Is the warp drive possible?

“None of the physically conceivable warp drives can accelerate to speeds faster than light,” Bobrick says. That is because you would require matter capable of being ejected at speeds faster than light—but no known particles can travel that fast.

Is NASA making a warp drive?

According to Popular Mechanics, the NASA warp drive will expend a massive amount of energy that will “warp” (contract and twist) space time behind the spacecraft, which will create a space time “bubble.” This bubble, which will be created around the ship and curved behind it, will theoretically reduce the distance that …

Does warp drive break causality?

Warp drives would not necessarily violate causality, either — although the possibility has been raised that they could help create closed timelike curves (CTCs). Thus they could visit the past — but only as far back as the moment that the CTC was created, so it would be strongly limited.

What are the limitations of the Alcubierre drive?

The Alcubierre drive, at its core, is just a deformation added on flat spacetime as a bump function (it is everywhere flat except for a compact region of spacetime). This deformation moves around, and there are no upper speeds dictated by general relativity. The limitations will come from whatever matter field is used to prop up this metric.

What is the Alcubierre warp drive and is it real?

In physics, it is what is known as the Alcubierre Warp Drive. On paper, it is a highly speculative, but possibly valid, solution of the Einstein field equations, specifically how space, time and energy interact.

Does Alcubierre drive work in free fall?

In particular, Alcubierre has shown that a ship using an Alcubierre drive travels on a free-fall geodesic even while the warp bubble is accelerating: its crew would be in free fall while accelerating without experiencing accelerational g-forces.

What is the Alcubierre metric?

This is what is known as the “Alcubierre Metric”. Interpreted in the context of General Relativity, the metric allows a warp bubble to appear in a previously flat region of spacetime and move away, effectively at speeds that exceed the speed of light. The interior of the bubble is the inertial reference frame for any object inhabiting it.