New warp drive concept does twist space, doesn’t move us very fast
New warp drive concept does twist space, doesn’t move us very fast
While it won't make a useful spaceship engine, it may tell us more about relativity.
The researchers did indeed discover a warp drive solution: a method of manipulating space so that travelers can move without accelerating. There is no such thing as a free lunch, however, and the physicality of this warp drive does come with a major caveat: the vessel and passengers can never travel faster than light. Also disappointing: the fact that the researchers behind the new work don't seem to bother with figuring out what configurations of matter would allow the warping to happen.
I strongly suspect all solutions will either be invalid, or be limited to the speed of light.
The universe seems to have a lot of weird quirks (the speed of light being 1) what they have in common is that they make time paradoxes impossible. This points to some deeper physics causing these disparate effects. Anything travelling faster than C can be configured as a time machine, and so create paradoxes.
It’s disappointing in its limitations, yes, but another step in bringing warp-driven travel into a more mainstream conversation and line of theoretical research in physics.
As with Albucierre’s proof, theoretical research always starts with the corner solutions and odd cases to reduce the variables.