Neil deGrasse Tyson on Antimatter and Faster-than-Light Travel

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[StarTalk]

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[aeon]

Yeah, Neil's great. It's such an important question, because if anti-matter had negative mass, we would know it would be possible to create wormholes—and thus warp drives. It would only be a matter of time. :)

Alas, anti-matter does not have negative mass, so it's still unknown as to whether wormholes are possible.

(FYI: The current mathematics on wormholes and warp drive state that you need negative matter to make it happen. That's what I'm referencing, in case you didn't know!)

[BenjiRemez]

I think this was another example of Neil's greatness. I saw the title of the video and thought, 'Oh my, that's a silly question; Antimatter has mass, so no, it can't do that'. Then comes in Neil and shows that although my guess was totally right, it's not a silly question at all.

[aeon]

Hehehe, yeah me too. But the thing is, if anti-matter had anti-mass, we would have a way to create anti-gravity as well as wormholes (which would allow us to travel vast distances easily)—given we could manufacture enough anti-matter.

It's really unfortunate that anti-matter is only negative in the quantum state. It would have made so many technologies in science fiction a certainty in the future given enough power.

[JACCO]

I thought the Alcubierre drive was a real world representation of the Star Trek warp drive in that it creates a "warp" bubble around the craft that causes space in front to contract and behind to expand. I dont recall anything about mass or lack thereof. But I could be wrong as I am in no way an expert.

The video game Mass Effect uses the negative mass idea though. They use a fictional element that turns their ships into negative mass so they can accelerate past the speed of light.

[Duncan_Idaho_Potato]

I believe that Miguel Alcubierre was inspired in small part by Star Trek. In fact, Star Trek: The Next Generation went on to use Alcubierre's ideas in fleshing out the idea of the Star Trek warp drive concept. But Alcubierre's actual design does require the existence of exotic negative mass matter, as well as ENORMOUS amounts of energy. Amounts of energy that can only be attained using matter/antimatter annihilation, in fact. Which is what they use on Star Trek! So it all comes full circle!

[Alxx]

Fascinating, I was not aware of this. I will have to endeavour to do some research on the topic.

[BenjaminSteber]

I'm not yet sold on antimatter not being anti-gravitational. They are testing that now, and it may come out to be that antimatter is normally gravitational. I just hope that it's not because that would be a wonderful explanation for symmetry breaking either before or after the big bang. I made a video about that two days ago, in fact. Check my channel to see.

[fredfarrell]

English captions are pretty funny in this one. Nice answer also Neil :)

[Duncan_Idaho_Potato]

I wonder if the author of the question was referring to the Alcubierre drive. The A-drive is a hypothetical FTL drive that is grounded in Einstein's equations, the only sticking point being that it requires the existence of exotic matter with negative mass. There are some theoretical models that posit the existence of such matter but they're a little off the mainstream. Still, there's enough scientific merit in the concept of the A-drive that NASA is currently funding research into it.

[Duncan_Idaho_Potato]

I suspect that if an A-drive is ever built and sucessfully tested, they will call it the "warp drive", and due credit will be given to Star Trek. As well as Miguel Alcubierre, of course. :)

[Avokado]

But what about Higgs boson and the higgs field? That's what gives matter mass, right? So if you create an artificial higgs field or rather higgs vacuum - like a bubble - would that allow FTL-travel?

[homerco]

I'm sure you'd say the same of Issac Asimov. Go you.

[jhobbz]

Why would it be a good thing if antimatter had antimass?