The physics of warp-drives
The ‘Alcubierre wave effect‘ was mentioned in Vacuum Diagrams– Stephen Baxter’s fictional history of the universe and the future of humanity, which I’m finding good reading so far. Looking it up on Wikipedia, I discovered that at least some serious physicists have given the topic of FTL serious consideration. It seems that a real warp-drive may be theoretically and practically impossible: most theories require the use of exotic matter to generate negative energy densities, and mind-boggling amounts of energy input, violate certain generalized uncertainty principles (the main sticking point), and don’t supply any hint of how one would apply them to the engineering of a working FTL propulsion system. It’s still exciting though! Enough to make me want to learn QM and GR.
Since we’re on the topic, I’d like to know what the science says on the feasibility of blackholes as methods of transport, ‘wormholes’. This is such a prevalent science fiction device that I often find myself nodding in familiarity when it’s mentioned in a book, but when I stop to think about it, I feel uncomfortable with their ubiquity. Even with my inferior popular science background in physics, I can identify some problems beside the obvious question of whether you can join two black holes (or a black hole and a white hole– do these things even theoretically exist?). For starters, there’re the tidal effects that would probably rip apart any vessel that entered the event horizon of the wormhole. Then there’s the question of how to stop the wormhole from eating everything in range. I wonder if there are any non-condescending popular science books on exotic applications of blackhole physics? Probably.
Possibly relevant posts:
- Black Holes and stuff (3/8/2002)
- Sci-Fi as the last bastion of philosophical writing? (2/18/2008)
- Winter Reading (12/4/2006)