Star wars? Space warp drive could create gravitational waves

The concept of warp drive exists in different works of science fiction in popular culture, but Star Trek is the series that most helped popularize the idea. Scientists claim that although it is a concept that emerged in the artistic environment, there is real science behind space folding. A new study suggests that this reaction may also create gravitational waves.

Long before the new paper, Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre wrote that warp drives could become a reality because they were compatible with Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. The idea of ​​warp drive is that it can distort space-time without violating any laws of physics. – A ship with this type of engine can reach speeds greater than the speed of light.

Alcubierre was the first to suggest that warp drive could result in faster-than-light travel and still not violate the laws of physics, the study’s authors say. Scientists suggest that warp drive will actually contract the space-time in front of it and expand the space-time behind it, rather than reaching the speed of light.

“Although their origins are in science fiction, warp drives have a concrete definition in general relativity; Alcubierre first proposed a measure of spacetime that would support faster-than-light travel. “Although there are numerous practical obstacles to its implementation in reality, including the requirement for negative energy, given an equation of state that describes matter, its evolution over time can be simulated computationally,” the paper explains.

Space curvature and gravitational waves.

Although it is a theoretically possible concept, it is important to emphasize that human society has not yet reached the technological level required to develop an engine with such features.

There are other issues as well, such as Zero Energy State (NEC), a concept necessary for warp drives to work perfectly; The problem is that current physics states that space cannot have negative energy density. There are even some proposed solutions to this problem, but none of them are really effective.

Since space warp engines will operate by distorting space-time, it will be possible to detect them in space through gravitational waves in emissions similar to those occurring in the mergers of black holes and neutron stars.

By simulating the collapse of a fold, scientists were able to detect gravitational waves, but they were not that similar to those resulting from mergers. But, If the engine were completely stable, there would be no emission of gravitational waves.

“From the standpoint of dynamically simulating warp drive, the real challenge is stability. There is (as far as we know) no known equation of state that will keep the warp drive metric in a stable configuration over time. Therefore, although the warp should initially be constant, it will rapidly drift away from this state, and warp fluid and spacetime deformations in general will dissipate or collapse to a central point,” the authors explain in the paper.

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