Related papers: Putting the Warp into Warp Drive
Recent research has proposed that advanced propulsion mechanisms such as warp drives are more physically feasible than previously thought, using positive energy sources potentially sourced by known classical physics. Motivated by this, we…
It is shown how, within the framework of general relativity and without the introduction of wormholes, it is possible to modify a spacetime in a way that allows a spaceship to travel with an arbitrarily large speed. By a purely local…
Certain classes of higher dimensional models suggest that the Casimir Effect is a candidate for the cosmological constant. In this paper we demonstrate that a sufficiently advanced civilization could, in principal, manipulate the radius of…
Warp-drives are solutions of general relativity widely considered unphysical due to high negative energy requirements. While the majority of the literature has focused on macroscopic solutions towards the goal of interstellar travel, in…
Prior to 1988, traversable wormholes were just science fiction. Prior to 1994, warp drives were just fiction. Since then, these notions matured into published scientific discourse, where key issues and unknowns continue to be raised and…
"Warp drive" spacetimes and wormhole geometries are useful as "gedanken-experiments" that force us to confront the foundations of general relativity, and among other issues, to precisely formulate the notion of "superluminal" travel and…
It is commonly accepted that superluminal travel may be used to facilitate time travel. This is a purely special-relativistic argument, using the fact that for observers in two frames of reference, separated by a spacelike interval, the…
"Warp drive" spacetimes are useful as "gedanken-experiments" that force us to confront the foundations of general relativity, and among other things, to precisely formulate the notion of "superluminal" communication. We verify the…
The warp drive envisioned by Alcubierre that can move a spaceship faster than light can, with modification, levitate it as if it were lighter than light, even allow it to go below a black hole's horizon and return unscathed. Wormhole-like…
The question of whether it is possible or not to surpass the speed of light is already centennial. The special theory of relativity took the existence of a speed limit as a principle, the light postulate, which has proven to be enormously…
Looking at current proposals of so-called `warp drive spacetimes', they appear to employ General Relativity only at an elementary level. A number of strong restrictions are imposed such as flow-orthogonality of the spacetime foliation,…
In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre proposed that the well-known special relativistic limitation that particles cannot travel with velocities higher than light speed can be bypassed when such trips are considered globally within specific general…
The Alcubierre warp drive is an exotic solution in general relativity. It allows for superluminal travel at the cost of enormous amounts of matter with negative mass density. For this reason, the Alcubierre warp drive has been widely…
What happens when a warp bubble has mass? This seemingly innocent question forces one to carefully formalize exactly what one means by a warp bubble, exactly what one means by having the warp bubble "move" with respect to the fixed stars,…
''Warp drive'' spacetimes are useful as ''gedanken-experiments'' and as a theoretician's probe of the foundations of general relativity. Applying linearized gravity to the weak-field warp drive, i.e., for non-relativistic warp-bubble…
Various objections against Alcubierre's warp drive geometry are reviewed. Superluminal warp bubbles seem an unlikey possibility within the framework of general relativity and quantum field theory, although subluminal bubbles may still be…
Gravitational radiation is an elusive form of radiation predicted by general relativity, it is the subject of intense theoretical and experimental research at the limit of the sensitivity of today's instrumentation. In spite of the fact…
It is commonly believed that Alcubierre's warp drive works by contracting space in front of the warp bubble and expanding space behind it. We show that this expansion/contraction is but a marginal consequence of the choice made by…
Drag reduction by microbubbles is a promising engineering method for improving ship performance. A fundamental theory of the phenomenon is lacking however, making actual design quite uphazard. We offer here a theory of drag reduction by…
Warp drives are very interesting configurations in General Relativity: At least theoretically, they provide a way to travel at superluminal speeds, albeit at the cost of requiring exotic matter to exist as solutions of Einstein's equations.…