The problem with warp drives

[@SabineHossenfelder]

This video comes with a quiz which you can take here: quizwithit.com/start_thequiz/1722954772919x193599954094382240

[@Thomas-gk42]

An added "thanks" for the quizzes.👌

[@osmosisjones4912]

What about the Quantum vortex in a jar

[@James-g3w7w]

Could we get a $10 million dollar, crowd funded even, Shroud of Turin X Prize for anyone who can reproduce it by any means or technology. It's the best candidate for either a miracle or ET contact. In either case was it left to point to advanced science and technology? What might we discover if we could build a 40 billion watt ultra violet laser printer with AI that could embed 3D information?

[@klocugh12]

Negative energy does exist. My ex has plenty of it.

[@riccacreecca]

No netflix no warp drive

[@KatyCloughQMUL]

Hello Sabine! I’m one of the authors of this paper, thank you for making a video about it. Regarding the point about the total mass of negative energy density in the warp bubble, the number you highlight is the physical value for a mass of 1R in geometric units (c=G=1) when R is 1km. Later in the paper we say that the integrated mass of the negative energy density is 0.01R (bottom right of page 4 of the paper). So it is about 1% of a solar mass at this scale, and didn’t need to be finely tuned to avoid forming a black hole. It is of course still quite a lot of negative energy to get into one place, and as we say in the paper, we don't advocate going out to look for the signals :-) We had a lot of fun doing the research, and it is nice to hear people talk about it, so thanks again for covering it.

[@aarionsievo]

Assuming you are not a troll. You might already know the paper from Fuchs et al. (Jared Fuchs et al. 2024 Class. Quantum Grav. 41 095013). They claimed to have found warp bubble solutions without the requirement of exotic matter. Do you knwo the paper and may this have implications for your calculations?

[@manoo422]

I seem to remember when Miguel Alcubierre originally wrote his paper it was shown to require the mass of the universe to be viable. It seems we have come a very long way back to 'reality' with current proposals. Now all we need to do is find some negative energy!!

[@eyeofthasky]

@@aarionsievo even IF they are the author, they r already a troll --- remember Sabines video about academia just farting out useless papers just to churn the money making machines but no actual useful research? well writing a paper about something they even themselves say it is superfluous to look for such signals, just to have written stuff, clearly looks to me like what Sabine said . . .

[@JD-kj4mj]

Oh oh, her next video is gonna have to be on practical time travel so she can go back to fix this. In that future I'll be hanging my daughter's tv instead of writing this.

[@JD-kj4mj]

And go easy on my time travel events logic above.. I come here to learn things from smart people 😊

[@msromike123]

There is plenty of negative energy. We just need to find a way to harness it from American political campaigns.

[@FerdinandFake]

So That's why Elon bought Twitter... Genius

[@tinycmo]

Word

[@Karlheinze12356]

Find a way to describe that phenomenon in terms of GR...you may have the concept already!

[@Spherical_Cow]

Facebook solved that problem ages ago

[@thomasdowe5274]

@Spherical_Cow And now use that 'potential' to moderate the 1st Amendment and applying it to 'Terms of Service'!

[@slaphead90]

"Ye Cannae Change The Laws of Physics" - Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, sometime in the 23rd century.

[@fubaralakbar6800]

Well, you can...but you would have to be God, which we are not.

[@TheOtherSteel]

Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott - "I can't change the laws of physics. I've got to have thirty minutes."

[@RussellDuffer]

...before he ignores the laws of physics.

[@luminiferous1960]

The Laws of Physics have been changed and added to many times. Galileo and Newton changed them from the old Aristotelian laws. Faraday and Maxwell added Electromagnetism to the Laws of Physics. Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Gibbs added Statistical Mechanics to the Laws of Physics. Einstein changed the Laws of Physics from the old Newtonian laws. Planck, Einstein, Bohr and others added Quantum Mechanics to the Laws of Physics. Dirac added anti-matter to the Laws of Physics. Today, some physicists are working on the next big change to the Laws of Physics required to reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The Laws of Physics are produced by human minds trying to understand how things work through observation and experimentation. Improvements in our understanding necessitate changes or additions to the Laws of Physics in order for them to reflect our improved understanding of how things work. The Laws of Physics are not some perfect and immutable divine laws handed down from on high and etched in stone. It may be true that Engineer Scott cannot change the Laws of Physics, but that does not mean that no one can change them.

[@Gunni1972]

Citing the Future? You hiding something?😂

[@5m0k3y9]

All we need are Dilithium Crystals or a Berylium Sphere to power the warp drive. I saw that in some old historical records.

[@52flyingbicycles]

Well we can already make beryllium spheres!

[@DKNguyen3.1415]

@@52flyingbicycles Now we just need to solve the "warp drive" part.

[@katieandkevinsears7724]

No...we need the Continuoum Transfunctioner. It's power is only exceeded by its mystery.

[@germanpenn]

@@DKNguyen3.1415 you see, we're just 1 step away!

[@DW-indeed]

​@@katieandkevinsears7724DUDE!

[@aquahoodjd]

You know Sabine we all just love to dream. I am lucky to have spent 2500+ hr underwater, am an Instructor, a technical diver, and it is the closest I will ever get to space but it is very similar. Completely different environmental conditions, microgravity, 1 atmosphere per 10m, so 2 atmospheres at 10m. 1 plus 1, as at the surface you are at 1ata. I dive in a dry suit if it's not the around the equator. So,, with 2 tanks ob my back, 2-4 tanks hanging under my arms, I can go many places and it's absolutely as close to what you may experience on an exoplanet as we don't know what a fraction of the life we see is and have stopped naming as the convention is broken (creatures which eat others but have chloroplasts:-). I remember on a decompression stop it at 6 m for 45 minutesand there was this little ball with Angel swings that was flying around in the water like the water was air.... I asked one of my buddies who is a long time instructor hey did you see that and he's like yeah do you know what it is now nobody does. It was 9km off the coast of Western Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean. We were coming up from 70 me had been exploring a the first purpose built aircraft carrier and one of the first victims of WWII. The Japanese bombed in surprise attack and they weren't even able to get any shots off but nice to know that most people made it to shore. That doesn't mean we didn't run into skeletons inside the ship and you don't take anything or touch anything as it's considered a war grave. However, when you die for such a long time and you do so many Dives you realize how foreign we are to that environment and you develop a great respect for it knowing how important it is for our life on this planet when you see entire galaxies of phytoplankton and zooplankton and every possible shape conglomeration of jellies float by you it's absolutely mind blowing. I guess I'm lucky to have that experience. And of all around the world and I've seen so many beautiful things.

[@everettputerbaugh3996]

They are war graves unless you are China looking for good steel for recycle. Then they are unclaimed resources.

[@cybrsage]

I spent over 10,000 hours under water, in a water-warp drive enabled craft...commonly called a submarine. :)

[@aquahoodjd]

@@cybrsage I wasn't in a submarine I was in a dry suit helium hypoxic oxygen and as little nitrogen is possible

[@maidros85]

I don't know why her "waving my hands causes gravitational waves" caused me to Crack up as much as it did, but I am grateful 😂

[@germanpenn]

your laughter caused gravitational waves too

[@kerryburns-k8i]

In Spain we wave our hands around rather a lot, even on the phone --- Are we making waves ?

[@Tom_Quixote]

I don't know why you found that funny either. Maybe you are high?

[@kerryburns-k8i]

@@Tom_Quixote I read your comment Tom, and thought it was a bit mean. Then I got high, and thought it was absolutely hilarious.

[@empireempire3545]

Interestingly, SUB FTL warp drives STILL require dizzying amounts of mass - i've talked with Helmerich directly about it and i'm working on numerical optimizer for their software so that we can see how far we can push this down. I'd say, if within my lifetime we can warp one arm of an interferometer by detectable amount in a controlled manner - meaning there's on-off switch for the warp field - i'd be happy enough. This could be, for example, used to reduce delay in data transmission in the fiber optic cables between the continents. Dont get me wrong, Enterprise-A would be nice and all, i dream of going to the stars just like any nerd, but i think going straight for FTL starships is trying to jump 10 developmental steps ahead. Lets try SMALL WARPS first.

[@user-hd7wd4nu1o]

There may be another approach. It's very hard to heat something to 27,800 degrees Celsius/55,000F ... (5x the surface temperature of the Sun) ... then nature does it quite easily (lightning) by moving air around :) or To build the processing power of in Intel I9 with and Nvidia 3090 desktop using vacuum tubes and core memory= size & power of a city, unless we figured out quantum mechanics and build Transistors/microchips using sand :)

[@tvuser9529]

2:52 "Momentum conservation": I thought part of the idea of a warp drive is that you don't need any rocket engine, because you're not actually accelerating the spaceship, you are expanding space behind it and contracting it in front. The spaceship is "sitting still" while space warps around it, and momentum is conserved without throwing anything out the back.

[@empireempire3545]

No. Thats a common misconception. However, it is understandable confusion because most people are not really up to speed with literature in this topic and present it incorrectly. Also not all warp drives contract/expand space - the Alcubierre solution did, but afterwards it has been shown that you can make a warpdrive without this feature. Interestingly... it doesnt change too much, contraction or not, you still need negative energy, and worse, momenta, and a LOT of it.

[@axilmar254]

Thrust is needed for the warp bubble itself, not the spaceship.

[@DavidCheok]

@@axilmar254 Thrust or rather motion is supposed to be created by the negative pressure in front and positive pressure behind the isolated space. Well at least that's what I think the warp bubble is suppose to be about.

[@pauljs75]

The ship technically would be accelerating, but instead of reaction thrust it's akin to falling in the presence of a gravitational field.

[@scyphe]

@@empireempire3545 Are you saying some warp drive ideas forego warping space? How would it be an FTL drive?

[@D1N02]

We can easily detect warp drives from gamma ray bursts from alien civilisations blowing them selves up trying to achieve warp speed.

[@rupertchappelle5303]

You are definitely Nobel Prize material . . . for the 21st Century.

[@D1N02]

@@rupertchappelle5303 If i solve the Gamma Ray bursts and the Fermi Paradox, they might as well give me 2 :p

[@Ryanowning]

It's far more than just gamma ray bursts. If aliens were using warp drives... WE WOULD KNOW. Partly because they'd be here already.

[@D1N02]

@@Ryanowning No they wouldn't if they all went to Oblivion instead.

[@rupertchappelle5303]

@@D1N02 Only one Nobel Prize at a time for a genius. Think of all the other wannabes.

[@foxtrotunit1269]

4:26 TBH an alien race that can warp space, can also probably manipulate the higgs field. Something having the mass of a sun doesn't have to be it's actual size.

[@tiagotiagot]

Maybe darkmatter is eezo...

[@user-hd7wd4nu1o]

So that's how "they" fit the Galaxy into a marble :)

[@xxportalxx.]

Mmmm the tricky bit here is that this is talking about negative energy density, which isn't the higgs as far as I know. Actually as far as I'm aware we haven't really figured out if negative energy is even a thing in the first place, no less attributed it to anything in particular.

[@LarryGarfieldCrell]

As an American, I find the way you pronounce "Einstein" to be absolutely delightful.

[@davidknellinger4278]

Love how you explain things, this is at the bleeding edge of my understanding, but you make it consumable.

[@jdbrinton]

I'm actually pretty encouraged by this progress. It means there's a direction for further exploration - expelled negative mass and have a solar mass equivalent of energy. It's a starting point.

[@diGritz1]

Simulation Technician #1: Alright since we can't agree whether or not to allow FTL in this Sim, how about we play Rock, Paper Scissors. ST #2: Sounds like a plan. Winner decides... Rock, Rock. Paper, Paper. Rock, Rock. Scissor, Scissor. WTH...... ST #1: Alrighty then, lets just split it 50/50. We let them think they can but make it so hard they'll never figure it out. ST #2: But didn't we do the same thing for Fusion generation?

[@jdmjesus6103]

C is just the redraw limit

[@pauljs75]

The funny thing is, if you can produce warp fields, if you can oscillate them at the right frequency you can also try playing with the Coulomb barrier... Basically, it might be a way to "cheat" at having nuclear fusion.

[@simonmorris-p7m]

“I read the paper & I think it requires some clarification” So many high hopes dashed with these few words 😢

[@DataIsBeautifulOfficial]

The real problem with warp drives? They keep warping my laundry.

[@osmosisjones4912]

Its finaly completed: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJW0ZGOGnryKps0

[@PiotrPavel]

so that's why my socks disappear

[@commonsense-og1gz]

@@PiotrPavel or it could be your alien cat.

[@aupotter2584]

warp dry

[@Sci-Fi-Mike]

That's why my bed sheets warp around my other laundry. And like Piotr says...it explains my missing socks, too!

[@charliedulin]

The Romulans use a singularity as the power for their warp drives. The Gallifreyan Time Lords also use singularities to power their Tardises.

[@virtual2152]

In one episode, the Doctor shows his Earthling friends a neutron star in one room of the Tardis, and it's being used for power, as well.

[@davidconner-shover51]

@@Raven-l8w Sorry, they don't. they have their Holzmann engines for that. Except Norma Cenva. she figured it out

[@user-hd7wd4nu1o]

@@virtual2152 Did it have "Please close the door firmly behind you" sign :)

[@DKNguyen3.1415]

@@Raven-l8w Don't do drugs.

[@scifirealism5943]

Yep

[@silentrocco]

I‘m in awe of your daily output quality. Making a well written, well edited, highly informative yet entertaining video on often very complex themes each day, seriously, hats off!

[@Zandaarl]

One of the authors of the paper about detecting warp drive activities (1:50) is even named Khaaaaaan! 😂 (The main antagonist of the second Star Trek movie.)

[@tombayliss5494]

I grew up on a large farm many years ago and learned that to get to a certain location was to take a "short cut" if I wanted to get there in the shortest time and with the least effort. In college I majored in physics and we were not on the Moon quite yet and I proposed that we take a short cut and everyone laughed but physicists are now very close to "short cuts" because the stumbling block of "time" is getting very different. The older I get the more I realize it's lacticity.

[@miketurner3964]

“The real problem with warp drive” Just what I needed after a day at work.

[@tommylee2894]

Thank you Mrs. Hossenfelder. Your dispassionate examination of nascent information is most welcome. Carry on...as you were...

[@amanofnoreputation2164]

A great way to understand gravitational waves is to think of literal waves on the ocean, which are caused (mostly) by the Moon. As the moon passed overhead a given point on the Earth's surface, that region is more greatly attracted towards the Moon, causing that side of the planet to stretch and then retract as the moon continues on it's orbit, with the oceans receiving the most noticable effect in the form of rising significantly higher than where they would otherwise be. Every body in the solar system has this kind of effect beause the amount of gravity they exert on the Earth changes in regular cycles: the Earth is either closer or further away from the planet Jupiter in a given position of it's orbit causing a realtive increase or decrease in tidal effects. It's important to note that these effects are measurable because they change: if there was such a thing as a gravitaltional field that always exerted a uniform amount of acceleration due to gravity on the earth at all times, it wouldn't register as a wave because a wave is a rate of change. (Even the Earth's own gravitational field isn't uniform with anomalies all over the place.) If someone were to boot up a warp drive in the solar system, then, it would be a bit like a new celestial body spontaneously appearing and our LIGO observatories wouldn't know to screen them out they way they do the tidal influences of the planets, leading to a blindingly obvious abnormality in it's data.

[@ObjectsInMotion]

The moon causes tides, not ocean waves. Those are caused by wind, mostly.

[@obsidianjane4413]

If someone were to fire up the warp drive as described in the paper video, no one would care about the LIGO readings as the Earth's orbit or even surface was disrupted by it.

[@spaceflight1019]

Consider Ouamaumau. Approximately the same size as the Battlestar Galactica or a Star Destroyer it used its impulse drive to get far enough out of range of our sensors before engagement of its FTL drive. Our best sensors weren't able to identify it beyond a "rock", albeit a rock whose motions defied conventional physics as we know them. If the "rock" used a drive based on gravity we have nothing that can detect the disturbance in spacetime caused by it. The first step in humanity's collective wisdom is to admit that we're only reading the preface to the universe's "how it works" manual. We know enough to destroy ourselves. The question is if we will.

[@thombell3311]

Excellent episode! The energy requirements are always somewhat ignored 😄 In Futurama scientists increased the speed of light so it was then possible to go faster than the old (current) speed ! 😁

[@aocbound]

hi sabbine, ive been following since you had 2K subs back in 2021. love your content. ty for your voice

[@Thomas-gk42]

Long term fan, great😊

[@SkotiM]

Alcubierre has the space infront of the vessel being compressed repeatedly. Where as Eltnam has the space comprising the length of the vessel being expanded repeatedly.

[@mamborambo1]

if they found conclusively that aliens were using warp drives, it would also tell us its possible to do. It would also tell us there are aliens which would drive some people to the walls likely.

[@terrenceparker989]

Hi, Sabine! I'm just a regular, everyday guy who enjoys learning about the world around us. I would like a deeper understanding. How can I learn the mathematical language used in formulas such as the theory of relativity? Where should I begin? Thank you for your help!

[@peterdefrankrijker]

Gene Roddenberry’s ghost must be pissing himself laughing that some words he made up in the Sixties are now subject of serious scientific papers.

[@71Antarex]

not completely. all the articles on dilithium crystals have yet to come out

[@obsidianjane4413]

The science and technobabble even in the old series was based on the pop-sci and sci-fi of the era. Warp drive was based on the implications of relativity that was pretty much standard fare by the 60s'. I think the only technology they made up was the "transporters" as a device to simplify and speed up the stories.

[@NoNamer123456789]

​@@obsidianjane4413Well it is inspired by quantum entanglement. I mean, of course we don't have the Heisenberg-compensator *yet*, we have an imperfect detection rate and we can't measure all bell-states... but it's not like the idea is entirely fabricated.

[@southcoastinventors6583]

Just a bunch of bored scientist that get paid to put out puff papers without even having any concrete way of identifying the things needed to make it possible. Best to focus on building a space infrastructure for the solar system.

[@peterdefrankrijker]

@@obsidianjane4413 and the tricorders. And the dilithium crystals. And artificial gravity. And the phaser weapons. And Spock’s neck pinch. Most of science fiction is made up. That’s why it’s fiction.

[@samedwards6683]

Thanks for your great explanation.

[@juimymary9951]

Hmmm maybe it’s better to focus on wormholes since they are stationary and aren’t mono-use like warp bubbles?

[@Kerostasis]

Problem: the standard mathematical solutions for wormholes are stationary in time as well as space. You can't go through one just whenever you feel like, but only at a single precise time, which only happens once for each wormhole.

[@juimymary9951]

@@Kerostasishmmm… what are you referring to? I mean are you implying that the wormhole would collapse the moment a mass passes through it? That’s the instability problem it doesn’t have to do with it being stationary in time

[@Gunni1972]

Your "ship" (should you accept this mission) will self destuct in 3..2..1.. Because it couldn't handle being tossed around in a tube that has literally gravitation cubed as walls. and most likely the source of it waiting for you at the end of it.

[@mobilephil244]

I'm glad they are still doing the math. Just because our current, incomplete, understanding of physics says we can't build one using what we know right now, we should not assume it will always be impossible.

[@hiltonian_1260]

Oddball wants you to stop putting out them negative waves about warp drives. But yeah, 2/3 of a sun seems insurmountable.

[@southcoastinventors6583]

We can't even travel to mars seems kind of like a waste of time to speculate on something that doesn't have any data to support ie a source negative energy or away to warp space without needing a huge amount of compressed mass.

[@andersjjensen]

2/3rds the mass of the sun is not the problem. Getting it to stay put in a 1km sphere is.

[@Thagomizer-U235]

Woof woof

[@donaldhobson8873]

Just scale it down. Make your spaceship a few micrometers across. Much less mass needed for the warp drive. (Bio humans can't fit on the space ship, but uploaded minds ...)

[@bobbun9630]

I'm working on it. One slice of cheesecake at a time.

[@stevedickens-h5e]

Perhaps a hypothetical equation for warp drive travel: ∇²w + (1 - w)R^2 = 0 Where ∇² represents the Laplace operator, w is the warp factor, R is the radius of the warp bubble, and 0 signifies the balance between energy density and pressure within the exotic matter. In simpler terms: The curvature of spacetime within the warp bubble remains constant, as the energy density of the exotic matter balances with its pressure to maintain the integrity of the bubble. Its what my A.I. told me anyway lol

[@davidkachel]

The biggest problem: There are not enough Scottish engineers to operate all the warp drives!!!

[@MadaxeMunkeee]

I guess for the purpose of their argument, that the resultant gravitational waves would be detectable - it seems like because of your main point, the gravitational wave patterns if they existed would look a lot like non-warp drivey black hole stuff so you'd still need a way to rule that out.

[@Zappbrannigan83]

Tech Industry: Good news. We're trying to recreate the warp drive from the classic Sci-Fi movie Event Horizon by using AI recreated from classic Sci-Fi movie 2001: Space Odyssey with robots inspired by classic Sci Fi movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

[@ptonpc]

There is no way anything could go wrong. Right?

[@Zappbrannigan83]

@@ptonpc STEM needs the humanities so they can discern satire in literature and stop trying to make Skynet happen... Like no, we DON'T want Ready Player One to become a reality. And yes, Homelander IS the bad guy.

[@DW-indeed]

If only they'd used the robots from silent running 🤦‍♂️

[@Zappbrannigan83]

@@DW-indeed The fools!

[@peterg76yt]

As I recall Event Horizon showed that faster than light travel worked by taking a short cut through Hell. Sounds safe.

[@pauljs75]

I figure to detect higher frequency gravity waves, something like a vacuum-tube with Casimir plates inside it will be needed. I'd hazard to guess the tube is about the size of a soda can and such a device would have optical ports so that laser interferometry can be done in proximity to the plate gap and see any waves that traverse over the vacuum noise there. The device may also need to be kept somewhat cold to have a useful threshold of sensitivity. (There will be some base level of noise, but it will go up and down in intensity. And that pattern in variation should be of interest.) Sounds a bit crazy at first, but I think that would make sense. If the "quantum foam" is a thing, you want to see the ripples in that. The trade off is it's likely this device would only detect higher frequency gravity waves, the upside is that this thing would be significantly smaller than LIGO although it may share some of the technology used. (At least in principle.) Have two or three of these things synched to the same reference clock, and that system should also be able to triangulate the sources of any gravity wave generating events relative to itself. I think it's something that could be reasonably built as a sensor in a well equipped lab using current technology, there just has to be enough motivation to try making one.

[@protocol6]

I think the assumption is that we've just not figured out the most efficient way to generate a warp bubble but any aliens that might be using them are necessarily more advanced than us and probably have. The mass requirements have already dropped many orders of magnitude from the initial versions. The more critical assumption is that the structure of the more efficiently generated bubble will be close enough to the ones we've thought of so far that it'd have a similar collapse signature. It's a long shot in any case but the new detectors would be extremely useful for a lot of other science so it doesn't hurt to have some long shot SETI stuff piggybacking on it.

[@edtheduck6219]

A problem with that assumption is that the gravitational waves produced by an orders-of-magnitude more efficient drive would be orders of magnitude less easy to detect. The waves are part (or probably most in this example) of the energy that is contained in the warp bubble when it collapses...

[@DaviAlex8]

sabine, i must be 100 w/ u.. your level of intelligence makes me feel dumb (just like pbs spacetime), but i enjoy u and your content sooo much. just finished making a video for my daughter (she’s starting middle school on monday), and had to add your channel in the end screen. you’re an inspiration for ALL people that want to study physics!! 🌹

[@michaelraine8111]

If only Star Trek had provided the math behind the warp drive!

[@steffenrumpel2784]

That would have violated the Prime Directive!

[@michaelraine8111]

@@steffenrumpel2784 DOH!

[@tmzwcky]

I would like to see an analysis of what the passengers would experience while travelling at or above the speed of light For instance - if you are travelling at c, then you wouldn't experience the passage of time, so how would you know when/where to stop? What are the ramifications if you actually did exceed c?

[@captainobvious8037]

1:20 Girl, i had to replay that part just to make sure it wasn't an ad for a random quiz. How much do you think i'll remember from the video. You know, maybe i have to actually learn how to listen, instead of listening to videos while writing emails or working out.

[@Xeno_Bardock]

You would have to create a smoke ring made of space with spaceship at the center. If an electromagnetic force becomes powerful enough, it can interact with space itself, creating a smoke ring made of space and torus mixed. A spaceship is always stationary at the center of smoke ring while the smoke ring simultaneously moves spaceship faster than light, take 90 degree turns or stop suddenly, without pilots ever experiencing any tremendous g-force. In theory.

[@trescatorce9497]

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! finally you put the idiocy of warp drives to rest

[@juzoli]

There are like 5-6 different reasons why warp drive is impossible. And whenever the article is published that warp drives might be possible, they are only targeting 1 of those reasons. But even if that 1 reason is eliminated, there are still other reasons why it is impossible. My issue is that in order to warp the space 1km away ahead of the ship, we need to send a signal to 1km away. And since warp field doesn't exist there yet, we are limited by the speed of light. And then we need to keep doing it across the journey. So we need a way of communication faster than speed of light in order to move the warp bubble. That doesn't mean warp drive is not possible. Only that it cannot move faster than speed of light. Which is another trick most articles are doing, they only claim that warp bubble can be created, not that it would be faster than light...

[@kidddogbites]

Theres 5ish issues associated with Alcubierre's warp drive. Theres been 30 years of people solving one of these issues. We're at the point now where each of these issues has been adressed independently by different researchers. But not many (save maybe frenando loup and gianluca periciano) that are working on seeing what happens when you combine each of these resolutions.

[@KuK137]

Did you pay any attention AT ALL to what she said? Space/time warp propagates faster than light. If it did not, our universe wouldn't exist, literally, because the ratio of space expansion would get stuck at C and redshift we observe at large distances would be constant and the border of observable universe wouldn't exist. Yet it does.

[@friedmule5403]

I think that the solution have to be something with WD40, dark energy, gaffatape and dark matter :-)

[@empireempire3545]

"And whenever the article is published that warp drives might be possible, they are only targeting 1 of those reasons. But even if that 1 reason is eliminated, there are still other reasons why it is impossible." That statement is blatantly false, you are either not up to date with literature or not writing in a good faith. Check out developments since 2020 - including but not limited to works by Helmerich, Lentz, and Lavinia Heisenberg. We are slowly but surely eliminating all the 'reasons'. At this point we have a sub ftl solution with absolutely NO negative energy OR momenta of ANY kind. And it is not a black hole. Just published this May, fresh out of oven.

[@boremir3956]

@@kidddogbites Did you watch the video bro? To achieve the required warping of space you basically need a blackhole. We aren't close to solving that issue if ever.

[@raktoda707]

You really do a splendid job dissecting proposed theories,papers using logic and a variety of why not examples.Teaching "critical thinking" is no easy feat.I guess when your working on a theory and think " By Jove I've got it !" It is disheartening to have to begin again.Yet that is how we progress to try, surmise,succeed or step up another notch. Good luck to all the researchers,teachers, scientist.There are always creators,fabricators,narsayers and those who bounce about in pure interest (Ie.get distracted) for they see the theories,the formulas everywhere ..floating about them in subtle undiscovered places. ( They don't have a medication for that yet do they?)

[@Dr.M.VincentCurley]

I had thought that if you WERE able to create a "warp bubble" that the Higgs would no longer be a drag on your vessel and that you could use an "ion" drive to slowly power the vessel up to the speed that you wanted it. I come to find out that its the creation of a Doppler like effect with space-time that is only possible with negative energy densities or potentially with theoretical states of subatomic particles that have only been hypothesized. Would it be ignorant to say that we'd have a better chance of inter-dimensional travel?

[@osmosisjones4912]

Its finaly completed: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJW0ZGOmnryKps0

[@anoobis117]

​@@osmosisjones4912Nobody asked

[@juimymary9951]

Well both concepts are based on hypotheticals, negative energy on one side and non-linear quantum equations on the other. I wonder if Sabine could tell us which one is more likely

[@Dr.M.VincentCurley]

@@juimymary9951 or at least give us a handicap on the favorite? Interdimensional +245

[@cookieDaXapper]

Dun, dun DUUUNNNNNNN!!!!!! Dr. Sabine uses logic and maths to add just a little reality to science fiction wishes. (...also, wouldn't traveling faster that light cause the object to warp space/time into reverse???) Thank you dear Dr. PEACE and God bless.

[@javastream5015]

When my grandfather (soon 93) was born, in his village in 🇲🇰 there was no electricity. When my niece was born, with 6 months she used the iPhone of my brother. If you go back in the last decades of the 19th century you can see how electricity was in the same stage like the internet in the end of the 1990s. 👉A lot happened around the 20th century! More can still come. So I wouldn't panic about nowadays theories. Just look what can happen during the lifespan of a human.

[@drbuckley1]

When my grandfather was born, there were no airplanes. He lived to see Apollo 11. That's a lifetime.

[@jondonnelly3]

The problem is that progress is not linear it comes in bursts. For thousands of years your light was made by some form of fire. Then steam age, nuclear age and electronic age (which we are nearing the end of progress) and that's could be it. Maybe we will get a new age of Fusion power but maybe we won't. The burst of progress could well be over. Most likely the only thing to reach the stars will be our A.I. and A.I might be all that is left of us.

[@drbuckley1]

@@jondonnelly3 Bursts result from anomalies in standard science.

[@Jwnorton]

The key for that development was unbridled curiosity, with a healthy dose of inquiry. Now, between the fear of bucking the $cientific community, surviving peer-review unscathed, and not having your findings stolen (either for industrial ational espionage or branded 'National Security Interests') away from you, is it really worth the efforts? I really think fusion power has been done, but its been determined to be cost prohibitive and would wreck the current power generation\distribution networks\industry. Computers less powerful than an Atari took us to the Moon, and have advanced incredible magnitudes, but software development has not kept par. Hope we can travel faster than light, but 'warp' seems too.... heavy. I still think super-luminal travel will involve wormholes or some elements of gravity-assist.

[@drbuckley1]

@@Jwnorton Basic science is also driven by funding sources. As long as the government, i.e., military, and corporations control spending, a lot of bright ideas will never see the light of day.

[@pagodakid]

I have seen many instances of warp drive. Every time I ask a girl for a date, whoosh!!!!!

[@peteduch2151]

Try having a 100dol bill sticking out of your pocket they love that

[@DKNguyen3.1415]

@@peteduch2151 Ehhh...not with inflation lol.

[@Bob-of-Zoid]

Excellent!! I loved it when the alien dude👽 peeked out from behind your shoulder!😅

[@ToddDesiato]

Forget warp drive. Where's your video on the TARDIS?

[@lukastemberger]

That's not real Star Trek.

[@russellharrell2747]

I thought there was a paper a few years back that suggested the energy requirement was several orders of magnitude less than the original estimates, depending on how the warp bubble is shaped. But I could be remembering that wrong.

[@Basketballamerican]

Also, what is their method of avoiding collisions with celestial objects?

[@GomuGear4]

The geriatric spice melange

[@williamstephenjackson6420]

Navigating Hyerspace ain’t like dusting crops 😂

[@UReasonIt]

This is one of the things that I always bring up with warp conversations. This includes having a computer that is fast enough to navigate and sensors that can detect and collect information as you travel. Also, shielding... How to do that for real. Another question is, how does matter react at or near the speed of light or ++ TSOL? Energy is another problem and you could go on with the list all day.

[@williamstephenjackson6420]

@@GomuGear4 I did not say this. I am not here 🍄

[@marksizer3486]

"Celestial objects" don't seem particularly concerning. They're big and predictable enough to just avoid them. Dust seems like a much bigger problem. IIRC, that causes issues with Alcubierre drives because it piles up at the front of the warp and when you turn the field off, that dust generates massive amounts of radiation in your direction of travel.

[@regomahoney3044]

Wow this woman is brilliant. I love my science but never heard from Sabine before. So sensible, keep it us Sabine.

[@crawkn]

Whatever technology, if any, enables relativistic or superluminal travel in the future, it's fairly certain we haven't thought of it yet. The issue with absurd quantities of energy isn't the availability, it is the management. There is far more energy available than we will ever need, our problem is we don't know how to make use of it.

[@joseluisespejoperez5774]

Dear Sabine. I'm a follower of your channel. I'm glad to say to you that I'm reading the last book by Michio Kaku, in its spanish translation (La ecuación de Dios) and he quotes you in the chapter 6.

[@HarryNicNicholas]

so, black holes are space ships that, er, don't go anywhere?

[@caejones2792]

I mean, all the SMBHs not bound to each other are moving away from each other because of mysterious spacetime whatsits. Does that make galaxies warpships? Because it kinda sounds like it ...

[@davannaleah]

Question: supposing you had a ship travelling faster than light using this warp drive concept, how does time dilation work in this situation? The ship itself is not moving in its own space bubble but the whole bubble is moving relative to everything else. Regular interpretation of time dilation implies that, if you could travel faster than light, time goes in reverse with respect to an outside observer.

[@DKNguyen3.1415]

It doesn't.

[@DJ_Force]

Fun Fact: Warp Drives were coined by Gene Roddenberry for Star Trek, and referred to warping TIME, not space. It was a throwaway piece of technobabble to justify a new space adventure every week.

[@Ryanowning]

Strictly speaking, when you warp space you ARE warping time. So it's not an incorrect way of describing it, just a confusing one.

[@DJ_Force]

@@Ryanowning OK, you got me on a technicality. Still, people talk about Warp Drive like it's some standardized technological process, when it's origins were just a dramatic necessity for a weekly TV show.

[@blazethefaith]

I thought the negative energy's purpose was to keep the bubble from collapsing, not propulsion. Sort of like a neutralizing agent in the center for the immense energy you'd need to keep pumping into it to keep the bubble formed. In that sense, it could be a black hole for all that matters from an outside perspective, and then the negative energy would "disperse" the black hole bubble on arrival.

[@markdowning7959]

Particles get their mass by interaction with the Higgs field. I have wondered whether some clever physicist might come up with some way to tweak this, convincing the universe that their starship is massless and therefore able to surpass c.

[@yeroca]

Photons are massless, and still can't exceed c. If one could manipulate the coupling of matter to the Higgs field, it would be a way to get free energy. Imaging lifting ping pong ball up 100 m, and then change its mass from 1g to 1000 kg. Suddenly you have increased the potential energy of the ball by a factor of one million. So because nature is stingy, I suspect it won't be possible.

[@Thomas-gk42]

😅Convincing the universe is hard stuff.

[@markdowning7959]

@@Thomas-gk42 If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. 😏

[@Thomas-gk42]

@@markdowning7959 Haha, yes and that would mean chaos.

[@juimymary9951]

Well… being massless isn’t enough, photons are massless and move only at c speeds. Though I mean maybe there is a way to tweak it along another axis and achieve the square root of -1 mass needed to actually move beyond the speed of light

[@gregoryclifford6938]

It seems reasonable to me that if gravity waves or anything else in that intergalactic sea is preventing headway, if that be parted for safe passage, it can also be used as a means of screwing or pulsing our wake behind us. Any breakdown of that at ultimate density and pressure would be a Titanic problem. And the waves heard would be the farewell song of its crew and passengers. Creating interference waves in gravity or other unknown and unseen media for surfing the curl and tube might not collapse so suddenly though. Waves fade gradually as their amplitude thins out, isn’t that commonly the case? I’d worry more about the breakers and shallows or in the passing of others’ wake. Water skiers can see that and exploit it for fun, but they can’t do it blindfolded like we’d have to. A Higgs Field condensation event might be a hazard to navigation, don’t you guess? How could you plant a CERN boson radar antenna on the nose?

[@ironnam8107]

A warp drive detector may not discover aliens, but it may detect something out there we didn't know about. It maybe good a detecting the wobble of black holes. Allowing us to see black holes without any kind of accretion disk around them in the blackness of space.

[@TheTwober]

So you saying the warp drive I am currently building in my backyard might not be working? 😥

[@JoeSmith-cy9wj]

Depends. Is your last name Cochrane?

[@vepeu]

whats the speed limit of space bending? whouldnt that be the next theorical speed limit?

[@jimgolab536]

How much work would it take to compress that amount of matter into the required amount of space?

[@osmosisjones4912]

Just because you can't travel through a wormhole doesn't mean You can't travel with a wormhole. Creating a flow of space time

[@juzoli]

What’s the difference?

[@osmosisjones4912]

​@@juzolitrillions of nanoscopic wormholes opening and closing but overal creating flow of space time

[@juzoli]

@@osmosisjones4912 Sou you enter into all trillions at the same time, or you are just an outside observer?

[@miriamweller812]

More likely to have the travel of (weightless) information and then the reconstruction of whatevert you wanted to send at the place you want to be. The whole warp thing, including wormholes and alike always not only ignore the absurd amount of energy you would even in theory need to create something like this, but also that nothing physical would ever survive this, especially not some squishy spaceship or even squishier human being.

[@carlbrenninkmeijer8925]

Listening carefully, I got more and more excited. Our dog noticed this and speeded to the door, that was shut.

[@chris.hinsley]

Good dog !

[@carlbrenninkmeijer8925]

@@chris.hinsley we call him Warp

[@chris.hinsley]

@@carlbrenninkmeijer8925 or and hear me out on this. Prat.

[@ausgoogtube01]

Best science video on utube by a country mile. But in which direction - that is the question...

[@Thomas-gk42]

So we look for accidentally crashed aliens now? I hope, I don´t have to provide first aid. And I hope that LIGO doesn´t accidentally measure GWs made by Sabine on the highway with 250miles per hour instead of aliens.

[@cyrus05w]

At 3:30 please look into wind screw sales or even caterpillar systems for subs, also earlier for the gravitational burst on exiting warp drive. Two things first the direction in which they are coming into from where we are please remember our issues with a mua mua and visualizing weirdly. On that same note depending on what it is using to go through warp space as descripted the end or front TDD will be showing something that looks like a starfish or perhaps should we visualize it more like octopus arms. There's been some great visual representations by the artists at NASA and no I'm not going to rant about their art stuff and pictures just saying they represented what we would be looking for quite well at times. I've actually been thinking about this scenario for more than 18 years I'm hoping that some of the stuff I've come to the conclusion on as accurate if this ever comes to fluition. Also also I should add I'm very bad at trying to give examples to people but I'm not face-to-face with my examples may be poor although one does not always need to push stuff out the back side in order to go forward there's plenty of stuff around the actual hull One would be using to utilize as either momentum , energy or even take note from nature which I think we should do more often and look at these sand rivers. Notice how some critters are easily able to cross the sand river while we have such trouble. Apologies about the long message just trying to make it clear of what I'm trying to say and I'm also not trying to push anything just trying to share thoughts. Apparently somebody thinks I'm going number two on science if you read this please understand I'm just trying to share information that I feel not that I'm saying is permanent or whatever you want to word it

[@blauemadeleine]

Thank you! 🎉

[@mm-yt8sf]

something that always confused me was...when seeing pictures of "warp fields" i''d see an uphill slop and a dip..and i'm assuming this is the same sort of space representation as gravity around a planet (so..negative gravity?) but i wasn't sure how just experiencing a pull from the front and a push from the back would get around the C limit. if something was truly falling forward wouldn't it keep accelerating forever but not reach C (from the original frame of reference)? and if warping space just stretches it..what causes it to actually displace itself? i can imagine a rubber sheet being stretched and compressed in an area but how does one rip out a pocket of it and move it a few miles? what propels the space itself? i just imagine something like a rubber band...stretching and unstretching but not going anywhere... though i also don't understand how jet engines work so...maybe i'm missing something obivous

[@arctic_haze]

Who needs a warp drive? I have my time travel vehicle and when I need to travel superluminously, I just use it in a different frame of reference.

[@stevencole7331]

This was established in the Star Trek movie where the vulcans detected a warp signature from planet earth showing that planet has warp technology and so began the federation of planets

[@larryscott3982]

It really does like a concept without reality support

[@UltimatePerfection]

No, wormhole drills are more common. The ship drills wormhole to the target destination in front of it and as it travels the wormhole collapses behind it. It's 100% safe and allows to more or less travel instantaneously to the target destination +/- several minutes. But warp drives are also used, though they're considered an obsolete technology.

[@angelosasso1653]

Most warpdrive concepts I have seen so far are either using insane masses, which in the nearby future (10.000 years at least) are completey off the table or some exotic masses which are mathematically possible but that´s it. And things being mathematically possible in this regard could be compared to someone being minus 1,70 metres tall. It´s mathematically possible but in the real world it´s a bit iffy to say the least...

[@georgesos]

Except if a mafia "plants" him under exactly minus 1.7 meters under cement ..😂

[@angelosasso1653]

@@georgesos That´s true. The mafia seems to defy even the laws of physics...

[@Robert-yc9ql]

Nicely done. 😊 Peer-review is always the way forward, no matter how disappointed some of us may be.

[@chekote]

Warp propulsion was always described to me as the vehicle “falling” towards the front of the bubble. No one mentioned any other propulsion. I’m not smart enough to know who is correct, but I’d love to hear why you feel propulsion is needed in addition to the warp bubble. My assumption is it has to do something with conservation of energy, and without it a warp bubble would essentially be some kind of perpetual motion machine?

[@gregoryclifford6938]

The alternative to riding in an interference void is to create a shaped-charge event that surrounds a throughput of the same media as a boundary layer turbulence. A metallic foil is forced into just such an event that its velocity makes its lightweight payload able to penetrate nearly anything. It doesn’t eject mass behind it, it just rides in the focal zone like it’s in a laser stream of photons. But it’s not, it’s a hypervelocity jet of hot gas.

[@gregoryclifford6938]

Airfoils do that too, in that aside from lifting, the upper and lower airflows meet just behind the trailing edge where a violent collision occurs. That pressure is not all behind, the energized streams meet and pinch the wing angle forward also. The devil in the design is figuring out how to focus the cylindrical stream surrounding a capsule ‘bubble’ to force a central jet stream back in a forward direction with the same media it’s robbing in front. Gravity wavelengths are huge at our radius from some ancient source of turbulence, but is there anything else to be considered when the source is your hood ornament?

[@gregoryclifford6938]

It’s obvious that gravity and presumably any slurry of other quasiparticles can be and are being compressed. The effect of gravity grows ever more intense in closing proximity to objects of great mass. Spinning spheres cause imbalances some many light years from the pairs. Close-up, that would be impossible to survive, but a more manageable figure might be at the bottom of the puzzles posed by Sabine’s pal Al?

[@gregoryclifford6938]

Assuming that gravity waves are spherical carrier wave transmissions without any message, the question of whether there’s another force or circulation initiated at 90-degrees +/- in the troughs between them, hiding in the unseen low-ebb spherical hollows. Would polar circulation patterns be opposite in hemispheres? Or would they resonate like an alternating current? Would the amplitude be a danger that modulation could mitigate? Can we send a probe into such a void on a circumferal route that would surpass light’s speed on a direct line?

[@gregoryclifford6938]

If a bubble can be created in gravity seas, the I’d expect that it would be easier to cause that to form a foam ahead of the craft and thereby disrupting its resistance and cohesive cling. Gravity is quite slow to respond, isn’t it? 32 ft/sec? Or is that all changed in the intense wave patterns and turbulence these reports forecast?

[@gregoryclifford6938]

Supersonic aircraft penetrations through air form funnel-shaped shock waves at their noses, and a golf tee-shaped fog of condensation behind. Designers simulate ways in which a leading surface will form a void of slight resistance that induces a trailing reconciliation to stop suction behind from limiting the flight’s advance. Velocity takes the place of mass in spacecraft, such that its point of contact will become too heavy to push and as Sabine observed, nothing going out the back will move it. Tricking it into attacking the wrong matter first or moving out of its way once it’s committed, seems like an enormous task. I sure wish Sabine had finished her quantum paper by now. They’ll surely need it to proceed.

[@VukMina]

Well done

[@Pelicanzzz]

We know less about gravitational waves in the galaxy than we know about fast particle collisions. Warp drive or not, funding new g wave telescopes is more interesting than funding more colliders.

[@foolo1]

If you observe a warp drive from afar, as a stationary observer, would it then appear to move faster than light? If yes, does that break causality?

[@edwardlulofs444]

Another outstanding video, Dr Hossenfelder. Thank you. So the technology of warp drives means mastering the technology to harness black holes. Fascinating. One author that I have read uses exotic matter. He has published on it. When I said that exotic matter might really exist, he stopped talking to me. (As we all “know”, exotic matter “doesn’t exist “)

[@cooldude4376]

My problem with warp drives is that, assuming you can warp space and everything else checks out, you would be bending space between yourself and interstellar objects. Imagine traveling through space and hitting an asteroid. Conventional methods of detection use light but we're already "traveling faster than light" and wouldn't detect it quick enough. We would need some method of clearing the path to create a "highway". Perhaps sending an unmanned ship to brute-force a clear path and destroy any obstructions, before sending occupied ships. So, now the energy requirements are already doubled.

[@WilliamTaylor-h4r]

You'd have to achieve continuous photon sonic boom. This means you fill a cone in front of the spacecraft until it's a sufficient atmospheric photonic pressure that it creates a sonic boom before convergence, stellarization. So it must be additive prime continuously at pascal prime combinations to allow the sonic boom to form into the stelararization at the focal point. This remaps matter into space, forcing space to equate the material as anti-space, even more powerful than anti-matter. It's a bit challenging for a no-nothing, but any equation can be solved with enough dimensions, except stelarization, do to decoupling, but the sonic boom projects an extra layer of electron shell, a space shell, where the equation must be solved, but there's no proton, just the ship, so the anti-space anhilates all space. Of course the passengers will experience infinite dimensions, so it need a cesium bulk or something, really just some soda cans.

[@davidvdr]

Thanks ben. Always good

[@lreid1457]

I think if warp drive is 200 years from now for us, it is like the horse and buggy for aliens.

[@mugencoreni7130]

My theory is that you have to compress the atom of elements using massive super conductors, and the atom has to be smaller than the plank length, creating extra- dimensional matter. The speed of the compresion has to surpass the law of causality too. (planck time) Which means the speed has to be instantaneous with zero momentum.

[@jambec144]

I recall seeing a partial solution to this problem: have your spaceship off in its own little pocket universe tethered to ours by a proton-sized tunnel. The warp bubble is then very tiny, not requiring impossible amounts of energy.

[@chrisbell7646]

I think the real issue is not so much the density but the incredible amount of electrical energy that would be required to warp the space time. Use E = m 2 squared and you can see the amount of energy needed to generate the equivalent of just one earth mass, let alone the mass of a sun. It is well over trillions of terawatts. This is enough to create a black hole or a supernova if something goes wrong. However, there may be a solution. Imagine if you start a small gravity wave at a great distance behind the space ship and as the wave approaches the ship you put out small bursts of energy to amplify the gravity wave. By the time the wave reaches the ship it is big enough to do the job if the waves are constructed properly. It is similar to the concept of a rogue wave and may be more efficient. Maybe this is the signal we should look for ... amplified gravity waves that come and go at intervals following short bursts of energy..

[@Betweoxwitegan]

Hypothetically, if you could create a warp bubble could you not transport people with them? As a sort of teleportation device.

[@astronautical1082]

You have a beautiful mind, Sabine. Thanks so much for sharing it with us.

[@o0alessandro0o]

The "warp drive" I remembered was something along the lines of two counter-rotating kilometer-size neutronium cubes. Now, I may be misremembering (it may have been 10km on each side, once you read the words "neutronium cubes" the rest of the sentence becomes a bit of a blur), but... Well, as long as it isn't physically impossible, it's just an engineering problem, right? :P

[@michaeldamolsen]

If the 1 kilometer sphere mentioned earlier in the video is from the same calculation as the 0.667 solar masses, then they have a problem. The event horizon of the black hole formed by all that mass is 1.9km, so the passenger bubble is inside the black hole. This doesn't prevent superluminal travel, but stepping out of the space craft at the destination becomes impossible.