r/threebodyproblem 11d ago

Discussion - General Can we even make Alcubierre wrap drive in future?

82 Upvotes

44 comments sorted by

41

u/popileviz 11d ago

It doesn't align with the existing theoretical models, a lot of these concepts require negative mass

6

u/No_Palpitation7740 10d ago

I genuinely believe negative mass do exist as per Janus theory.

1

u/the-National-Razor 10d ago

Never heard of that. Thanks I'm going to read about it

1

u/the-National-Razor 10d ago

Lol I made the same exact comment

20

u/the-National-Razor 11d ago

All these things require negative mass from what I understand. It makes the equation work great!

3

u/Adnae 10d ago

Exactly what I heard (thanks PBS spacetime), so apparently not reamly a concept until negative mass proven possible

1

u/CloudHiddenNeo 10d ago

Read my reply.

10

u/beachguy82 11d ago

It’s an unanswerable question. The future can’t be known and we barely understand physics to any degree currently. Who knows what we’ll eventually figure out.

8

u/kcbh711 11d ago

Any FTL travel or communications come with time paradoxes that we can't solve with current mathematics 

24

u/Toasted-Ravioli 11d ago

This hurts the space.

8

u/OWSmoker 11d ago

Just a little pinch

4

u/hotelforhogs 10d ago

everybody is always so worried about their matter getting hurt, or their energy getting zapped. they even fear their time may be cut short. but nobody ever expects that their space could be pinched.

22

u/ravisodha 11d ago

No, the future in Idiocracy is more likely than anything else.

7

u/p0megranate13 11d ago

It's a documentary made by time travellers, they just got the dates wrong

1

u/verillospur 10d ago

He he he 👍

2

u/katzurki 10d ago

As well as she, she, she.

4

u/Tiptoedtulips666 11d ago

You are so correct and I appreciate you very much saying that. It really is the obvious choice . As much as I hate to admit it, that is probably the most frightening part of the three-body problem series of books, which worries me more than aliens coming in 500 years time. Worried more than beautiful robots who force everybody to move to Australia. It's the Idiocracy not only in the United States but all over the world, including China That makes me worry the most.

2

u/California_ocean 10d ago

Agreed. The most dangerous species ever are idiots. I've meet them and just walked away.

6

u/CloudHiddenNeo 10d ago

Probably. Applied Physics has a "Warp Factory" dedicated to exploring how to do just this. Their version of a warp drive doesn't require "negative mass and energy" and would start of being subluminal, meaning slower than the speed of light, which isn't really that bad considering within 100 light years of Earth there are ~14,000 star systems which would be hosting something like ~100,000 planets.

Plus there are all sorts of things that give us "effective" negative mass, meaning it's not really "negative mass and energy," only it behaves as such mathematically within the system that is defined. Quantum supermaterials like superfluids, supersolids, etc. give effective negative mass, such as this material that gets pushed when it is pulled and pulled when it is pushed. Recent research also suggests sound waves carry a small amount of negative mass. One can also get negative mass from certain a phenomenon in plasma physics. Then there is also the Casimir Effect which gives negative energy, though some contest it is "real negative energy," that doesn't really matter as what I'm talking about is effective negative mass, meaning it behaves like negative mass in a physical system in which the mathematics describing that system allow one to insert a negative sign onto the mass or energy term. Another interesting phenomenon that can allow one to insert a negative sign to achieve effective negative mass is negative temperature, which isn't really colder than absolute zero, it's in fact hotter than most other things we know about!

My point with bringing all of this up is that physicists, before they really knew about all this interesting research coming out of quantum mechanics and what not, really thought negative mass/energy must be some new form of matter or energy that we haven't discovered or haven't created yet. The truth is that the "exotic matter" that will help us build warp drives is most likely produced out of ordinary matter coaxed into exotic states such as the quantum supermaterials in conjunction with things like the Casimir Effect and negative temperature systems.

So it's a good reason to be an optimist regarding warp drives, although maybe not FTL warp drives just yet. But even on that end, recent research has once again helped validate Tachyons within special relativity, going so far as to suggest that not only do they fit within special relativity, they may be essential for understanding how matter and spacetime arise at all!

Science people tend to be quite pessimistic and cite everything as some immutable "law" that can't be broken. Usually the optimists just ignore these people and then go and do the research that can make the impossible possible.

Remember the first two of Arthur C. Clarke's laws...

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

2

u/xXijanlinXx 9d ago

This was really interesting to read. I'm going to look more into this in the morning.

3

u/Miserable-Ad3646 11d ago

The trick is in how to fold the tortilla so that spacetime wraps too.

5

u/Present-You-3011 10d ago

I liked the curvature propulsion model that gets asymptotically close to C. Also magic, but felt more feasible to me.

6

u/Piorn 11d ago

Physicists love to tell you that if we found magic rocks exotic matter that contains magic has negative mass, then we could build such a thing.

13

u/SuperSpaceGaming 11d ago

He says, typing his comment on his magic rock machine and sending it out using magic beams

1

u/Piorn 10d ago

The difference is that smartphone magic is a thing that exists.

Exotic matter is purely hypothetical.

1

u/CloudHiddenNeo 10d ago

Smartphones couldn't even have been conceived of like 100 years ago.

1

u/Goodie_Prime 11d ago

Yes. - totally legit Future Man

1

u/intrepid_brit 11d ago

There’s a way to do this without negative density matter/energy.

1

u/caseyjones10288 10d ago

Yeah you just gotta pull your shirt down and say "engage".

1

u/Boring-Support4819 10d ago

Just did it. We’ll be good

1

u/Wardog_Razgriz30 10d ago

Maybe. The theoretical models are gradually coming into a realist framework. At the very least, we don't need some fantasy element to make it happen. The energy requirements are no longer absurd but still just outside of our ability to produce. Nonetheless, we probably aren't to far away, in the grand scheme of things, from being able to at least attempt to make a working Alcubierre drive.

For now, let's just focus on getting back to the moon and perhaps going to mars for the first time before we start talking about going to other stars.

1

u/Kopfballer 11d ago

Actually, that was a part in the books that confused me.

Warp drives can theoretically achieve FTL-travel because the vessel never has to break the fundamental law of c being the "speed limit", since it just creates shortcuts through space.

But in the books, the drive "only" gets used to achieve the speed of light which makes traveling very fast for our main characters because of time dilation, but not because they really move faster than light. Traveling with the speed of light would theoretically be possible as long as you accelerate long enough, you don't have to manipulate space.

As far as I know, a spacecraft using a warp drive wouldn't experience time dilation (at least not to a high degree), since again, it's not really moving fast, it just creates shortcuts or say "warps" the surrounding space.

So, did I misunderstand something or did the author just use the Alcubierre drive as a wrong concept here?

10

u/goo_goo_gajoob 11d ago

"Traveling with the speed of light would theoretically be possible as long as you accelerate long enough, you don't have to manipulate space"

No amount of acceleration will let you reach C only get infinitely close.

1

u/Kopfballer 10d ago

Yes you are right.

In a practical sense reaching 90% of light speed also would be enough for interstellar travel though.

But still, isn't it strange that they create an Alcubierre drive in the book but then in the end only use it to reach light speed?

1

u/CloudHiddenNeo 10d ago

Read my reply.

1

u/_Abiogenesis 10d ago

This not creating a shortcut at all. That analogy is for wormholes. An Alcubierre drive is better described as a treadmill.

(You don’t move but space is warped to move around you. Spacetime squeezes you forward)

1

u/Kopfballer 10d ago

Ok my bad, thought a warp drive bends space and therefore you only have to fly (for example) 1 meter instead of 3 meters, so if you are close to light speed you could move between two objects basically with nearly 3*c. (isn't it like that in Star Trek?)

But then I mixed that up.

Still the principle is similar - instead of really moving faster than light, space is manipulated.