Related papers: The warp drive and antigravity
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…
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…
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…
The Alcubierre warp drive allows a spaceship to travel at an arbitrarily large global velocity by deforming the spacetime in a bubble around the spaceship. Little is known about the interactions between massive particles and the Alcubierre…
I show how a minor modification of the Alcubierre geometry can dramatically improve the total energy requirements for a `warp bubble' that can be used to transport macroscopic objects. A spacetime is presented for which the total negative…
The null geodesic equations in the Alcubierre warp drive spacetime are numerically integrated to determine the angular deflection and redshift of photons which propagate through the distortion of the ``warp drive'' bubble to reach an…
Over the last decade, there has been a respectable level of scientific interest regarding the concept of a warp drive. This is a hypothetical propulsion device that could theoretically circumvent the traditional limitations of special…
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…
Alcubierre proposed in 1994 that the well known special relativistic limitation that particles cannot travel with velocities bigger than the light speed can be bypassed when such trips are considered globally within specific general…
Despite originating in science fiction, warp drives have a concrete description in general relativity, with Alcubierre first proposing a spacetime metric that supported faster-than-light travel. Whilst there are numerous practical barriers…
We study the generalizations of the original Alcubierre warp drive metric to the case of curved spacetime background. We find that the presence of a horizon is essential when one moves from spherical coordinates to Cartesian coordinates in…
"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…
In this paper the problem of the quantum stability of the two-dimensional warp drive spacetime moving with an apparent faster than light velocity is considered. We regard as a maximum extension beyond the event horizon of that spacetime its…
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…
It can be shown that negative energy requirements within the Alcubierre spacetime can be greatly reduced when one introduces a lapse function into the Einstein tensor. Thereby reducing the negative energy requirements of the warp drive…
We present an analysis of the classic Alcubierre metric based on conformal gravity, rather than standard general relativity. The main characteristics of the resulting warp drive remain the same as in the original study by Alcubierre, namely…
Coule's primary objection to the Alcubierre "warpdrive" is that the material producing the warp field needs to be superluminal. This difficulty is solved by placing the drive material inside its own warp field (making the drive system part…
The expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of a free conformally invariant scalar field is computed in a two-dimensional reduction of the Alcubierre ``warp drive'' spacetime. The stress-energy is found to diverge if the apparent…
Following the work of H. Ellis, we study warp drives in the gravitational field of a Schwarzschild black hole. We find that as long as the warp drive crosses the black hole horizon at a subluminal speed, the horizon would be effectively…
We first take a closer look at the original warp drive proposal by Alcubierre, examine its kinematics in the context of a covariant 3+1 setting, and explain some drawbacks of this construction. In this model, changes of the velocity profile…