![]() The ship would then ride this wave inside a region of flat space, known as a warp bubble, and would not move within this bubble but instead be carried along as the region itself moves due to the actions of the drive. In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre proposed a method for changing the geometry of space by creating a wave that would cause the fabric of space ahead of a spacecraft to contract and the space behind it to expand. Some physicists have presented arguments to suggest that a theory of quantum gravity (which would incorporate both theories) would eliminate those solutions in general relativity that allow for backward time travel (see the chronology protection conjecture) and thus make the Alcubierre drive invalid. At the close of his original article, however, Alcubierre argued (following an argument developed by physicists analyzing traversable wormholes ) that the Casimir vacuum between parallel plates could fulfill the negative-energy requirement for the Alcubierre drive.Īnother possible issue is that, although the Alcubierre metric is consistent with Einstein's equations, general relativity does not incorporate quantum mechanics. If exotic matter with the correct properties cannot exist, then the drive cannot be constructed. The proposed mechanism of the Alcubierre drive implies a negative energy density and therefore requires exotic matter or manipulation of dark energy. Īlthough the metric proposed by Alcubierre is consistent with the Einstein field equations, construction of such a drive is not necessarily possible. Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination more quickly than light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws. Since those solutions are metric tensors, the Alcubierre drive is also referred to as Alcubierre metric. Proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994, the Alcubierre drive is based on a solution of Einstein's field equations. The Alcubierre drive ( ) is a speculative warp drive idea according to which a spacecraft could achieve apparent faster-than-light travel by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, under the assumption that a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (that is, negative mass) could be created. Two-dimensional visualization of an Alcubierre drive, showing the opposing regions of expanding and contracting spacetime that displace the central region
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |