What is a warp drive? Can it help humans surpass the speed of light?

The closest star to the earth is about 4.25 light-years away and about 40 trillion kilometers. The fastest human probe is the Parker Solar Probe, which can reach 725,000 kilometers per hour, about 200 kilometers per second.

According to the speed of the Parker Solar Probe, it only takes 20 seconds to travel from Beijing to Tibet, but it will take 6633 years to reach the closest star to Earth. Human means of transportation can basically satisfy Earth-scale travel, but to travel in space, humans need to be faster, even faster than the speed of light. But so far, light-speed travel has never been achieved.

The current physical science theory, want to exceed the speed of light, there are two ways to choose - wormhole theory and warp drive.

Wormhole theory, opening a space shortcut? ‍

Einstein's theory of relativity states that our universe is a four-dimensional spacetime consisting of three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time, time and space are fused together, and nothing can exceed the speed of light, but space can be warped by gravity.

Although our speed cannot exceed the speed of light, we can reduce the distance to our destination through the distortion of space. From a two-dimensional point of view, it is like folding a piece of paper so that two points that are originally far away are infinitely close, and it looks like a tunnel.

For the two-dimensional world, the wormhole is the product of the three-dimensional space and looks like a "hole"; for us in the three-dimensional world, the wormhole will be the product of the four-dimensional space and looks like a "sphere". Unfortunately, as three-dimensional space, we cannot understand and interfere with four-dimensional space, so it is difficult to create wormholes. Since we cannot interfere with wormholes, it is very dangerous to directly pass through wormholes. Any situation can only be left to fate.

Wormholes are theoretically feasible, but to create wormholes, a huge amount of mass is required to warp space. Only black holes can form such a strong gravitational effect, but scientists know almost nothing about black holes, let alone control the gravitational warping space of black holes. form a wormhole.

With the current scientific level of human beings, the only way to verify wormholes is to discover naturally formed wormholes, or to discover wormholes created by other life, but so far, human beings have not found any man-made or natural wormholes. Wormholes are "space shortcuts" in the universe. Many scientists believe that space shortcuts, like time travel, are prohibited by the laws of the universe.

Warp drive, safe way to go beyond the speed of light? ‍

The warp space of wormhole theory is too complex and difficult to achieve, and warp drives have found simpler ways to travel faster than light.

According to the theory of the warp drive, the spaceship can compress the space in the front and expand the space in the rear. In simple terms, it is to compress the space of 100 meters into 1 meter. Although the speed of the spacecraft remains unchanged, it only needs to move forward by 1 meter. Reach the destination at 100 meters.

For the spaceship using the warping theory, during the flight, the space in which the spaceship is located does not change, but the space in front is compressed and the space in the back is expanded. From the perspective of a bystander, the speed of the warped spaceship can exceed the speed of light. , but from the perspective of the space where the warped spacecraft is located, the speed of light has not been surpassed, and even the warped spacecraft does not need to have speed at all. As long as the space is continuously compressed and expanded, the spacecraft can move quickly in the universe.

In the warping theory, the speed of the warped spacecraft will not exceed the speed of light, so there will be no time change, thus avoiding the time paradox when it is close to the speed of light, and will not produce a relativistic response.

Although the warp drive is very convenient, how to compress and expand the space is a huge problem.

Expanding and compressing the space at the same time means that the warp drive needs to carry ordinary matter to provide energy and mass, and also needs to carry a large amount of antimatter to provide "negative energy". However, "negative energy" is only the theoretical product of antimatter, and no exact Evidence that "negative energy" really exists.

If you want the warped spacecraft to operate normally, then the front and rear ends of the warped spacecraft need to place energy density rings of opposite substances, and by adjusting the particle balance between the density rings, energy affects the space. Since one of the density rings is normal matter and the other is antimatter, positive and negative energy is generated, which compresses the space in front of the warped spacecraft and expands the space behind.

In this process, the body of the warped spacecraft does not need any power to accelerate, and the change in space will bring the warped spacecraft to its destination. Since the warped spacecraft itself has no speed, even in "superluminal travel", as long as the compression and expansion of space stops, the spacecraft can stop instantly!

According to the flight principle of warped spacecraft, the greater the impact of the energy density ring on space, the faster the warped spacecraft will be, which will cause the mass of the spacecraft to increase. Although the mass of the spacecraft does not affect the speed of the warping drive, According to the level of human technology, it is difficult to collect enough energy to create an overly large spaceship.

If the warped spacecraft wants to compress the space beyond the speed of light, the mass of the spacecraft may need to be heavier than the sun. Although the theory has been improved several times, the required material energy has been greatly reduced, and some scientists have even proposed warping that does not require negative energy. Drive mode, but for the current human technology, it is still very difficult to make warped drives.

In the wormhole theory, the wormhole formed in three-dimensional space is difficult to expand to the size that the spacecraft can pass through. In order to keep the wormhole stable and expand, it is necessary to release negative energy into the wormhole for stabilization, and the negative energy is also a warping driver. one of the necessary energy. But compared to wormholes, warp drives have already obtained solutions that do not require negative energy, and are more likely to be realized.

Summarize

For humans living in the universe, the current speed of human probes is too slow. It takes thousands or even tens of thousands of years for interstellar travel. According to human lifespan, this must not be correct for interstellar travel. Way.

Although Einstein's theory of relativity tells us that it is not realistic to travel at the speed of light, the four-dimensional space-time defined by Einstein allows us to find another way to exceed the speed of light - to change the space and create a different path.

The wormhole theory creates a higher-dimensional space tunnel, which is difficult for humans to achieve, but the warp drive only needs to compress and expand the space. However, the warp drive requires a lot of energy support, and the quality of the spacecraft is beyond imagination. Perhaps waiting for human beings to fully master stellar energy and entering the second-level civilization, they can drive warped spaceships to colonize various galaxies and become a "multi-planetary civilization species"!