(In the case Van Den Broeck used, it lowered the energy from the mass of the galaxy to the mass of the sun. Result? It lowers the amount of energy required to make Alcubierre work. But essentially, Van Den Broeck multiples a mathematical function by a part of the space-time metric that creates the warp drive. In an interview, Davis said the math is too complicated to explain to a non-mathematician. Hart cites physicist Chris Van Den Broeck (with the National Institute for Subatomic Physics in the Netherlands), who did a modification of Alcubierre's warp drive. Worse, the physics of the situation doesn't even allow you to steer space-time to control where you're going.īut there are ways to modify the equations to get around some of these issues, according to Hart and some of the other authors cited in Hart's paper. Without some sort of shield, careening around space escaping the dark side of the Force would be a bad idea.Īlso, the radiation surrounding the Alcubierre drive wouldn't allow the spaceship to communicate to anyone outside the bubble – so forget telling your family that you'll be back on-planet for dinner. One is the deadly potential for a ship – even the Millennium Falcon – if it smashes into an asteroid or some other object at near light-speed. Hart uses work from his own team, and summarizes several other physicists, to point out other problems with Alcubierre drives. It's called 'On the Problems of Hazardous Matter and Radiation at Faster than Light Speeds in the Warp Drive Space-Time.' (Cleaver was not aware of the paper until recently and could not comment on it for this story.)

Hart et al on the prepublishing site Arxiv, which often publishes papers during or before peer review. He mentioned some recent reading of his – looking at a 2002 paper from C.B. 'There has to be an energy source on board the ship … to balance things, so that whatever energy is used for blueshifting has to be provided towards the front.' So under that model, you'd need an extraordinary amount of energy to continue – an amount that Cleaver doesn't think is technically feasible to produce.ĭavis and Cleaver are collaborators, and Davis recently gave a presentation that dealt with variations of the Alcubierre drive while visiting Baylor. 'There will be a continual energy loss … due to the energy converted into the blueshift of photons,' Cleaver said. Meanwhile, the ship itself will start to stall due to a problem with space-time. 'Then they will become super-intense radiation and kill everyone aboard the starship.' 'Those will get radically blueshifted in the direction of motion towards the destination star,' Davis said in an interview, meaning that the ship will travel so fast that the photons will be compressed and their frequency will increase. That's bad news for both the spaceship and the occupants on board. As the Alcubierre drive approaches the speed of light, photons from the cosmic microwave background – that's the leftover radiation from the start of our universe – will be absorbed into the starship. The next problem is keeping the energy going. 'There have been proposals for alternatives, however, and if you can get that process going that is a technological issue.' (Davis said the mass requirements range from the mass of the galaxy to the mass of the sun, but the principle still holds – it's a lot of energy.)īut say you can overcome that and start your space-warping. 'The amount of energy to start the process would have to be on part with the total mass-energy of the planet Jupiter,' Cleaver said in an interview. The problem begins with putting the Falcon into ignition. Cleaver has looked into some of these problems in collaboration with Richard Obousy (who was then his graduate student and now works with Icarus Interstellar) and Jeff Lee (who is also at Baylor.) Alcubierre drive limitationsīut there are a lot of problems that physicists need to figure out before we can use the Millennium Falcon to escape Kylo Ren. In the same way, a starship would stay still in space-time while space-time warps around it. The surfer is standing (relatively) still on their surfboard while the wave moves toward the shore. Imagine that the surfboard is a starship the surfer is the crew. In separate interviews with, physicists Eric Davis (at EarthTech International) and Gerald Cleaver (with Baylor University) independently compared the phenomenon to a surfer on a wave.

Hyperspace lighting