A potential model for an actual physical warp

A few researchers in Applied Physics have created what they describe as the first general model for a shear drive, a model for a spacecraft that can move faster than the speed of light without violating the laws of physics. Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire wrote a paper describing and publishing their ideas for a warp drive in IOPs Classical and quantum gravity.

In the 60’s, television viewers became familiar with the idea of ​​a warp drive thanks to the television program “Star Trek”. When the crew had to get somewhere quickly, Captain Kirk gave his famous order (“Mr. Sulu, carry on”), and the ship was quickly pushed to another distant destination. Physicists mocked the idea of ​​an actual warp strip because it suggested traveling faster than light. But in reality, as the name of the propeller indicates, such an engine did not push the vessel faster than the speed of light; instead, it simply twisted time in a way that a shortcut could use. Imagine a napkin. If you have to traverse the entire surface, it will take some time. But what if you fold the napkin in half and move it through and over the folds? You can reach your destination in a short time. In this new effort, the researchers took a previous idea based on the distortion of space-time a step further to create a model for a warp that they believe would be feasible in the future.

Bobrick and Martire start with the idea of ​​an Alcubierre warp drive, a concept developed by Miguel Alcubierre in 1994 – he proposed it as spacecraft that could contract space time in front of the vehicle while expanding behind the rig. But such a vessel requires an enormous amount of negative energy, which is not possible for a real spacecraft. Bobrick and Martire suggest that a massive gravitational force can be used to bend space-time. The trick is to find a way to compress a planet-sized mass into a manageable size of the spacecraft module to use its gravity. Because of the implied problems, a warp developed by the researchers could not be built today, but it suggests that it might one day be possible.

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