How could we one day travel between the stars with real physics? Perhaps the greatest challenge to interstellar flight is energetics - it takes vast amounts of energy to accelerate even small ships to 20% the speed of light. But what if we could steal that energy from where? Perhaps even a black hole. Enter the "halo drive", a video by Prof David Kipping based on his new peer-reviewed research paper on the subject.
This video is based on research conducted at the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, New York. You can now support our research program directly here: www.coolworldslab.com/support
Further reading and resources:
► Kipping, David (2018), "The Halo Drive: Fuel Free Relativistic Propulsion of Large Mases via Recycled Boomerang Photons", JBIS, 71, 458: arxiv.org/abs/1903.03423
► Dyson, Freeman (1963), "Gravitational Machines", in A.G.W. Cameron, ed., Interstellar Communication, New York Benjamin Press: www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/as...
► Breakthrough Starshot homepage: breakthroughinitiatives.org/i...
► Our Cool Worlds video giving some background on Breakthrough Starshot: • Project Starshot | New...
► Our Cool Worlds video on relativistic moving mirrors: • Einstein's (small) mis...
► Our Cool Worlds video on mirror distortion effects: • Why All Mirrors Are Ly...
► Columbia University Department of Astronomy: www.astro.columbia.edu
► Cool Worlds Lab website: coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu
* There’s an error in the video at around 8:30, 2 trillion joules is the cumulative energy output of a typical nuclear power station after 2000 seconds, not 20 days
Music is largely by Chris Zabriskie (chriszabriskie.com/) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/..., in order of appearance;
► Cylinder Five (chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/)
► Music from Neptune Flux, "We Were Never Meant to Live Here" (chriszabriskie.com/neptuneflux/)
► Music from Neptune Flux, "That Hopeful Future Is All I've Ever Known" (chriszabriskie.com/neptuneflux/)
► Cylinder Four (chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/)
► The Sun is Scheduled to Come Out Tomorrow ( / the-sun-is-scheduled-t... )
In addition, music from OneGuitarOrchestra, acoustic cover of Hans Zimmer's "No Time For Caution": • No Time For Caution (A...
Video materials used:
► Several NASA videos, in particular from the Voyager 1 and New Horizons missions
► Several ESO videos, in particular of TRAPPIST-1 and LIGO merger animations,
► Breakthrough Starshot animation from Breakthrough Initiatives (breakthroughinitiatives.org/i...)
Films clips used:
► Interstellar
::Playlists For Channel::
Latest Cool Worlds Videos ► bit.ly/NewCoolWorlds
Cool Worlds Research ► bit.ly/CoolWorldsResearch
Guest Videos ► bit.ly/CoolWorldsGuests
Q&A Videos ► bit.ly/CoolWorldsQA
Tabby's Star ► bit.ly/TabbysStar
Science of TV/Film ► bit.ly/ScienceMovies
::Follow us::
SUBSCRIBE to the channel bit.ly/CoolWorldsSubscribe
Cool Worlds Lab coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu
Twitter / david_kipping
THANKS FOR WATCHING!!
As you can probably tell, I struggled with finding a good illustration of this thing! If you have some artistic talent and come up with anything let please message me!
Well that would be my first illustration of the halo-drive, I'm not sure I got all the effects right, but this is my best guess atm. www.bilder-upload.eu/bild-0bab30-1551614591.png.html I hope links don't end up in spam.
@@MaddEndd hey not bad! Diffraction, event horizon, blue shift, I like it!! Fraser Cain is looking for images for his video too, can I send this along? The only issue I see is that the beam is emitted from one side but absorbed on the other, which would impart a torque on the spacecraft causing it to enter a pretty insane spin.
Thanks, I would be honoured. I had thought about a more extreme variant with a planet or asteroid for the spaceship.
Regarding the torque, wouldn't that depend on the mass distribution on the ship. Granted I havn't drawn the ship so it is left to the imagination how it is designed. I had focused a bit more on the visualisation of the laser and the black holes. While I was doing that there where a couple of questions that popped up here and there. Does the spin of a black hole affect the laserbeam? Another thing, if we assume that the laser has a round cross-section, does the blue-shifted laser have an eliptical or maybe even egg-shaped cross-section? I actually have a couple more of those questions but that would push it a bit.
continu to dream ;)
So, you wrote a paper. And then made a video about it on KZhead. In the spirit of open science I really hope this will happen much, much more often in way more fields. People need to know whats up in the labs and see the great minds living there.
Welcome to the Cool Worlds channel!
Exactly, I think the same!
Yes! Agreed!
It does happen more... Go to Barnes and Noble > Science Fiction section = Stuff even way more plausible
LOL !! WONT BE MUCH CHANGE ANY TIME SOON... BUT HOPING !! www.holoscience.com www.safireproject.com www.thunderbolts.info
Dude I felt every single word of that childhood story, I still look up at the night sky almost every night wondering whats out there.
Same here dude 🤔
I would love to be able to spectate humanity's journey after I die. I just want to know if we make it or not. It's such a cruel curse that we're only given a trial period of the whole package ☹
sameziez 🐿😃
What's out there, what to do, why are we here ;)
@@siddharth_chaurasia I forgot this comment even existed-
But that's ok, sometimes the dream is enough. The dream is enough to keep us inspired... Thank you for sharing your dream, David!
This is really an exciting time to be living in- to think that we may be laying some of the precursory ‘groundwork’, for the future reality, of space travel.
Thanks. Your comment is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike
@@radical7663 ashtray on a motorcycle can have purposes, dream big man
For example?
@@radical7663 seriously? Lol a cigarette holder for your smokes (or half smokes between stops) or roaches or joints. A tiny garbage can. Maybe some ppl dont want to litter. Being a container it can hold small things upfront instead of the back pouch. Ofc this is the cup ashtray not a flat open one. It can also be a cup holder. Use it as a glove box. Like i said dream big
The interstellar soundtrack is just ❤️... Goosebump moments!!
not the real one btw
Come on TARS
If i'd have had this guy teaching physics at school, i totally would have gone into physics for the rest of my life. Thank you Prof. Kipping.
I love your videos, Mostly because you easily explain complex ideas, but you don't dumb it down so far to where it seems to kill brain cell's
"cell's" I see what you did there
This gave me goosebumps. Thank you for making these videos. Here is a sort of a background story as to how big of a difference you've made in my life: I was having an existential crisis for a very long time, because I as many others didn't see the meaning of life. But not because of an bad event or because i was not working hard towards becoming better (and not having many opportunities to evolve), but rather because I had no dream, no final goal. Since I can remember my sole goal was making my father proud ( not that I did not love my mother, but she was always satisfied with whatever I did while I had to work to get praise from my dad). I aced my way through mid school, then high-school. Then I entered an Electrical Engineering program at a Dutch University and kinda got to the point when my dad was also constantly happy with me. The constant work load kept me busy, but I was empty. i aced my third year as well and reached year 4 and my father passed away form cancer. ( that's October 2018). What that did was kinda allow me to evolve to a whole new level mentally physically, but still. what was supposed to happen just continue grinding hoping that my dad is watching? I still had no particular purpose. I had to take a break from uni for half a year to fix the mess due to my dad's death (in my home country).So I did some soul searching in my free time and I stumbled across your video on the Kardashev scale. I think the video(as in you) gave me purpose in life. Like legit. (and also helped my choose what I would do for my Master (in other words I will go into renewable energy, for example)) You gave me the dream of helping our race progress towards Level 1. Because yes I was acing my exams, but i did not know what I wanted to do with my diploma afterwards. I don't know why I want this (progressing us to level 1)( probably my ancient monkey brain wanting me to help the tribe), but the feeling of knowing what you want. I think that by showing me the scale of things you helped me expand my mind even more. They say that in order to prevent a mid age crisis one must choose their goals to be abstract and unreachable ( and I was searching for a goal like this for 2 years, but being healthy and strong and following the Bushido code was not inspiring enough, or as much as this is). I have always been fearless, but now I am afraid that I may not have enough time to do as much as I want to towards this goal and this is probably what inspiration means and motivation. Actually wanting to be alive, because it would allow me to maybe create and/or witness something Great ( maybe a bit of the cyberpunk age). I was never a fan of cosmic travel, because i was not aware that so much was actually possible, but after watching this video I feel like I've unlocked this passion that I had kept down and its amazing. I know that I may not have time to know everything that I want to know, but I will do my best to push our civilization forward. (starting to repeat myself :|) Now, I have never posted a comment on youtube, might be a dumb idea, but I thought that maybe I could express my gratitude and kinda give you insight into how big my gratitude is with the whole background story paragraph. ( Also I am kinda writing this at 00:05 and I hope that when i read it in the morning it would make sense at least at the key points) ( I will cringe so much in the morning)( no I am not under the influence of any substance) ( I am having a very hard time pressing the send comment button, but if I spend another 20 minutes looking for writing mistakes I may not send it so here it goes)
You will reach the stars dear brother!
That's an awesome story! Congrats on finding a goal, and I wish you the best of luck in your work and your life :)
I could literally listen to these videos for hours. Very soothing but also extremely accessible and engaging. Brilliance in speaking like this is an art and the passion displayed for the subject matter is truly inspiring. Thank you!
I'm impressed. So simple and common sense according to our current understanding of physics. I wish you much success and hope to see you find a way to test a proper theory for it! Well done sir!
With a whole lot of thanks to Freeman Dyson, who dreamed up the Dyson Ring and the Dyson Sphere, which offer still other possibilities for using free energy stolen or borrowed from the Universe. And we'll use something like this if it's the only way to get there. But we'll never give up looking for FTL.
This man is absolutely captivating, makes me miss college like crazy
Beautiful! We need more ideas like this. We’re surrounded by free and vast amounts of energy. We just need to harness it.
wow !! so refreshing to see someone ( on KZhead) propose an idea and have it backed-up with a written paper that can be peer-reviewed . You scientific honesty does you a great credit
Im so glad this video was on my recommended. Subbed instantly. Please more videos like this. I love the Interstellar music when u explained the slingshot.
Albert Einstein loved your theory man!
Aside from all of the other issues which you mentioned, the major problem would be, slowing down once you reached or got anywhere near your destination. Hoping that such an advantageous double-star system would be near enough, or in reasonable proximity, of your destination would likely make the destination choices relatively limited. Regardless, a novel idea, & your visual portrayal was quite sufficient for me to understand the concept.
you have two lasers, one in the front and one in the back. front one pushes the lasers past the black hole and the second one decelerates you upon approaching your destination. I dont know if the mass would be large or dense enough or if it would work but i guess its just a theory
he said how
The issue you describe is not with the proposed Halo Drive, but with interstellar travel in general.
Could use ion engines to slow down, as well as for getting to the first binary black hole system.
@@imtoouncreative8263 You have a valid concern. The energy to decelerate the spaceship from approaching (against the gravitational field) is way higher than the energy acquired from the coming back photons, or at least equivalent. Because the energy used for decelerate is going against the entire mass of the spaceship and the black hole(s), while the energy increase by the laser beam is pretty much massless. I'd like to see the calculation of the comparison between the two.
I’m really honored to find this channel! Your insight and your discoveries are simply amazing! Thank you so much for sharing with us mere earthlings! God bless people like you that can see outside of the box!
Congratulations for reaching 10,000 subscribers !
Thanks!!
@@CoolWorldsLab Congrats on PLUS 6k subs in 2 days! Worthy Sir. Worthy. ;)
16k 2 days later, growing fast!
@@britzwickit 3k more in 14hrs, now at 19k. This channel is gonna blow up!
1 year later and you are up to 193k
I found your channel this evening. It's 2:45 am and I'm still watching your videos. You're one of the best teachers of these concepts in a way that the average person (like me) can mostly understand while still appreciating we are just being shown the very very tip of the surface of its complexity that I've ever seen. Subscribed!
history of the universe is a good channel like this one.
I like the fact that you try, the best humanly possible to be honest and unbiased as possible, and that's why I subscribed.
This man's voice is so relaxing and soothing. I drift off before the end in a sort of trance. He is great though.
I agree, but the music is also distracting. Why do they feel like they need it ?
This is the most interesting video I have watched about anything - many thanks Prof Kipping.
This guy's channel is absolutely great, love the material selection. Excellent, easy to follow, clearly articulated presentation for a layperson. Just awesome.
What a mind-blowing, fascinating idea for an alternative drive for space traveling! You have the spirit of an intellectial pioneer. Thanks so much for sharing!
This channel is my favorite discovery of the year, such amazing content and so well explained ! Mind blown
Your videos are very emotional and compelling. Thank you for another lesson :-) Subscribed!
Most of the videos on space/the universe makes me fall asleep but yours keeps me ingrossed
I'm so glad I found this channel. The work you do is amazing.
I like that there's one of one of the pieces from the Interstellar soundtrack in the background
Good idea. And important for SETI too. I'm not a scientist, but I suppose that Astronomers can look for life possibly moving along black hole highways in any galaxy. Can even make a map! Theoretically, life could be spread out across an island chain in the galaxy between these black holes, like an archipelago
Yup, the problem being in actually detecting the black holes
I can't believe I haven't heard of this man,or theory. This is genius. Revolutionary.
Explanation is so simple. Loved it.
i just keep coming back to this video, it excites me so much just thinking about this whole concept, i love it!
Most certainly a brilliant idea Sir. Well Done!!
the conclusion almost made me cry . love the concept #HaloDrive 😍
One of the best videos I've watched in the past year.
That was one crazy concept explained surprisingly simplistic. I'm almost not sure which of these is more impressive. Either way, after seeing only two videos of this channel, I already love it.
This presentation's quality is top notch! And the idea itself is also great. At the very least it keeps the dream alive!!
Just brilliant! Astrophysics is so beautiful. I'm in love with this YT Channel. Congrats.
Completely hooked and binge watching. Thanks for the information
Brilliant. I always get emotional with these videos. Thank you so much Dr. Kipping.
Thanks for the wonderful video david! Love your clear presentation and well laid out thoughts! This was my first video of yours and cant wait to check out the rest! And I love your idea about your dreams!
Great concept and beautiful video. It’s also interesting to think about possible technosignatures around binary black holes.
That was amazing and has actually blown my mind. Thank you Sir for sharing. So glad I've found your channel.
Thank you. I appreciate all your efforts.
Great stuff as always, David. I have that dream too. Thank you.
Wow !! I have now listened to this video in its entirety ! It's very well explained , even I easily understood it ! I am most perplexed by the number of dislikes , to me it makes no sense at all !
While I have nothing of fundamental value to add to this lovely concept so brilliantly explained, I would like to thank you for sharing it with all of us. I look forward to to seeing it brought to life in film in the very near future... As it seems as simple to understand as it was difficult to calculate. Hope you'll continue your work on the KZhead series, as they are most enjoyable.
I'm new to the channel, but I have watched most of the contents already. The way you explain things are amazing. Its always a blessing to be inspired by such an amazing mind.
Fantastic! Someone will surely use the ‘Kipping Halo Drive’ one day! Bravo!
REALLY! By that time we will already have FTL engines or close to it. The nearest twin stars are over 200 light years away. Is common sense dead!
Wow! Very cool video I love your videos thanks for this it really fuels the imagination.
Absolutely incredible work, thankyou for sharing!
Elegant. Beautifully presented. Thank you sir.
Why am I crying? Thank you!!
Congratulations on such a well made, informative and fresh science channel, you've just earned a sub from me, I only wish I had more scientifically minded friends to share your great channel with!
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Sometimes it's taking existing ideas and looking at them a new way. Also gives a target for future observations like unusual activity near binary black holes.
This is an incredible video. Thank you very much sir. I truly appreciate this. Especially today after seeing the very first actual picture of a black hole.
7:13 In short, the Dyson Slingshot is not for the faint of heart... 10:33 The light skims the event horizon ...loops around and actually comes back to you." How cool is that?!? Great video! Thanks for making!
AWESOME STUFF MAN!!!!! LOVE IT
These videos are such high quality. Please make more!
And a scene from 'Sunshine', best sci-fi movie ever :) Love ur thinking and explaining.
Best channel you may happen to discover through “recommendation”. For once, well done to KZhead!
🎯You are exactly the kind of KZheadr I want to listen, I personally Boost my General Knowledge with these Types of Video content📈 thanks Teacher🎓
You had me at way points. Beautiful.
Your work here is consistently excellent and enthralling. Thank you from all of us.
Really thoughtful and clear video David, awesome!
Thanks so much Jim!
Excellent video, I'm now a subscriber. Nice work.
I only watched one of your realizations and it so captivated me that I subscribed right after. Thank you! I will share them to the world. Wonderful job!
I can listen to you for hours!
Very cool idea. One issue that occurred to me, though, is that tight black hole binaries don't live very long. Black holes binaries with a semi major axis of ~3 solar radii will merge due to gravitational wave emission within a Hubble time, and the orbital velocity of such a binary would be comparable to the escape velocity of the sun ~300 km/s (only a factor of a few larger than the velocity of stars around the galaxy). In tighter binaries the lifetime scales very steeply with semi major axis (I think it should go like t~a^4), while the velocity only scales as v~a^-0.5. Therefore, it seems that tight black hole binaries are going to be rare.
Yes I agree that tight binaries don’t last very long. But hopefully there is always a population in transition going through this phase - there kind of has to be else LIGO wouldn’t have seen anything.
This inspired me to go look at the stars. I saw nothing but clouds because I live in the Pacific northwest.
Are they the high density star-forming clouds?
Laying out under the nights blanket of stars listening to your words . Magic.
Amazing video and explanation. Thank you for doing it.
I've just read "Collapsing empire" by John Scalzi and it blew my mind :D Your video also blew my mind. It is all amazing
Added to my read list!
Great! So all we have to do is get the spaceship to the binary neutron star. How do we do that?
Do you know why it has be to a binary neutron star to a pair of black holes, which are very rare. Just because they are dead stars?
I had the same dream growing up during the Apollo missions. The Halo drive sounds like a great concept. You may be the equivalent to Zephram Cochrane, inventor of the warp drive in Star Trek! Great vids, keep up the good work.
Love your voice, you get my juices flowing
Great content ♥️!!
thanks Elias
So basically we need to build a few mass relays and scatter them around the galaxy and have a central citadel to control them all.
If only we had some kind of crew to maintain them. You know, keepers of a sort.
@@ZA-ui1sv lol
Umm wouldn't it have a single point of failure.
Also we have to extinguish all intelligent life all 1 mio. years by harvesting them for some reason.
Sounds very familiar 🤔
your videos are like therapy for me
Excellent vid ! Informative AND the music effect was soft and effective. THANK YOU !
Hi, this video blew my mind when I first saw it, and I just watched your interview on Event Horizon. I'm wondering: how hard is it to target the laser accurately enough for it to take this geodesic path back to you? Could we build a Halo Drive with current technology (ignoring the problem of getting to the nearest black hole)?
This leaves the problem of decelerating on the other end -- you would have to aim at ANOTHER pair of orbiting black holes and do the same thing when you arrive
Rod Schmidt that’s exactly right, in this way black holes represent waypoints scattered across the galaxy. The fact you can accelerate and decelerate using the halo system is an advantage to the concept, not a problem!
Everything was on point..... Really loved the video.... It's soooo explanatory.... Thank you for sharing your dreams.
Great explanation on using the slingshot procedure to increase speed. Thanks.
Interesting concept, but whatever miniscule energy you get from the returning beam, will be offset by the immense energy you have to spend to escape the gravitational pull of the black hole. Unless you are planning to use this from far away. The nearest currently known black hole is some 3,000 lightyears away. So good luck waiting 6000 years for your energized beam to bounce back :)
Depends on how far he is from the black hole?
Isn't it possible that the initial "push" from the laser beam cancel out the energy gain from the laser after the slingshot? thereby gaining no net energy. Also, how would one capture the laser energy back since the push from the laser would cause the craft to move and not be in the same position as before?
yeah you would need to account for the initial kick that firing the laser gave you and thus fire the laser slightly further away from the exact boomerang geodesic but it would still work. The con is that the energy you gain was actually stolen from the black hole and thus will accelerate the timescale for the binary merger.
@@Dragrath1 given the mass of even a "small" blackhole, even slinging planet scale objects off it frequently would take a long time to have a minor influence, sure the effect is greater than 0, but the number of 0s that would be behind the decimal point would be beyond what my feeble brain can comprehend
@@UNSCPILOT Yes any given event would be "minor" in terms of the effect but remember if you are using this as part of a galactic infrastructure. Basically my point had mainly been that the energy isn't "free" it is coming from somewhere in thins case the black holes orbital angular momentum. And yeah it might take a while butt the argument that all interactions are negligible kind of worries me as it has caused people to underestimate their impacts a fair amount of time
Wow! You are amazing. And I really like the way you present information, not so much technical, but yet so scientific and precise. Keep on posting videos like that! I enjoy watching, one of the reasons because you are not mainstream like scishow e.c. And you really know what you are talking about! I subscribe! :)
Professor David? You sure deserve lot more subscriber. Easy to listen and easy to understand the maths when you talk about them. . I wish you could be in the next program/series of Cosmos!! Carl Sagan will be Proud. Seriously🙂🙂🙂
Great concept, thanks so much. If an alien civilization was using a system like this, would we be able to see it? Would we see a bright flash or something if the beam crossed our path? Or is all of the beam absorbed or reflected by the spaceship? Interesting to think how this might be detected.
It’s an ultra efficient system so not much leakage... the best bet is seeing an increase rate of binary mergers beyond that expect naturally
He’s great at this niche. The open minded science plus his storytelling makes me feel smarter than I am 😂
Absolutely fascinating idea 'The Halo Drive ' Prof David.
I love your channel! Really inspiring and simultaneously mind-blowing
You Sir, are amazing. Maybe you WILL live to travel the stars. We never know what tomorrow will bring.
Bro, take a look at the Daedalus Project. It travels at a speed of 0.12c.
Tonight was the first time i watched some of videos. .the gravitational studies wer fascinating...i love your videos guy! Way cool very well done and smart..i like it i hope you keep puttin em out...
this has to be one of best learning channels i have came across thank you bro
Reminds me of Isaac Arthur, some great channels have come along
RedGunBullets yeah man
The laser fired from the ship towards black hole will firstly redshifted in wavelength and then the laser turn around from the black hole will then experience a blush it as it is moving away from the black hole, so over all in brief , the laser is keeping the energy conservation.
But since the blackhole is moving relative to the ship the time spent redshifting is less so than the time spent blueshifting, ending with a higher energy beam than you started with until the ship is moving at the same velocity as the blackhole at which point you reach equilibrium where redshifting and blue shifting are equal but you still have all the fuel/energy you started with plus more. Energy is still conserved as in this process as the blackhole will lose the energy which you gained.
I’d ask how many of you just discovered this gentleman and his wisdom... and Sub’d Instantly.... but I can read 😉. BTW Sir, Well played backing track!!!!
Blown away by the content on this channel! Ultimate destination for brain stimulation!
Wow, that was awesome! You think way outside the box.