTL communication method to be invented, but that is exactly what we tried to solve with warp drive in first place.
If I understand this correctly it means you can only go between places that you've already visited.
What if whatever is creating the bubble (maybe an external not-moving-with-the-ship structure around a tube) just only has the bubble created for limited amount of time? Say... If any chosen geometry of spacetime in principle has a corresponding value for like, the masses and momenta etc., even if it isn’t like, something we can obtain a closed form solution for, what stops us from taking a geometry which has a warp bubble form at rest, and then gradually accelerate to FTL speeds, decelerate, and then un-form, and then solve (numerically, let’s say) for what matter fields would be necessary for that? Or, might one come up with answers like “the only matter field configuration that corresponds to this geometry, is one which violates conservation of mass , or momentum or energy or something” ?
The Horizon problem is merely a fundamental misunderstanding of the physics involved. Humans will eventually overcome this and be able to join the rest of the universe.
@@protoborg What misunderstanding is that?
@@protoborg Please elaborate. What is the misunderstanding and what is the correct understanding?
I wonder if the people at LIGO or the Pulsar Timing Array have figured out what a warp signature would look like. That would be a really neat way to learn we aren't alone in the Universe.
would be funny if we could detect warp signatures of other species not having a warp drive ourselves) that's like reverse ST: First contact
No it cant..at least this concept However accelerating an object through space beyond light speed would produce a boom in spacetime just like breaking the sound barrier does. Also remember it was theorized nothing would break the sound barrier so dont go screaming at me about causality. We are like infants in science yet we think we can define absolute rules for the universe.
The warp drive is fun to think about but this kind of travel is achievable by , and only by, superposition drives.
Brother, if uou have seen the news lately, it should be obvious that we are not alone
Maybe that's what dark energy is?
Best video on youtube I have seen concerning this topic, thanks for putting it together.
I really appreciate the honest assessment of where we are at with FTL space travel. Some of these KZhead videos would have you believe that we'll be going on vacations half way across the galaxy next month. That said, I suspect that there is so much about creation we don't understand yet, that history will look back on this time as when we finally started asking the right questions.
Everyone focuses on the possibility of FTL, but i think the most immediate potential is in the form of a sub-light **reactionless** engine. No longer would we depend on accelerating and ejecting propellant, or need to slow down after long distance travel. I appreciate you touching on that feature.
You sound like you'd be up for some hardcore engineering.
@@chrissyjay100 I don't know if you'd call it hardcore, I'm just an embedded software engineer.
This already exists! Look up magnetohydrodynamic engines.
The two are not different like at all😂 Give me a reactionless drive and I will give you a warpdrive , no kidding The reactionless drive ( which I believe is fact) will open up the physics and applications just like electricity and lightning. A warpdrive would be a relatively meagre application
@@cedriceric9730 it all depends on how much power is needed for a given effective speed
Always a good day when Cool Worlds drop a new video! Thanks professor kipping. :)
This is the true story of your enslavement, the "elite" exposed 👉 The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
Great content. Entretaining yet ideas are presented with proper research. Thank you.
The video you want for your highway to solve the Horizon Problem (11:00) would be from the video game Mass Effect.. you sort of described the funtion of the Mass Effect Relay system that allows ships to jump around the Galaxy.
The best days are Cool Worlds days, especially physics heavy/faster-than-light style videos! We love ya Prof Kipping!
This is the true story of your enslavement, the "elite" exposed 👉 The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
@@VeganSemihCyprus33 no one cares
I love the idea of warp gates. Its like a railroad track through the Universe. once its there it pretty much builds itself. minor some Celestial Mechanics problems but ey its a thought.
Think about explaining a microchip to someone from 100 years ago. This shit could happen in our lifetime
I absolutely love your videos because there practical within physics, you must have a whole team helping you out with these videos.
Do these same problems apply to wormholes as well? Could you do a video on that?
yep. all FTL travel has problems.
The problems of weak energy condition violation (ie. that it requires negative energy) and causality violation certainly also apply to traversable wormholes.
We need to harness some of the energy of a double spiral galaxy. Know anything about that?
@@jaystarr6571 I know that people constantly shit on our safest form of energy, being Nuclear, for reasons that aren't valid today. I know that if we actually kept pushing down the fusion chain we would eventually make it cold-sustainable. From there, self-replenishing. And then...we find whatever is next. But people have been made afraid of Nuclear Power by the Coal Industry so that they don't lose all their money.
Well my day just got 1000x better. Thank you Dr. Kipping and of course to the cool worlds team.
What's Stopping Us From Building a Warp Drive?
@@LavaCreeperPeople Us is stopping Us!
…”you complete me”
He mentioned 6 fundamental… What are the others?
Better lol how does a slightly better understanding of how impossible SLT is make your day
"I remember reading these papers as a teenager" I'm happy that people like you exist
I know right
You typically start university at 18 in the UK and special relativity is likely taught in the first year of a physics course with general relativity following at a later point. There are many teenagers studying relativity.
@@exocosm-worldbuilding I have no math skills and I learned the relativity equations in my 11th grade physics class. It's just algebra. That's an ENTIRELY different matter from reading scientific papers about theoretical physics. You're strawmanning the issue by reducing the alcubierre papers and their progeny to high school relativity Its like reducing the Manhattan project to E = mc2. Stop being a pedant. Teenagers DO NOT normally read theoretical physics papers. And you know this very well. Just stop
@@stevencoardvenice I’m not talking about high school. I’m talking about 1st (and 2nd) year university students studying physics. Reading physics papers is common within that group of teenagers at every university, even if only as part of the coursework. Sure, it’s a small proportion of the total population and it doesn’t mean everyone fully understands everything but it’s perhaps more common than you realise. There were about 120 of us in the year when I was a physics student for example and we certainly discussed such things over a pint in the pub. I’m not trying to downplay the statement, just give it context.
@@exocosm-worldbuildingDid you respond to the wrong person?
Just an interesting idea I've always had about the alcuberre drive. What if we didn't create the bubble but rather found a way to ride naturally occurring gravitational waves?
That sounds cool as hell
I wonder if there’s potential for meta materials that could be used create a sail that can be pushed by gravitational waves. Just like light, gravitational waves carry energy, and we can already use light to push things so it could definitely be possible to do the same thing with gravitational waves. The biggest issue would be making a material that can interact with gravitational waves in the ways needed to use them for fuel. How do we isolate a ripple in space time while in said space time. We don’t have an outside perspective to see the wave like we would on a pond from a bridge or on the ocean from a boat. We have to use extremely precise instruments to even detect them. If we can get around the difficulty of interacting with them I think gravity surfing could definitely be a thing
@ianharrison5758 I had a similar thought the other day, but instead of gravity surfing it was hawking radiation surfing. Which is arguably more detectable.
@@Fightre_Flighte elaborate that sounds super interesting
@@ianharrison5758 Well, we know hawking radiation exists, which is basically like a ripple in spacetime IIRC, and it usually comes out of black holes, but oddly extreme distances away... We've been able to see the stuff, so we could find some going in directions we need, so if we found ways to surf it, we could use it for near Lightspeed travel.
Wow, that was a fascinating look into FTL flight, and the obvious barriers in achieving that goal. My question relates to the movie Event Horizon, in which they built a ship that could generate the energy of an artificial black hole, and use that power to bend / fold space. So in theory the ship never needs to fly at extreme speed, and basically just jumps through the fabric of space to an alternate location. Obviously, we would never be able to harness the power of a black hole without killing ourselves in the process, but I loved the idea of how they did it in that movie. I am sure that caused a few physicist to argue the possibilities of that method over trying to build a FTL ship.
That is a very common topic in sci-fi. They do the exact same thing in Star Wars, Interstallar, etc. And never say never about anything technology related. Humans have always done that throughout history and always get laughed at in the future
yea but they jumped into hell in that movie, so maybe not a good idea to jump unless you can control where you go lol.
That's simply magic.
I would think that at the very least the act of trying to find a solution to superluminal travel is getting physicist to look at things in greater detail and ask "what if" kinds of questions. I honestly think that we will someday, eventually find more solutions to subluminal space flight at relativistic speeds but who knows when. Like you said, looking at ideas for warp drive might help with a more conventional approach.
If we haven't already ...
We don't really have to travel superluminally. It's sufficient to stretch time. I don't think that this would be sufficient to reverse the directionality of time. Furthermore, I don't think there's a paradoxon with regards to causality and reversed time. The paradoxon is resolved by applying the theory of many worlds. Every reverse would put the traveling matter into a new branch, a new universe. So there's no problem "going back" and eliminating your own causality because your own causality remains unchallenged in the old universe that got entangled through this single point of time travel. Every additional time travel would open up additional branches.
@@matfax issue is now you're entering the land of theorycraft.
I have always seen it as we are starting to develop the _math_ for FTL. The tech and material requirements, as well as not outright violating the laws of physics as they exist (which is vastly beyond what we currently know) is an engineering problem. Though it is one where we may never be able to practically solve, but it is a problem that has a theoretical solution. And a practical solution will always require a theoretical solution to exist. You put out six issues that have to be dealt with, though those aren't the extent of it. I would place causality as the top issue, as if we cannot solve that, then any solutions to the rest of the issues is moot even if we have solved them.
You can't solve the causality problem, that(s the problem, it's like trying to solve 2+2=5 (in a base 10 system, just to head off at the pass trick answers).
@@devi1sdoz3n and how do you know the causality problem might not be solved in the future? I agree, it is very unlikely it'll ever be solved, but absolute 0% is an impossibility in the universe. But yeah, for all we know, our understanding of General Relativity is ever so slightly wrong.... or the laws of physics might change for a reason or another. Odds are though that humanity will be gone if it's the latter and it ends up happening....
@@lanteanboy I mean if you propose that the laws f physics may change, there isn't anything I can say then, beacuse that could make anything possible.
@@devi1sdoz3n first of all, stop going around to every comment being a downer second, what's to say we don't just like... speed up time when we get there? fuckin idk, figure it out
Great video and explanation bro! Keep it up like that!
Well, when you travel near speed of light, doesn't the time seem to slow down and you arrive to your destination near instantly (from traveller point of view) ? Could we use warp bubbles as projectile shield for such sunlightspeed travel ?
One thing that has always bothered me about very high speed drives (not necessarily FTL) is what happens if you impact a particle of dust at such speeds. Moreover, any object moving through space sweeps out a volume and will encounter all the dust and fundamental particles in that volume.
The older I get, the more I realize it was sci-fi the whole time, and it's not something you just magically "get" for existing long enough. I don't think we're ever going to other stars.
For a warp drive the field would accumulate the material encountered in the field perimeter in some models. Other models I’ve seen suggested move the material around the bubble like a ships bow. Both have some math to suggest the conclusions others are not so distinct.
The book series The Expanse and the television series about part of the books provides some excellent, real-world illustrations of what bullets and rail gun projectiles would do in space to a ship impacted by those projectiles, so small dust particles impacting at speeds closer and closer to c aka the speed of light are definitely a big engineering and science problem.
That's why you don't want to move even at high fractions of light speed in any system, keep it for when you're out of star system, your's, other's. Doesn't matter. I like expanse too, but i believe you can help that problem with geometry of warp bubble.
When traveling at such speeds, it ceases being a problem. Dust would be incinerated, but at FTL, you'd be in a different dimension entirely, dodging all matter. Star Wars basically got it right.
I will always advocate for the first practical design of a warp drive to be called the Roddenberry Drive. Not because he first thought of the concept but because of how he popularized it.
His ghost would want a royalty.
No. Alcubierre would deserve the credit.
Great video. Your smooth and sultry tones earned this subscription.
The concept introduced of having a slower-than-light warp drive, but slowing down the passage of time inside the bubble is actually extremely interesting! A drive like that would invoke a “time-debt” system of interstellar travel, since the passengers wouldn’t experience the same time-passage as outside observers. Very interesting .
Isn't that more or less how slipspace works in Halo?
@@960456 I’m woefully bereft of lore and mechanics of the Halo franchise. I’ve played a handful of them but never got into them very much (until Red Vs Blue).
Dr. Kipping, I wish to express my utmost and sincere appreciation for your inspirational and awe-inspiring videos. Your content has had a profound impact on my educational journey. Recently, I have delved deeper into physics-based content, and I'm pleased to share that I have gained a conceptual and practical understanding of several complex topics mentioned in your videos. Please keep posting more content- it means so much to me and to others. Thank you!
That's because you are not a high-level theoretical physicist and are easily fooled.
@@JackSarfattiwhat?
Well-expressed. (Ignore the numbskull who said otherwise) Yes, David Kipping, with estimable contributions by his post-docs and lab workers, etc, are churning out incredibly impressive video "essays," I like to call them, with research, writing and production values that clearly dazzle legions of science-literate non-scientists, and even fellow astro-physicists, which is a compliment he earns easily. Years ago, after I first saw "Watching The End of the World," I think my jaw actually fell slack, and I stared ahead unawares, until I regained my space-time composure. I started binge-Kipping, and arranged monthly deductions of support for the first time ever outside NPR! Even from my dinky capacity it feels purposeful, because someone like David Kipping could gather enough momentum to change the world! Upon realizing that, of course, I sent everyone I like a playlist, including "Journey To The End of The Universe," "Why We Might Be Surrounded by Older Alien Civilizations" and "Why We Might Be Alone in the Universe." In other words, the most apocalyptic science-art-documentary ever has given my life deeper meaning than I hoped was possible. So I feel reassured by your parallel admiration!
Using warp drives at sublight speeds close to C is another very interesting use case that alleviates most of these problems, and allows nearby interstellar travel without time dilation. Be interesting to have you examine it deeply from that angle.
I think sublight warp would still induce time dilation, just no possibility of reverse time travel.
But it is still a catch 22, you need 3 stars worth of energy. You would already need interstellar infrastructure and logistics to engineer one but how would you achieve that without warpdrive? Guess we are too unlucky to be in a single star system.
@@charlescook5542 I don't think being in a multi-star system would help us either.
@charlescook5542 That could easily be an issue of the energy being applied incorrectly. The exact mechanism of what limits objects to the speed of light under natural conditions is still a very much a mystery.
@@charlescook5542 And that is 3 stars worth of energy to turn it on. How much more energy is required to keep it running and for how long?
The most important thing is making a barrier to prevent matter from hitting the craft, as the level of perfection needed in the shape, and the amount of damage an impact with a single particle may do, means we need a way to violently push stuff to the side before we touch it, probably by an extremely strong electromagnetic field
That’s why ships in Star Trek generate their own deflection field to deflect dust and matter I think using a much weaker Alcubierre drive
Gotta love it. Scientists say it's an engineering challenge, but when an engineer finally builds one, the Scientists will take credit for the discovery
Well the engineer won't be able to build one until scientist find or create the hypothetical forms of matter needed to supply enough energy to power it .
They cannot describe what they want to build. the technical construction details are irrelevant and fantasy.
Well, the scientists build the prototype, then the engineer perfects it.
@joefish6091 it's like Stan Lee saying, " I had an idea that super heros could were their underpants on the inside, like normal people. And that's how I created Ironman!"
There is a literal lack of disconnect from reality with these engineers. Imagine a game of asteroids, but in three dimensions. However instead of shooting asteroids you have to deal with particles smaller then sand. That are usually not impeded by objects of larger mass, but are now being pulled into your spaceship at extreme speeds. While you are also traveling at equal extreme speeds, under extreme conditions, along a fixed path, with no actual control of anything around you. Only an engineer would enjoy playing this garbage simulation of asteroids.
My guess is that shielding a ship from the effects of time frame dragging will be way easier and also have a similar effect, except you wouldn't be charting a course, you would be in some kind of freaky temporal freefall. If you could change the way time passes inside a ship, it could move very slowly and yet for the passenger the trip would seem stupidly fast. No, I think that if we ever get some kind of magical negative mass material, we would be better off using it to stabilize artificial wormholes, and then we could just travel preposterous distances with regular crap spaceships.
If the travel is slow, then do we really need that travel ? For example, would we buy stuff made on the other side of the world if it took 10 years to get delivered ? I think humanity needs and will send ark like ships to other worlds, but without faster ways to travel, we will just have seeded these worlds with humans, it won't create a unified multi-world civilization.
Love your work. I enjoy it immensely.
Alcubierre drive is oe of my favourite things in science. Not only because of its potential possibility but how scientists discuss the idea and its surrounding problems. It explores the limits of our understanding and capabilities. It may never be possible but it does show us our limits and how we may break them.
One paper I would suggest is a good read on a positive energy density solution is "Positive Energy Density for the Alcubierre Warp Field Equations Using an RF-Driven Dielectric Resonant Cavity" by Chance M. Glenn. He makes the warp drive more like a practical engineering problem
Every video on this channel is so well made. Keep it up
Only for easily fooled physics illiterates.
"You can't break the laws of physics. But like all the laws, you can always bend them"
Love the point about the 'Grandfather paradox'. Actually, I'm curious if this really is still a paradox given todays modern understanding of QM. Since every possible outcome that can occur does and creates separate time lines at each of those possibilities, going back in time would introduce a new event creating a new time line. At the time of your return or even the point Space time dimples prior to your arrival would generate a different time line because it never happened before. This would preserve the original time line thus your existence.
I really liked the way you assessed these fundamental problems to the creation of a practical Warp drive. However, I can think of a 7th essential obstacle that no one here seems to talk about: How are we going to protect ourselves from the Daemons?
doomguy :)
@@ArtificialDjDAGX*Daemons* , not just regular demons. I was making a Warhammer 40000 reference.
@@danielcreepercristo9864 I know, but considering the fact that doomguy becomes basically a conceptual anti-demonic entity in the remakes by Bethesda, I was wagering that he'd do pretty well against even WH40K daemons.
@@ArtificialDjDAGX Oh ok, I can agree on that part.
That's why this isn't the only problem. We need to find a way to train navigators as well
If alien life elsewhere had solved these problems, what should we be looking for out there to spot them using it? Small energy bursts indicating one dropping out of bubble? Could we see them pushing particles streaking across the sky as they moved and bounced off the edges of the bubble? What else?
I mean the problem is that since we don't know the solutions, we don't know what the signs of them would be
The ship would probably have to be planet size or something for us to detect their 'wake' ...at least until we create more advanced telescopes
Hopefully they emit only small bursts of energy. Some think the device would emit supernova+ level radiation (in a steady beam perhaps), turning it into a weapon
Simple but astronomical in practice, plantiods getting vaporized, stars pretty much anything but black holes in a line across at least a light year min. So hey bob that galaxy we were looking at? Its got a weird dash in this arm of that spiral
If they solved those problems, we should look for them here on Earth. The lack of aliens on Earth seems to suggest warp drives are simply not possible to build.
One of the funnest subject in physics. Thanks for the great video.
Fascinating and curious as always. So if something outside has to create or control the 'warp bubble', as someone in the comments calls them "launch and catch stations"... I wonder how the catch station will know when there's something coming in a warp bubble? We would need faster-than-warp communication for them to know eactly when and where it will be to 'switch it off' in time before it shoots past and is lost in space. I think for now we have a big enough engineering problem catching rocket boosters trying to slow themselves down at just the right rate that they slow down to about zero by the time they reach the ground, hopefully wthout destroying the launch/landing complex! But they are getting there slowly!
Always great to see a new video from the best channel on KZhead - thank you Professor Kipping for all you do!
hi verified
The subluminal warp drive may be what we end up using. The superluminal version may be a 'cathedral project' as you mentioned in the sponsorship that may not be solved for generations. And the tunnels are not a hard stop in a universe with sublight warp drives as they could be built using them.
Problem is tunnels long enough for interstellar travel would likely require multiple planets worth of materials.
@@Erowens98 likey. not to mention that the precision required to maintain the tunnel might be insane.
This channel is so good. The presenter is amazing!
In order to ride the waves of space, we need a board that can ride along the vacuum of space. Harnessing the momentum that the vacuum of space generates. It’s possible that the vacuum of space does have waves, maybe they’re gravitational waves. Maybe it’s something totally different. Just as the ocean is relatively calm in areas, and hurricane like in other areas. Space might have very turbulent areas that can be used to travel through space faster. This might explain why some stars seem to move faster away than others. We need a spaceship that doesn’t just shoot out fuel and energy to propel it forward, we need a spaceship that can use the frabic of space as the propellant itself. Just as a boat pushes water to move it forward, we need a spaceship that can push the fabric of space in order to really see fast space travel. What can move the fabric of space itself? Some kind of fourth dimensional propeller that can move the vacuum of space as if it were water 🤔 maybe
I have no idea of the details being discussed here (I’m no mathematician or physicist) but I LOVE getting the general gist - the image of space time really helped my understanding / conception of in and outside the bubble. Which was a new idea for me entirely. Cool Worlds are v cool! ❤
Your causality/FTL video was a "mind clear-er". Finally helped me understand what could happen if these were possible.
Yeah, we would have to find a way to insulate both the vessel and the universe at large from the temporal effects of the drive, and who knows if that's even possible.
20:06 "If you can travel faster then light, someone will see you arrive before you left" But wouldn't that be once again only relative to the observer? I mean, yes, assuming I can see you far off in the distance (Point A), if you travelled at ftl to a point right in front of my eyes (Point B), I would see you (for an infinitesimal fraction of a second) appear in front of me at Point B before seeing you disappear from Point A. But that would just mean light took longer to get to my eyes then it took you to travel from A to B. How is that time travel? If you did the opposite (travel at ftl from B to A -away from me-) I would not see that kind of paradox.... Isn't that "just" Relativity? What am I missing? 😅
I absolutely love his videos and the way he explains everything, it’s inspiring
What a great video! This is what is really exciting about science, when someone looks at a problem in a totally new way and opens up new vistas for the rest of us to look through.
Wonderfully approachable content that stands on its own and inspires others. Very well done.
CWL, have you tried checking out the Orion's Arm worldbuilding project? They try to build an interstellar civilization using principles that conform to what is known and theoretically possible, like how their warp drives get very close to c but doesn't actually go beyond, and that wormholes can be made to do weird things to causality.
A couple of questions, since I'm just watching this out of interest. I don't know quite a lot about physics, so if someone could break down some answers, that'd be awesome! 1. What is the Weak Energy Condition? 2. So if you did build a warp drive, you'd be moving to fast for anything to register. Basically, you can't interact with the future since it hasn't happened in that point of time... Right? 3. I understand the concept of the plank length and how it's a measurement smaller than atoms. But could such a material be feasible? Is it even theoretically possible? 4. Is Hawking Radiation just insanely strong gravity? 5. Tachyonically = Super Liminal? Sorry if these are weird questions, I'm just trying to solidify an understanding of this topic lol...
I would like to see a video on the problems with wormholes. I've read many over the years, including some reasoning (from Daniel Jafferis in 2019) that wormholes might actually be slower to traverse than sub-light travel through normal space.
Thanks for your great presentations on the enormous conundrums that face us with the leading edge of physics, it sure makes me think a lot more about these subjects and where reality may actually lie.
So interesting. Thank you.
Gravitational vortex rings are interesting. On one side you have equal centripetal gravitational waves and on the other side an equal opposite centrifugal gravitational waves. Imagine in a 3d space. It's amazing to think about.
Absolutely awesome video. While I love and adore the concepts explored by physicists exploring the possible realities of science fiction, VERY FEW have taken the time to explain the problems associated with FTL travel. Kudos, much love, and after at least a dozen of your videos viewed, this is a subscription well earned. Thank you, and keep up the good work.
Thanks for the sobering and inspiring video. To me it's encouraging that people are working with these concepts at all. I'll keep on hoping the nature allows FTL and warp drives and we'll find the way around these and other problems - eventually.
When flying at warp speed we stepped outside of the spaceship onto the iceball that formed around our ship and gazed out on the universe surrounding us. Bending around us. I took all of the crew out to look at space bend around us. We all broke down and cried at the beauty. Then we cried again after dreaming about it.
"in our all too short and fleeting lives" - Thanks for cheering me up man
Humanity has always figured out ways around problems that were once considered impossible, and this is happening exponentially faster as time goes on. I have little doubt that if it's possible, we will figure it out, and likely sooner than we think. We likely don't understand the universe well enough yet to even say whether or not our speculations are accurate. The universe seems unbelievably complex. A chest of secrets that we've only begun to open. If there's a way, we'll find it.
I agree with this. If you asked a 16th century astronomer if he thought humanity would ever visit the moon, he'd probably laugh and say it's impossible. Yet we did it. Nobody could have conceptualized the internet back in the days of covered wagons, and yet we figured it out. I think people have this bias where they only consider the limitations of modern technology while not accepting that we may find some revolutionary discovery someday which makes FTL travel possible.
@plaguepandemic5651 You know, I'm always amused when people, including scientists, speculate about future humans. They always say, "If, in 1 billion years, humans are still around, the sun will make the Earth uninhabitable for us. We'll then need to find a new home." Like, do they not realize how long a billion years actually are? If humans are still around in 100 or 200 years, we'll have already started expanding into space. Hell, once we start mining asteroids, all material bottlenecks vanish. Suddenly, if we want to build it, we can. Trillions of tonnes of material. We'll have machines that'll work faster than any human can in conditions that would kill us and without breaks. AI will compliment our intelligence and take over the burdens of menial tasks and day-to-day operations. A technological and societal reformation that'll shake us to our very cores. That's probably within the next century. Companies are already looking into mining asteroids. With seemingly unlimited resources and AI assisted technological development, nothing short of breakneck, it astounds me that it's even a question of if. It's a question of when. Humans will either die off, or we'll transcend our planet. At that point, short of an alien civilization, our survival is all but guaranteed. If FTL travel is possible, we'll find out how to do it.
I love this. So true, so optimistic
@@kenhimself to break that optimism, wartime is what gave us most of our modern science and tech advancements. We got to the moon via a rocket used for ICBM research. We got microwave ovens that stem from radar technology used to predict incoming attacks. We got the internet stemming from a communication meant for military purposes initially. jet powered aircraft comes from back in WWII, ect... If we want more innovation as quickly as possible, there's a cost, and that cost is measured in human lives.
@@brummyuk2151 Right. Once we achieve commercial success in space, we'll expand our horizons exponentially. The value of rare materials on Earth will die, as even the rarest elements will become abundant. Even the most expensive endeavors would become inexpensive. Building massive systems, such as enormous colliders or scientific apparatus, or scientific endeavors currently limited by resource scarcity. Perhaps we'll be able to create exotic materials in quantities far greater than a few atoms. It's an interesting thought experiment.
13:00 I've been wondering about the rebound effect outside of the bubble, I'm glad you brought it up. Would it result in a gamma ray burst in the direction of travel? How far downwind would the devastating effects reach?
Thx for the video!
Brilliant watch. Thank you for speaking in a way that novices can actually understand
Great video! I'm no physicist, but the way you explain it can help me understand a bit
Longtime fan here. Thank you, truly, for continuously creating such insightful and beautiful content. In my mere opinion, this amongst one of the most well-crafted and intelligent channels on any media platform. Thank you sir.
I don't understand a lot of this, but I find it fun and intriguing to learn new things.
Paradox goes away if, by traveling through time we instead create alternate timelines. This theory states that you are unable to change the past, but instead create a new future for another you. I've heard this referred to as the multiverse theory and I understand that our current knowledge of physics suggests this is probable.
Oh man, do I love your videos, how much effort, love, and sense of all things as well as knowledge you give, it's just so beautiful. You and rare sorts of people like you inspired me to make my own little channel and try to popularize Space exploration to uninterested people in my country, in Slavic languages. I called it Balkan Secrets. Thank you, Professor!
This really reminds me of a method described on Cixin Liu’s “Remembrance of earths past” science fiction series - in which a “curvature propulsion” method operates incredibly similarly.
Curvature Propulsion is just the Chinese way of saying Warp Drive. 曲速
that whole series is amazing
halo was a sub-light speed ship, but that wasn't a problem because special relativity meant that you could travel countless light years in what the ship and passengers would experience as a few hours. If we want to explore the universe in 99.999% lightspeed ships, it would be easy. But, there would be no going back, and no practical communication between systems. There is also a risk of encountering aliens that will force you to move to Australia.🤮
Three things. 1) Star Trek warp drives uses subspace with "Dilithium crystals" to concentrate, amplify and feed that warp power to the nacelles. Similarly, the nacelles could be transporting (just like the transporter being capable of FTL communication) the warp bubble ahead of the ship. In summary for this point, Star Trek STILL has a bunch of technobabble mumbo jumbo that makes warp drive possible in the series. It's like the old saying, behind every lie is a grain of truth. The truth is that it's physically possible to have such a bubble. The lie is that they are capable of riding it and controlling it and it leaves no ill side effects. (Except tearing up the fabric of subspace itself) 2) I've never subscribed to the paradoxical nature of time travel. This because i believe time travel (moving backwards in time specifically) is actually a sideways move, in that you aren't moving back in YOUR timeline, you are moving sideways into a timeline that echoes yours where you can then alter events. Moving forwards in time on the other hand leaves no paradoxes. But moving forwards will NEVER put you back on your original time line, no matter what you do. Even if you just travel back in time to then in a Planck second go forwards again back to where you started, the mere fact that you visited the past has altered the future, and the flap of a butterflies wings will leave your future completely unrecognizable when you get back. 3) The whole "subspace" mumbo jumbo can be replaced with wormholes. If you can bend the fabric of space so you can punch a hole through it in one place and come out lightyears away, you've essentially solved the transporter problem. It doesn't mean you are traveling faster than light, it means you are taking a shorter path than that which a photon would normally take. You aren't transmitting information in a straight line over several light years distance, you are merely making the path to be taken MUCH MUCH shorter. Quantum entanglement is this phenomenon on a subatomic scale, if we can find a way to make it possible in on a much larger scale such that we can fit a whole vessel through it, then we've solved the problem of intergalactic travel. In summary though, as much as it's theoretically possible to bend the fabric of space. It's still literally lightyears away from our current technological level and we need to solve a MASSIVE amount of hurdles before we get there. I mean, we can't even get along enough in a small community... Let alone across the whole planet. And to get to intergalactic travel we need more than our current solar system can offer. We need GENERATIONS upon GENERATIONS just to leave our solar system at a 99% and beyond speed of light to then start gathering the energy necessary to bend the fabric of space such that we can create and sustain a wormhole long enough to pass through it without being ripped apart at the quantum level.
Addendum: IF we were to solve FTL (not just wormholes) then we would be traveling in time. The effect of this is that anyone performing FTL travel will NEVER return to their original time line. For the observer, the parts of the ship that goes into FTL simply vanish out of existence and the observers will deem it a failure and shut it down. Unless of course they already KNOW that FTL travel means leaving this timeline forever. Then they would have to work on FAITH that the technology works and keep sending more and more people sideways through the multiverse for whatever reason. Still, any observer left behind won't ever see the results of FTL travel, they will simply have to believe that the travelers made it and are now in an alternate universe, never to be seen again.
You forgot to mention the work of prof dr Harold Sonny White from eagle works advanced propulsion labs about energy optimization. Also, look at a professor building a warp drive in his garage who uses 100 to 1000 watts to create some pull on a led ball. It might not be much but it certainly is a way to get towards the first step a sub luminal warp drive as stated in star trek that the Phoenix was as a test flight. Also the dynamic fasmir effect holds some promises towards more negative energy if we can master it. Coupling between em fields and drive is also something out of the work of Eric Lentz since certain waves possibly scalar waves do have properties possibly needed to create such a field.
What a fascinating video! I too was inspired at a very young age by Star Trek. In my lay-person's understanding, if something isn't forbidden by laws of Physics, and rules of general and special relativity, then it's possible (as you state in the video). In this case now, it's just an engineering problem, albeit a really super complex thorny engineering problem. I have no doubt that we will someday unravel the challenges to allow us to travel and communicate via FTL. It may take us a good long while, but we'll do it. Staying positive, and hopeful while staying thoughtful and curious... Thanks for this awesome video Prof. Kipping!
You know, the thing is we only have the laws of physics. down to a point they are painted in pretty broad strokes at this time. and we know that relativity, Which is arguably the very foundation of everything? of everything we know about the macroscopic universe. is not complete. for example, its inability to play nice with quantum physics. So I guess my point is this. I think it far more likely that we will discover some nuance of the physical laws of the universe that proves to be. a deal breaker for F. T. L. Then to find some loophole in those laws. to allow it. I desperately hope that the universe does allow for such a thing. But realistically. there could be any number. of reasons why it isn't possible.
When speaking about the horizons, What came to mind was something similar to the way of travelling in the Mass Effect trilogy. Jumping from point to point across the galaxy. FTL was achieved through 'Element Zero' which from my own interpretation is an utilization of dark energy, or antimatter and converting it into an energy source meant to be used by the cores of ships in order to perform FTL travel. However, it still is very slow, relatively speaking, so 'Mass Relays' were structures that essentially catapult a ship over vast distances across the galaxy. I always believed that Mass Effect's technology and sciences behind it should really be a focus for some astrophysicists because I see true potential. If you just find the 'real world' equivalents, we could achieve FTL travel and figure out a way to conquer the warp drive issue. Sure I'm a game nerd, but I tend to find aspects and subjects in certain games to have some semblance of reality to them, and that these elements applied to real world equivalents could truly be utilized and push us towards that so called 'fictional' reality in time.
Mass Relays instantly came to my mind too.
@@LuckyLucyHi Hellyeah, thank you. I do hope Professor Kipping does a video on the potentiality of realistically incorporating Mass Effect's theoretical sciences and technology. I have for many years felt that Mass Effect achieved beforehand what we could achieve in reality.
Mass Effect is really good scifi in that the creators invented a single core physics phenomenon to do all the fantastical stuff instead of handwaving the ftl, artificial gravity, shields etc. all separately. Element zero seems like just the exotic matter we'd need for any of that to be possible but the way its presented in the games' universe is a bit too good to be true. No advanced power sources like fusion reactors or antimatter required, just the eezo and some electric current and you got all the standard scifi tech
Classic Star Trek "Take us out Mr Sulu". Modern Star Trek "Let's punch it".
I just love being interested in a subject and having the use of the internet to start learning about that subject almost instantaneously!! It's so COOL to see technology that only existed in Science Fiction now being used ubiquitously! smh. I picked the right decade (63) to be born in!! I got a touch of the 60s having 2 older siblings, with my brother being the oldest (1953) and my Sister (1957), then the 70s, 80s and 90s. All being decades that shaped today as much as the industrial revolution shaped the decades following that in ways that were not thought possible!!! Soooo, Cool for me!!! LOL
it's crazy impressive we even have anything like this. imagine a 1920s scientist mathematically describing a way to break the sound barrier, when it only started become known and was still thought of as unbreakable.
Never thought of this. Good perspective
I wonder if you create the same effect in a space that is "lower" relative to the other part of the plane. Like what if we weigh the space down so that to expand space relative to that weighted region we do not need exotic matter, instead we remove the force weighing down that spot.
Re: Problem 4. Accelerating bodies (everything that walks, runs, etc) create event horizons, which would involve Hawking Radiation. How would this be different than a warp drive?
on the plus side we are now learning at an Exponential Rate since the Making of the computer , which means we will soon have and answer for a more plausible means of propulsion in space
The horizon problem can be solved by shells or bubbles which decay. I was thinking of a bubble which only functioned for ten seconds or so, and then got replaced as it warped and weakened. As far as the bubble's material is concerned I think we are looking at a broadcasting problem. I think it might be easier to hit a bubble of fluid-like material with a tone to help keep its shape consistent rather than building a more permanent shell. Further, a fluid material would allow for the bubble to collapse periodically, allowing for the horizon problem solution. This solution would also simultaneously solve the particle buildup issue. Given the temperatures involved, the fluid we are probably talking about is a plasma.
I was reading this whole comment and thinking: "so... Plasma? Aaaand it's plasma." I kinda follow that. With proper magnetic fielding we might even be able to control a plasma bubble. In which case, we could cause a decay and rebuild of the super-thin plasma field in order to manipulate spacetime for control. But the video did miss one particular idea: if the passengers are in a stationary bubble of spacetime, who needs a front and back of the ship? This is basically a gravity drive for a ship. The occupants feel nothing as it accelerates or decelerates through nominal space. Manipulate the bubble and you can change directions. Like steering a rocket, you point the bubble's "front" where you want to go. But that could only be solved if the bubble can actually be manipulated.
One wildly outrageous solution I can think of: Stop time. If time were to stop in the entire universe, except for the vehicle(with the passenger area being outside of the field, also time-stopped), then the vehicle could proceed to a destination at any sub-light speed, power down, allow time to resume, and look to the rest of the universe as if it had traveled instantaneously. No time travel, no FTL.
The concept is great, but the problem: how would actually do that?
That is the detail work, I'm just the idea guy, lol. Get on it, science!
This video is good in that it's well produced, the narrator clearly cares about the topic, and attempts to deliver scientific information in popular science terms. However the content would definitely be better understood by physicists. But good video, and I like all of the research citations, and credits - well done.
On the prequel Star Trek show "Enterprise" the Vulcan star ships had the best with a ring like warp drive around the vessel. It looked a lot like the ones pictured on You Tube but it only had one ring instead of two, one at each end. The show is now 25 years old. Did this solution exist that long ago?