Space Mysteries Could Warp Drives Ever Be Possible

Hey out there, space fans. Welcome back to another week of Space Mysteries, where we dive into some of the unsolved questions in spaceflight astronomy. Who knows what we'll get into. This week, I'm joined again by my good friend, author, podcaster, journalist, Micah Hanks. Brett, how you doing? Always good to be here with you. Doing great, buddy. And this one I know is a very special topic that's near and dear to our hearts. We've both reported on this for years. This week, we're going to be looking at whether warp drives, things we've seen in science fiction that allow people to travel vast distances between stars, could these warp drives be possible? But before we dive into that, I want to tell you about our friends at Norton VPN. In this day and age, we all know how important it is to protect your data when you're online. Whether you're tracking the latest rocket launches or just browsing the latest science fiction from home, Norton VPN helps keep your privacy and devices safe. Right now, you can get 50% off your first year. That's just $39.99 for the year, which works out to just over $3 a month. Hit the link in the description below to get protected today. Now, Micah, let's dive into this. Could a warp drive be possible? We've both looked into this for years. What does the science say? Well, the short answer is yes. Warp drives are at least feasible. They look good on paper. The problem is, how do you do that in real life? How do you make a functional warp drive? Now, most of us know the warp drive concept from popular science fiction portrayals. Brett, there's no better example than Star Trek. And this is really the idea and its genesis in terms of popular media. Although, we traced the roots for the article recently all the way back to the early part of the last century with early science fiction writers who thought, hey, maybe there are some advanced propulsion mechanisms that hypothetically could carry people across vast interstellar distances. Now, despite the roots in science fiction, we do know that although there are obvious limitations, and this all comes from Einstein, the idea that essentially there's sort of this universal, I guess, speed limit with light speed, And the idea that relativity, according to Einstein, prevents, at least locally speaking, an object with mass from accelerating beyond light speed. But physicists have long wondered, well, you know, I mean, there might be conditions where we could overcome this. For instance, if we think about the Big Bang, there may have been periods early in the universe where there was actual expansion occurring in the universe where space itself was carried along quicker than the speed that light could propagate. So that was kind of the root of the idea. What if there are conditions we could create, maybe even engineer, where we could allow something to move faster than light speed or at least to be carried in ways that don't essentially conflict with what Einstein told us was possible under relativity? Now, it sounds like, though, if we're trying to recreate conditions that were around at the time of the Big Bang or shortly after, we're going to need incredible amounts of energy or some sort of exotic matter to fuel this, right? Well, that's one of the real problems with a functional warp drive, because, you know, as you and I both know, having dug into this subject back in 1994, the Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre looked into this and he wrote a groundbreaking paper where he said, Hey, look, if we were to sort of engineer a space called, and this is what he called it, a warp bubble, and we could place some kind of a spacecraft in that space, effectively, you could actually engineer this such that space is warped around the object, and that carries it across distances as opposed to the object traveling in a conventional sense. but in order to achieve this in order to create the warp bubble i mean we have to also have a lot of other kinds of things like you know energy sources and this gets into a lot of very exotic physics concepts which currently our technology essentially makes infeasible we haven't gotten to that point yet where we can account for exactly what would be required although there are of course theories but again the problem that we face is how do you have that power source how do you have the the energy systems that can drive the hypothetical warp bubble right and you know this is something that NASA the U.S. government even the U.S. intelligence agencies have looked into right when you really start looking into the history of warp drive theory and uh theoretical research into this i mean it's a deep deep rabbit hole well everybody looks at it and the reason why is because we're never going to get to that point you know what is presently hypothetical only works in theory we'll never get to that point until we continue to advance our understanding of it and work toward reaching a functional prototype now currently what we see NASA and other space agencies working on primarily involves nuclear or electric propulsion those are the ones that in terms of you know the present day are the most feasible for future space missions but a very intriguing prospect has emerged because we also have you know gravitational waves and things that We're learning more and more about each year. And so some physicists have said, look, if somebody else out there, you know, another advanced civilization, if they're more advanced than we are, and significantly so, they may have already cracked the warp bubble conundrum. And if so, we might be able to detect some signatures from that technology. technology and so one application for this one approach toward trying to study the feasibility is actually looking for warp bubbles warp spacecraft in other words that may have been engineered by another intelligent civilization as far out as that idea seems some of the physicists we talked to have actually looked at that possibility as well right and you know we both know from looking into the UFO lore over the years some people have said that well maybe some of these devices some of these craft could have crashed on earth and perhaps the government is hiding evidence of them but i don't think we've seen any any proof of that just yet so you know do you ever feel like we live in kind of one of the worst eras of space flight and astronomy by that i mean we have the ability to look so far into the distant universe but we can't reach it yet humanity can't go there yet does that ever i don't know make you feel sad oh sure it does because you know what we see in science fiction i mean brett if you gave me a warp drive or a TARDIS like Doctor Who or if i could you know you know go on board the Starship Enterprise I would be out there traveling I would be out there exploring I'm sure you would be too oh yeah but it is the dreamers among us those who have continued to look at this and look at the feasibility of what science actually says that to me remains so hopeful and you know one of them Alexey Bobrik who's with Applied Physics the think tank that looks at all these very sorts of hard problems of today which may forge you know new avenues for propulsion and for space exploration tomorrow Alexey and I talked about this and he says listen you know we aren't to that point yet but we are working on these issues so that one day we can make these actual and in fact in 2021 Alexey and the CEO of Applied Physics Johnny Marchier they wrote a really intriguing paper I've talked to both these guys about this many times and they looked at you know both what is known about warp bubbles but also placing some constraints on Alcubierre's original metrics and in fact according to Alexey he says you know the sad news is you're still going to need some sort of form of propulsion even for a warp drive spacecraft so we are still advancing our understanding we're a long ways from making a functional one yeah but I think that if we keep working on this problem at very least the hopeful side of this Brett future generations they may be able to engage in this kind of space travel that was once relegated to Star Trek and science fiction well you know it wasn't too long ago maybe 150 years ago that some of the top scientists in the world were saying you know powered flight was impossible heavier than air flight would be impossible so who knows what we'll see in the near future Micah as always thanks for another week of space mysteries always a pleasure bud