What's Stopping Us From Building a Warp Drive?

A faster-than-light (FTL) warp drive would arguably represent the most important invention of all time. In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre gave all of us hope as he found a solution within general relativity that would cause the necessary warping of space. But after nearly 30 years of further study, what does our current understanding of physics say about the feasibility of a warp drive?

THANK-YOU to D. Smith, M. Sloan, L. Sanborn, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, A. Jones, S. Brownlee, N. Kildal, Z. Star, E. West, T. Zajonc, C. Wolfred, L. Skov, G. Benson, A. De Vaal, M. Elliott, B. Daniluk, M. Forbes, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee, Z. Danielson, C. Fitzgerald, C. Souter, M. Gillette, T. Jeffcoat, J. Rockett, D. Murphree, T. Donkin, K. Myers, A. Schoen, K. Dabrowski, J. Black, R. Ramezankhani, J. Armstrong, K. Weber, S. Marks, L. Robinson, S. Roulier, B. Smith, J. Cassese, J. Kruger, S. Way, P. Finch, S. Applegate, L. Watson, E. Zahnle, N. Gebben, J. Bergman, E. Dessoi, C. Macdonald, M. Hedlund, P. Kaup, C. Hays, W. Evans, D. Bansal, J. Curtin, J. Sturm, RAND Corp., M. Donovan, N. Corwin, M. Mangione, K. Howard, L. Deacon, G. Metts, G. Genova, R. Provost, B. Sigurjonsson, G. Fullwood, B. Walford, J. Boyd, N. De Haan, J. Gillmer, R. Williams, E. Garland, A. Leishman, A. Phan Le, R. Lovely, M. Spoto, A. Steele, M. Varenka, K. Yarbrough, A. Cornejo, D. Compos, F. Demopoulos, G. Bylinsky, J. Werner, B. Pearson, S. Thayer, T. Edris, A. Harrison, B. Seeley, F. Blood, M. O'Brien, P. Muzyka, E. Loomans, D. Lee, J. Sargent, M. Czirr, F. Krotzer, I. Williams & J. Sattler.

REFERENCES

MUSIC
► 0:00 Sid Acharya - Searching for Answers
► 3:18 Falls - Life in Binary
► 9:49 Chris Zabriskie - Cylinder Four
► 11:42 Falls - Ripley
► 14:00 Chris Zabriskie - We Were Never Meant to Live Here
► 17:06 Caleb Etheridge - Always Dreaming
► 21:11 Joachim Heinrich - Y
► 23:34 Indive - Trace Correction

CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
3:18 Energy
5:01 Exotica
8:26 Blinkist
9:49 Horizons
11:42 Radiation
14:00 Catch-22
17:06 Causality
21:11 Conclusions
23:24 Outro

#astrophysics #warpdrive #ftlfasterthanlight

[jrfish]

As an engineer, love engineering challenges. Usually I just say it’s a money problem, but plank length metal isn’t really a money problem lol.

[infiniterats]

Imagine you use the warp drive to jump to the nearest star. Once you got there you could look through an extremely powerful telescope and see yourself in the past because the light traveled slower than you did. I love this idea

[asialsky]

"The problem with space travel isn't reaching your destination: the problem is having the crew survive."
--NASA engineers

[nicholashylton]

_"...merely engineering issues..."_ When I hear that remark about speculative technology, I frequently think they're saying in a roundabout way - _"...and then magic happens..."_
An excellent video! Clear and without the hype.

[mrtoastyman]

Cool worlds and pbs space time are the only channels I re-watch videos multiple times. So information dense. Amazing as always.

[smokyHR]

Mass relay stations from Mass Effect could be a solution for the horizon issue, that is a launch and catch stations. First trip would be a long one but a needed sacrifice for the ease of the rest.

Kinda like a highway, you need years to build it, but hours to travel through it.

[camb]

The concept introduced of having a slower-than-light warp drive, but slowing down the passage of time inside the bubble is actually extremely interesting! A drive like that would invoke a “time-debt” system of interstellar travel, since the passengers wouldn’t experience the same time-passage as outside observers. Very interesting .

[juzoli]

I rarely see the Horizon problem the emphasis it deserves, and it is very well described here.
This is THE ONE issue which is not just an engineering challenge, but makes it outright impossible. Basically we need another FTL communication method to be invented, but that is exactly what we tried to solve with warp drive in first place.

[edwinwagha]

The fact that a group of people around the world are busy trying to solve some of the most complex problems available, problems that their solutions feel like they are hundreds if not thousands of years ahead of us, makes me feel hopeful for a greater future for our species. I might be wrong, but I am optimistic about things and ideas like this.

[rJaune]

I wonder if the people at LIGO or the Pulsar Timing Array have figured out what a warp signature would look like. That would be a really neat way to learn we aren't alone in the Universe.

[CalamitousJonathan]

When flying at warp speed we stepped outside of the spaceship onto the iceball that formed around our ship and gazed out on the universe surrounding us. Bending around us. I took all of the crew out to look at space bend around us. We all broke down and cried at the beauty. Then we cried again after dreaming about it.

[adammanneh]

Always a good day when Cool Worlds drop a new video! Thanks professor kipping. :)

[Jedbullet]

We discussed this paper back when I was doing my Ph.D (it was new then). We came to the conclusion that although very interesting (and exciting), some fundamental problems existed with materials (now realised as the Planck length skin lol), energy requirements and we just couldn't get away from the paradoxes, and how quantum mechanics/gravity (if we ever get unification) would play into this. Looks like we've come a long way in understanding, but we young Ph.D students weren't too far off. Brilliant synopsis and Video. Thanks man. PS I'm now a blinkist customer, cheers lad, Dr D (aka Jed)

[simonmasbaum]

I'm tickled by the fact that warp field theory is becoming an actual field of physics.

[lloydlopez]

"If we have budget as much as the military does, we would have colonized Mars 30 years ago "

[gravitascascade]

Despite all of the challenges, it's encouraging to see that this is not just a fantasy, but an actual branch of theoretical research

[lorddoinkus]

Well my day just got 1000x better. Thank you Dr. Kipping and of course to the cool worlds team.

[natgrant]

I would think that at the very least the act of trying to find a solution to superluminal travel is getting physicist to look at things in greater detail and ask "what if" kinds of questions.
I honestly think that we will someday, eventually find more solutions to subluminal space flight at relativistic speeds but who knows when.
Like you said, looking at ideas for warp drive might help with a more conventional approach.

[gothfalcon]

The original Star Trek series refers to it as "Time Warp" factors. The way they were supposed to work was to create basically two bubbles so that outside of the outer bubble was normal space, then inside the inner bubble was normal space, but between the two bubbles, time moved very quickly so that the speed you were traveling was set in the space between the bubbles so that it was multiplied to being faster than light. Star Trek warp speed is time travel. Star Wars hyperspace is moving into an alternate reality similar to our own that is affected by matter and gravity in our universe. That's why Han was able to make a trip faster than anyone else in the expanded universe lore. He knew a path through a region with a lot of black holes that required precise travel and even dropping out of hyperspace to safely navigate

[jgkitarel]

I have always seen it as we are starting to develop the _math_ for FTL. The tech and material requirements, as well as not outright violating the laws of physics as they exist (which is vastly beyond what we currently know) is an engineering problem. Though it is one where we may never be able to practically solve, but it is a problem that has a theoretical solution. And a practical solution will always require a theoretical solution to exist.

You put out six issues that have to be dealt with, though those aren't the extent of it. I would place causality as the top issue, as if we cannot solve that, then any solutions to the rest of the issues is moot even if we have solved them.