The idea of being able to travel through space using “Warp Drive” has fascinated many of us for a major part of our lives. As a former physics professor, who once taught astronomy, I have always had a more direct, personally alluring, interest in Warp Drive, even if that enthusiasm was always slightly tempered by the reality that it was pure fantasy. Well, things change, and an article I read recently suggests that the idea of Warp travel has moved from the realm of “totally insane” to the level of “highly improbable but not at all impossible”.
That’s exciting!
As British astrophysicist, Kat Clough, has said, “I think there is just so much we don’t know. When you look back through the history of science, you see examples of this all the time. People think something is science fiction….and then they realise there is a way to make it happen”. I could add here, just think about the fact that, less than a hundred years ago, you would have been put in a lunatic asylum for promoting the idea that man could travel to the moon – many thought it was made of cheese because of the craters they could see.
Scientists know that, at some point in the far distant future, our sun will degrade to the point that the earth will be uninhabitable, and that’s assuming we don’t get wiped out by a stray meterorite or one of our own nuclear weapons in the meantime. We will have to move somewhere to survive. However, true as that is, it’s not really the driving force behind our quest for Warp Drive. That quest is driven more by curiosity and a desire to explore the unknown.
NASA estimates that there are at least 300 million habitable worlds in our galaxy alone, with perhaps 24 that have environments that are better for life than those on earth. AND there are an estimated two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. What more incentive do we need to try and get there, wherever “there” might be?
We know that, even at the speed of light, it would take generations of human time to cross any significant distance in our galaxy, let alone the rest of the cosmos, and the speed of light has generally been thought of as the maximum velocity attainable, even theoretically. However, if we could somehow bend, or warp, time then we might be able to defy these astronomical distances and timeframes. Captain Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard seem to be able to do it quite effortlessly!
Miguel Alcubierre grew up in Mexico City and was fascinated with the books of Issac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. When he became a Ph.D student at University College in Cardiff, Wales, that fascination moved him to watch multiple episodes of Star Trek and the warp-drive adventures of the starship USS Enterprise. One night, during one episode, it occurred to Miguel that there might be a relationship between Einstein’s theory of relativity and warp drive – in other words, bending/warping time, which the theory of relativity permits, might be used to allow something like the Enterprise’s warp speed capability. How many beers were involved in this revelation is not recorded!!
Miguel then set to work to do the math to prove what he had conceived. Two years later, his work, once exclusively undertaken by science fiction writers, would evolve into a paper, suggesting that it’s possible to modify space-time in a way that allows a spaceship to travel at the speed of light. This paper kickstarted a decades-long effort among scientists to understand, design, and search for warp drives. Simply put, Miguel envisioned creating a “bubble” that would contain the spaceship. His theory suggested creating the “Bubble” with a massive amount of something-called negative energy. Space in front of the bubble could then be contracted and space behind it expanded. The problem was that negative energy didn’t exist except in a quantum phenomenon known as the Casimir Effect, and the mass of negative energy needed was about the size of the visible universe. Hardly a practical solution. However, it was a start. Miguel left it at that point and went back to his day-job of studying Black Holes.
Fast forward 30 years and multiple scientists have moved Miguel’s concept from “impossible” to “plausible”. However, as one of the scientists who is convinced warp drive could exist, said, moving the concept from “plausible” to “feasible” is a whole different process. It might take 20 years, two hundred years, or never, but, currently, it’s plausible.
In conclusion, the article I read stated, “Humanity is no stranger to dedication stretched across millennia. Great cathedrals of Europe took several centuries to build. If Miguel Alcubierre created a blueprint, it is, maybe, the scientific foundation of a effort that might, one day, centuries or millennia from now, produce a functioning warp drive.” As I said, exciting!
