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DARPA researchers believe they accidentally created an actual WARP BUBBLE

I don't go near Twitter and other (anti)social media so I don't know what he gets up to there. He seems to understand the scientific method but he needs to compartmentalise his political musings and his research so they do not overlap. He wouldn't be the first physicist who is perhaps a bit of an a-hole in real life.


The warp bubble is a side effect of the Casimir effect in a real-world experiment, I believe. I might be wrong as I only have access to the article linked by the OP - it's not peer-reviewed research.

ETA: They've updated the article today to emphasise that this is a theoretical prediction - @Ronald Held - you are correct. So probably it's just another case of poor science journalism getting ahead of itself.
I actually read the article, although I did not understand their software.
 
I don't have access to academic journals, unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately as I'm happy to let others explore what might well be dead-ends. However, the following video does appear to describe how their model has been developed:
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As far as I can tell, it appears to use the de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave interpretation of QM, which is not commonly favoured by physicists although it does yield results that conform with those from other interpretations of QM.

Pilot wave theory - Wikipedia

It doesn't sound that expensive an experiment to set up and test the predictions if they were already working on applications of the Casimir effect. I suspect there might be ways to manipulate the "bubble" using electromagnetic fields if it does prove to be a real-world phenomenon.
 
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It seems to me that the predicted warp bubble is not asymmetric as in an Alcubierre warp bubble but rather that the warping is symmetric. This is a result of the symmetry of the Casimir enclosure. In addition, the bubble would only exist within the confines of the enclosure. If I'm correct - and that's a big if right there - this bubble isn't taking anyone boldly anywhere no matter how much it can be scaled up. The compressing and stretching of space-time needs to be asymmetric (as shown in depictions of the Alcubierre bubble).

The energy density required to warp space-time using EM fields is enormous. I don't know how to configure such fields asymmetrically to overcome conservation of momentum - by ratcheting your way against vacuum fields, for example. The EM drive results appear to have been systematic error, as expected. A Mach effect drive might be feasible were quantised inertia theory to be valid but its assumptions about Unruh radiation are not widely accepted. It's worth testing, though, and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

However, my knowledge and imagination are probably lacking - there might exist exploitable exotic materials and physical phenomena of which I am unaware.
 
If I'm correct - and that's a big if right there - this bubble isn't taking anyone boldly anywhere no matter how much it can be scaled up.

I don't think anyone's saying it would -- just that it provides experimental validation for the math of the Alcubierre metric. So it means that the theory could have some real-world applications someday, even if it isn't actual FTL. Or even if it's just improving our general understanding of physics.
 
Yes, it's definitely worth investigating for the new physics that should come out of it. It's just that the reporting of it is very sensationalist and inaccurate, which raises people's hopes way too much. We're not even at the equivalent stage of Michael Faraday demonstrating the first (primitive) DC motor in 1821 - just my opinion.
 
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Mike McCulloch
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I wasn't aware of his politics, with which I do not agree, but I can ignore that aspect as he doesn't seem very voluble about it and it doesn't appear to taint his research.
Looks like it will get a chance to be proven or not in vacuum and microgravity in October
 
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