Time travel hypothetical diagram.
While many people are studying how to make spacecraft gain huge power to achieve FTL travel, other scientists are drilling warp drive. It is a technology that is theoretically thought to enable FTL travel.
In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed that FTL travel could be achieved by bending space-time. But his idea was only a rough direction at the time. In a study published in February this year on the preprint arXiv, two American physicists, Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire, have built on Alcubierre’s theory, fleshing out many of the problems and solving some of the difficulties in implementing the theory before.
FTL travel
People have always wanted to build very powerful spaceships to travel at superluminal speeds. However, Einstein’s theory of relativity considered this to be limited in at least two ways. On the one hand, he believed that no object could move faster than the speed at which light travels. Even if it does travel at the speed of light, the range of space it can reach is actually very limited. Except for the solar system, the distance between celestial bodies is measured in light years.
On the other hand, even if the spacecraft reaches near the speed of light, relativity theory suggests that time inside the spacecraft will slow down relative to Earth. Assuming a trip to a destination 150 light years from Earth, although the people inside the spacecraft may arrive at the destination in their lifetime, at least 300 years will have passed on Earth by the time they return to Earth. Such space travel would not be convenient for Earthlings.
Warp speed engine
The warp speed engine proposed by Akuberi is based on the theory of relativistic space-time bending. Relativity theory mentions that space-time will be warped around energy or mass. If you imagine spacetime as a rubber mat with a bowling ball on top, this mat will sink a piece. This theory interprets gravity as the tendency of objects to fall into a sinkhole.
Akuberi envisages that if a warp bubble (warp bubbles) closed space is created, the space-time in front is contracted, so that the object tends to move forward; the space behind is expanded, to assist in pushing the object forward. Such a bubble can move in space with the effect of warping space-time in front and behind. The space-time inside the warp bubble is “flat”, that is, a space-time free from any mass action. In this way, objects moving inside the warp bubble will not be bothered by time changes, and can travel in a state of time synchronized with the Earth.
Warp-engine spacecraft?
Akuberi’s vision is supported by complex mathematical calculations and can be very abstract. The new study by Bobrick and Martyr proposes that a warp engine could be a shell built of sufficient energy (or mass, in physics mass and energy are almost equivalent concepts) and in constant motion, enclosing a flat piece of space-time, perhaps like a car. A car is also a shell made of visible matter material with a fixed piece of space enclosed inside it.
In Akuberi’s theory, warp engines require a large amount of “negative energy”, a substance that scientists have not yet discovered. This new study calculates that it is possible to use positive energy material to build this kind of spacecraft, or use a combination of positive and negative energy. In any case, the concept designed by Bob Riker and Martyr is a little closer to reality than Akuberi.
Unfortunately, the new study concluded that such a vehicle would still be subject to the limitations of relativity. And such a vehicle can be divided into a variety of types, and for most of these types of design, which closed space-time is afraid that will also be affected, that is, passengers still have to face the problem of time differences with the Earth. According to their vision, this energy shell has the ability to modify the characteristics of its internal space-time, which can make the internal space-time faster and slower relative to the outside world.
Curvilinear engine applications
Sam Baron, associate professor of philosophy at Australian Catholic University, believes that even though Bobrick and Martyr’s research has fleshed out many aspects of the warp engine concept and solved some other problems, it is still too far from being a spacecraft for human needs and is not necessarily a suitable technological direction. necessarily a suitable technological direction.
But he felt that there were other uses for this technology. Essentially, a warp engine is a different space-time closed up, and building smaller machines of this kind should be much easier than building a space ship, and also have magical uses.
For example, put a plant inside such a machine and it will grow overnight because days or more have passed in the space-time inside. Or, let the terminally ill live inside, slow their aging, and wait until the outside world finds a cure before coming out of the machine to receive treatment.
All in all, FTL travel is still too far away, but time-warping technology is still not a revolutionary research idea.
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