The Star Trek television series and films use the term “warp drive” to describe their method of faster-than-light travel. Neither the Alcubierre theory, nor anything similar, existed when the series was conceived—the term “warp drive” and general concept originated with John W. Campbell’s 1931 science fiction novel Islands of Space. Alcubierre stated in an email to William Shatner that his theory was directly inspired by the term used in the show and cites the “‘warp drive’ of science fiction” in his 1994 article. A USS Alcubierre appears in the Star Trek tabletop RPG Star Trek Adventures. Since the release of Star Trek: The Original Series, more recent Star Trek spin-off series have made closer use of the theory behind the Alcubierre Drive incorporating warp bubbles/fields into the in-universe science.
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- brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish1 hour
It still violates causality.
Orion’s Arm has an elaborate write-up for their wormhole system, to get around this:
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48545a0f6352a
https://www.orionsarm.com/page/322
When a wormhole is transported to a distant system by linelayer at relativistic speeds, the two ends of the wormhole become displaced in time due to time dilation. In theory this displacement could allow time travel into the past, especialy if the wormhole mouths are subsequently brought close together again or connected via additional wormholes.
In practice time travel into the past is prevented by the so-called Visser effect. The ends of any single wormhole cannot be brought more closely together than the time difference between them; i.e. if one mouth is a year younger than the other, the ends can’t come closer than a light-year without causing a Closed Timelike Curve. The formation of such a CTC immediately generates an exponential flux of virtual particles, which destabilises the wormhole and causes a collapse.
This represents an effective event horizon between the (hypothetical) part of the universe which allows time travel and the part of the universe which does not; this horizon is known as a Cauchy Horizon.
In other words, one can’t place wormholes in a configuration where they’d violate causality; the act of doing so creates a black hole.
And this includes more complex multi-wormhole configurations that could indirectly generate CTCs. For I time, I thought maybe Star Trek ships were “smartly” routed to avoid violating causality with each other… but this is clearly not the case.
With respect to wormholes, we are like DaVinci – we have the knowledge to design and construct wormholes. We just lack the tools and materials at present.
5 hoursStill violates the laws of physics
You and I are in two conventional spaceships traveling at 0.86c relative to each other. In my reference frame, you are traveling through time at half the rate I am. This is due to time dilation, not speed of light delay. After I experience one year on my ship, you will have experienced 6 months on your ship. In your reference frame, the opposite is true. After you experience one year on your ship, I will have experienced 6 months on my ship. This violates no laws of physics, because even though there is no universal “present,” the limited speed of light ensures that causality is maintained.
Both of our ships have away shuttles with Alcubierre drives. These away shuttles can move arbitrarily fast, far in excess of the speed of light, without ever leaving their parent ship’s reference frame.
After 60 years, my ship has a cyclospirosis outbreak because someone didn’t wash their hands. The last pilot not suffering from explosive diarrhea hops in our away ship and instantaneously warps some distance in front of your ship (reminder: in my reference frame, you have only aged 30 years). He sends you a message explaining the situation. This message reaches you after you’ve only aged 30 years.
Swapping to your reference frame now. Causality must be preserved, so since you received that message after 30 years in my reference frame, you must receive that message after 30 years in your own. But in your reference frame, after 30 years of passed, my clock is only at 15 years. You decide to send your own away shuttle to warn us about this future outbreak. Your away shuttle arrives arbitrarily fast, sending us a message about a future cyclospirosis outbreak that arrives 45 years before that outbreak happens.
You can dress your FTL technology in whatever sci-fi bullshit you want. If you can get information to a destination faster than a photon could, you can break causality.
Here’s the thing. If it’s all vibrating strings in 10 dimensions then ???
- Apepollo11@lemmy.worldEnglish24 hours
I noticed a lot of the players doing that neck grabbing thing in the World Cup this year.
I get a visceral reaction every time I see it. It’d be a massive red flag if someone tried to do it to me.
Is it a new Andrew Tate/alpha male kind of thing? It’s weird and I don’t like it.
- 1 day
That idiot explains it to the wrong person. Instead of to that woman, who’s clearly not interested, he should talk to me, a fat guy who loves Star Trek!
- hakunawazo@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
But I bet he can’t wrap his fingers as easily around your neck.
~(Wasn’t meant to be rude, just in case)~- 1 day
Probably not, and he might not feel like doing so as well.
- 1 day
And all it would require is more energy than exists trapped in all the matter in the galaxy!
- 1 day
I thought someone redid the math a while back and got the energy requirement down to simply the mass of Jupiter.
Corrct, but, it also still requires local negative energy density to be a conceptually and physically possible thing.
Which is… currently not understood to be possible, or exist… so that basically does violate the laws of physics.
There have been even more recent attempts to… reconceptualize the whole idea, which have resulted in less required negative energy density…
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.06824
… but not 0. So this is still sci-fi, untill we discover… anti-energy, or… something like that.
Pretty good recent recap of the current status of this line of research, if you look past the misleading headline:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a71362600/scientists-say-physical-warp-drive-possible/
- chuckleslord@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
Negative energy is almost certainly not a thing.
If two objects made up of matter and antimatter collide, they would annihilate each other and release all of their energy as an explosion
If two objects made of energy and anti-energy collided they would also annihilate each other… except there would be nothing afterwards. Total information loss as no energy would escape the impact, since there would be no more energy afterwards.
Wait.
Ok uh… what if…
What if anti-energy + energy = 50.0000…1% matter, and 49.9999…9% anti matter?
We… still don’t actually know why matter dominates the universe over anti-matter, right?
… just spitballing here.
Does that even … possibly make sense?
I don’t know.
Yeah I’m inclined to agree.
If negative energy is somehow possible, it causes … an absurd number of paradoxes, very quickly, if it can just… exist, without bounds.
I am not any kind of actual physicist, but if I had to attempt to concieve of some framework where it even might be possible…
I’d go for some kind of 11, 12, whatever dimensional universe, when it would concievably be possible to have energy be able to bleed off, transfer, through higher dimensions, which might kind of look like ‘negative energy’ to us 3D spacetime things, but actually wouldn’t be.
Of course… all of that is mind bogglingly complex as well, and probably causes paradoxes I am too ignorant to understand.
since energy is a property of matter rather than something on its own, it would be more like a totally inelastic collision.
but while we’re on sci-fi, what if negative energy is possible in a moving reference frame?
Just want you well appraised of the facts, sir, up to you to judge the rest.
- davidgro@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
But in negative energy, which isn’t known to exist independently. (You can’t take the Casimir effect out from between the plates, etc.)
- 1 day
And a completely hypothetical state of matter and energy.
Well, the universe is expanding, and we don’t know why. Dark energy has come to dominate the energy balance of universe, and we don’t know what that is. We’ve a theory that’s great for describing small things, and a different theory that’s great for describing large or fast things, but they don’t line up, so we can’t have them quite right.
If the universe did have a period of greatly increased expansion shortly after the big bang, it doesn’t seem too crazy to suggest that you could do it again, at least in theory. Might require some absurd energy density. That much energy in one place is likely to collapse into a black hole, which would sort out contacting the universe again.
- saltesc@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
I’ve seen this meme many times, but for the first time I’m seeing Dr Ian Malcolm’s dumb jock brother. I hope this is temporary and not something that can’t be unseen…
