Faster than light travel

[Umbran]

So, there are solutions to Einstein's equations for General Relativity that allow for effective faster than light travel - you may have seen them referred to as real life "warp bubbles". The problem with them is that they need a lot of what physicists call "exotic matter" - matter with really weird properties like negative energy density, stuff that we have not observed in nature, and do not know how to make.

Someone's found some new solutions that don't require exotic matter. However, to move a ship of 100 meter radius, it'd take energies equivalent to the mass of a few hundred Jupiters.

But, that's progress, right?

Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

If travel to distant stars within an individual's lifetime is going to be possible, a means of faster-than-light propulsion will have to be found. To date, even recent research about superluminal (faster-than-light) transport based on Einstein's theory of general relativity would require vast...

phys.org

 

[darjr]

Halo Drives still seem the most realistic possibility. Just got to get our selves to the nearest black hole pair.
Maybe the Halo mechanism could be used to provide the energy needed here?

 

[Morrus]

The Gallifreyans just captured a black hole and use it as a power source. Simple, eh?

 

[Ryujin]

The Gallifreyans just captured a black hole and use it as a power source. Simple, eh?

Same with the Romulans. They must have been on to something.

 

[MarkB]

Same with the Romulans. They must have been on to something.

Yeah, I never could decide who was the more crazy in Star Trek - the Federation for flying around with fuel tanks full of antimatter, or the Romulans for riding around on black holes.

 

[aco175]

I'm still waiting on my jet pack they promised me back in the day.

 

[Umbran]

Halo Drives still seem the most realistic possibility. Just got to get our selves to the nearest black hole pair.

The nearest known black hole is some 1100 light years away. When you want to get to something 4 ly from Earth (like Proxima Centauri), having to first go 1100 ly to QV Telescopii isn't exactly a win.

Maybe the Halo mechanism could be used to provide the energy needed here?

I would question the ability of any normal matter to manage that amount of energy all at once. Using the drive system in the OP requires bringng the energy requirements down by about 30 orders of magnitude.

 

[darjr]

Well yea, but a 30 magnitude reduction is asking a lot. So meet somewhere higher. And yea it’s a hard nut to crack anyway it’s sliced.

 

[Umbran]

Well yea, but a 30 magnitude reduction is asking a lot. So meet somewhere higher.

I don't think you have the option to meet somewhere higher. The laws of physics are a harsh mistress.

We are talking about how much energy can be in a ship a few hundred yards across.

Consider, if you managed to put all the mass (and so, all the energy) of a single Jupiter in a space about 6 meters across, it would collapse into a black hole. If you put it all in a space between one and five kilometers across, it collapses into a ball of neutronium.

Basicially, in order to power the ship, you need a ball of neutronium ten times larger than the ship! The matter/energy you need cannot fit within the ship, much less be managed by the ship's systems. Not going to the stars in that.

If you bring it down by 30 orders of magnitude, we are talking about completely converting maybe a kilogram material into energy. For scale, all the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb was less than a gram of mass. So, we are then still talking about containing a thousand Hiroshimas within a space of, say, a modern sports stadium. Which may be possible, but still pretty fantastic.

But, above that... you're not going to the stars if you vaporize the ship when you turn the engine on.

 

[Ryujin]

I don't think you have the option to meet somewhere higher. The laws of physics are a harsh mistress.

We are talking about how much energy can be in a ship a few hundred yards across.

Consider, if you managed to put all the mass (and so, all the energy) of a single Jupiter in a space about 6 meters across, it would collapse into a black hole. If you put it all in a space between one and five kilometers across, it collapses into a ball of neutronium.

Basicially, in order to power the ship, you need a ball of neutronium ten times larger than the ship! The matter/energy you need cannot fit within the ship, much less be managed by the ship's systems. Not going to the stars in that.

If you bring it down by 30 orders of magnitude, we are talking about completely converting maybe a kilogram material into energy. For scale, all the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb was less than a gram of mass. So, we are then still talking about containing a thousand Hiroshimas within a space of, say, a modern sports stadium. Which may be possible, but still pretty fantastic.

But, above that... you can't go to the stars if you vaporize the ship when you turn the engine on.

I recall a book series (was it by Vernor Vinge?) in which an ancient race has set up compact cylinders of stellar mass, rotating at near light speed, to act as anchor points for folding space. My memory of it is quite vague, as I read it decades ago, but this was based at least loosely on the understanding of physics at the time. Simply put you would approach at a given vector in order to "link up" two of these points, so that you could enter a space fold that would transit you to your destination. This removes the necessity for having super massive objects housed within a relatively tiny ship but, then again, there is the issue of getting these anchors in the locations you wish to visit.

So, on that theory, we could have interstellar travel in a few mere millennia