WARP derived from known physics


  1. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Mar 15, 2001
    I'm not the one who needs to ask questions. I offered you a couple of links to the work that real theoretical physicists are doing in warp theory so that you could investigate them and find out for yourself what actual physics says on the subject. You've come up with a complicated and interesting idea, but Alcubierre and other physicists have come up with a theory that's much simpler and much closer to how fictional warp drives are portrayed, and I thought you might be interested in exploring those ideas.

    I'm not talking about Star Trek. The concept of space-warp propulsion predates ST by over 30 years. The term "warp" refers to a propulsion system that relies on riding a distortion in spacetime, getting carried along on it like a surfer riding a wave. Wormhole-based propulsion is a different system and the term "warp" isn't generally used for it. It's really more of a jump drive or a point-to-point transit system than a warp drive.

    And that's my point -- you may not need to.

  2. prometheuspan

    prometheuspan Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2008
    yes, i do live
    Its an interesting paradox of consciousness that one persons self evident truth can be another persons bumbling inane gobbledygook. I find
    these ideas to be self evident, but, thats me.
    Similarly, truths we now think of as self evident, such as gravity, or,
    the roundness of the earth, or, the laws of conservation of matter or energy were at one time considered crackpot ideas.

    I would encourage you to refrain from projecting your capacity to look at these ideas critically onto me. I can be very skeptical, and I might ask a lot of questions or refer people as you have to some reference materials.
    I'm happy to receive criticism if its constructive. The purpose of this thread as I see it is to work on the problem together, not pat me on the back, and, not tear me down.

    I honestly think that these ideas are entirely defensible and in point of fact they have withstood scrutiny by people with doctorate degrees in physics.

    I consider that a fair appraisal on your part.

    I consider that an unfair appraisal on your part.

    I am not sure what gives you that impression, but I hope that we can quit talkign about me and talk about the physics, the theories, and the ideas.
    If you feel that you could do better, then you absolutely should. How do you think it should work?

    And So here i am, putting things into two or three sentence chunks which really are much more complicated than that, and opening myself to all sorts of potential criticism, fully knowing that I have super simplified much for the purpose of brevity and starting the conversation.

    Yeah, that sucks when that happens.

    I understand completely. There are several factors at play. The first and most important one to consider is that the links to current science are not apparent. I didn't put all my work on the black board. If i had and tried to post it here, I'd be accused of flooding. How much work would such represent if it actually is true that I'm deriving this from a depth exploration of science? Hundreds of hours.

    The second is attachment to both canon and to science dogmas. As is said in martial arts; First you learn the form. Once you have mastered the form, the form falls away. That falling away may look sloppy but the masters movement works. Over the long term and with more introspection on your own part, I think you will realize that these ideas have lasting and meaningful staying power, even if they might be better formulated or more
    eloquently expressed than I have.

    The third is standard pack psychology and egotism. The first impulse of any male is to find fault. Thats millions of years of evolution and hard habit to break. Its also pointless, because while its easy to attack me, its a whole lot harder for you to come up with your own 22 or 30 basic axioms.
    Thats the challenge here in any case, not knocking me down.

    What you seem to fail to understand is that this presentation is a result of looking at those same kinds of materials.
    Frankly this is a more advanced and more diverse exploration of ideas than anything you are going to find to link me to.

    Yes, they have come up with some interesting ideas. And I think we should explore them. Which is what I am doing.
    If you feel that I have left something out, by all means add your own 30 axioms.

    In my opinion, both concepts together would have to be employed to make it work. Also, a wormhole could in theory
    be created which would be shorter on the inside than the outside, but also, thats not true of all wormholes by necessity.

    I don't know why you are telling me this when I just got done saying the same thing in the body of ideas which you are criticizing.

    My opinion is that a wormhole is only functional as such to get into and out of higher dimensional realities and etc,
    and that in fact to make warp work will require a combination of several different approaches.
    Perhaps this is a failure of clarity on my part, but I also am exploring simultaneously a few different possibilities, some of which might even be mutually exclusive.
  3. prometheuspan

    prometheuspan Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2008
    yes, i do live

    important semantic factoid which we should adopt for the remainder of the thread.

    Perhaps I should be blunt. I find the idea of a warp drive without a wormhole to be merely a science fiction fantasy construct and cannot find
    it to have merit. Thus for my own purposes, I have somewhat redefined "warp" as what you are now calling transit or jump drive. This may again be a failure of my own mind and I am not above the possibility I have erred.
    However, to my knowledge, and after discussing it with people who are much more practically knowledgable than I am, It is my opinion that the only way to travel faster than light is to leave the universe via what for lack of a better word I am calling a wormhole. If you have a case to make
    for a propulsion system of the more standard basic warp concept, I certainly would invite you to make your case. My feeling is that this thread should be a collaborative effort to solve the problem, and I invite any and all approaches towards that end.
  4. Shaw

    Shaw Commodore Commodore

    Feb 21, 2007
    Twin Cities
    Okay... not if what you've given us here is what you gave them.

    We can't start talking about physics until we are on the same page. From what you've given us to work with so far, either you don't understand the physics or you aren't sure how to word your ideas.

    And quite frankly, the odds are that you don't truly understand some of these ideas as you really can't seem to explain the basics. It must be nice to by pass years and years of physics, but by doing so you've skipped all of the foundations of what you want to work with.

    At this point, you are either a waste of time or you have some potential.

    I don't care what your IQ is or how many people think your great... show me that you have a clearer understanding of the basic building blocks that you are using. When I ask you to explain your terminology, don't make me ask three or more times. I'm not trying to make you look bad, I'm trying to provide help (if I can).

    Again, I didn't make those other quoted statements.
  5. prometheuspan

    prometheuspan Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2008
    yes, i do live
    I'm sorry if i initially found your question too vague to make sense of.
    I think i have answered it. If you have further questions, ask. At this point i think the thread would be better served if you run with your first impression that I'm an idiot, and just give us the low down of how you think real warp technology would work. Then we can all follow your lead, and I can safely retreat back into just being the guy who started the thread.

    Sure, while everybody else was having a social life, I was reading textbooks. From the age of 8 to 18, my nose didn't come out of them. So
    some people might think I took the easy route, and some people may even resent that I might make such claims, but the real truth is that I worked very hard for my understanding, possibly as hard or harder than those who earn degrees because I have disabilities I have to overcome.


    I am truly bored talking about me and sure you have all sorts of insights into warp theory that would be much more interesting.

    Either stand and deliver, or go away. please.

    I could say that about you and virtually the whole lot of humanity.

    Please come back to the topic. How does warp work, in theory, given what you know of physics?
  6. Shaw

    Shaw Commodore Commodore

    Feb 21, 2007
    Twin Cities
    Frankly, I don't care about your life. And as someone with my own disabilities to deal with, I'd suggest that you stop using yours as a crutch. Stop trying to tell us anything about yourself and stick to the physics if you can.

    I don't have anything to prove, but then again, it is starting to seem that neither do you.

    What I'm getting here is that you've spent years reading math and physics books... but skipped all the math. That explains quite a bit... You're right, I have nothing to offer here as this (and most of your ideas) seem to fall into the realm of science fiction (and I generally attempt to avoid applying physics to science fiction).
  7. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Mar 15, 2001
    I don't need to. I already gave you the links to the actual papers that actual theoretical physicists have written on these subjects. They've done the work far better than I could.

    If you constructed a wormhole with two mouths close together and then separated the mouths through normal space, those mouths would remain motionless relative to the interior space, therefore the interior distance would not increase along with the exterior distance. So it's possible to generate a wormhole in such a way as to ensure that the interior distance is shorter.

    And again, as I said, you're right that some form of alternate continuum with a higher speed of light could allow effective superluminal travel, but again, that's not a warp drive. The term for that would be a hyperspace drive or hyperdrive.

    Here's a list that physicist/SF author Geoffrey A. Landis compiled, basically a taxonomy of the various categories of FTL drive in fiction:


    Warp drive is category; yours seems to be in the section, "Alternative space without fixed nodes."

    Hey, no need to be defensive. I'm just trying to offer further information on a subject you're interested in. I apologize for overlooking your reference to that point elsewhere in this long thread. I'm skimming a lot of it.

    Well, I recommend you explore the links about the Alcubierre-type warp theories; there's more on that if you scroll further down the page containing the Landis list. I think that the recent Cleaver-Obousy proposal of using the Casimir effect, combined with the Van Den Broeck micro-warp bubble idea, could conceivably get the energy requirement for a warp drive low enough to be practical. And that's entirely based on known physics, no need to postulate any hypothetical otherspace beyond the extra dimensions already proposed in string theory.
  8. prometheuspan

    prometheuspan Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2008
    yes, i do live
    good, we are on the same page on that.

    Yes, thats absolutely true, I can't do math. I can on the other hand run a
    lucid visualization simulation, and that can yield results which are remarkably similar to doing math.

    If thats your way of politely bowing out, then its been nice chatting with you.
    Otherwise, No, I'm not doing science fiction, I'm trying to create a collaborative problem solving process and am acutely aware of the both the
    things of merit I have to bring to that process and how much I need other people to fill ini blanks which I can't.

    Somehow I think my error was in not directly addressing those papers to start with. Okay, I'll backtrack and do that.
    This classification page you found is great. Actually the stuff i put out is a few different ones on this list, cuz I was going with a few different ways of solving the problem.

    I think the casimir effect is great as one way to work out some of the problems with the warp engine. Its even better as a method for augmenting a slower than light ramrocket. String theories abound, which interpretations are we specifically talking about?

    I did miss those follow up papers, my bad. Thanks for pushing a second time a bit harder.
    The follow-up papers *

    1. Photon propagation in a stationary warp drive space-time
      Claes R. Cramer
      e-print: gr-qc/9510018, (1995)
    2. Some thoughts on the Implications of Faster-Than-Light Interstellar Space Travel
      I.A. Crawford
      Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 36, 205-218, (1995)
    3. Physical and Cosmological Implications of a Possible Class of Particles Able to Travel Faster than Light
      Luis Gonzalez-Mestres
      e-print: hep-ph/9610474;
      Contribution to the 28th International Conference on High Energy Physics, Warsaw (Poland), (1996)
    4. Warp drive and causality
      Allen E. Everett
      pdf; Physical Review D, vol. 53, 7365-7368, (1996)
    5. A Superluminal Subway: The Krasnikov Tube
      Allen E. Everett & Thomas A. Roman
      e-print: gr-qc/9702049; postscript; pdf;
      Physical Review D, vol. 56, 2100-2108, (1997)
    6. Quantum effects in the Alcubierre warp drive spacetime
      William A. Hiscock
      e-print: gr-qc/9707024; postscript; pdf;
      Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 14, L183-L188 (1997)
    7. The unphysical nature of "Warp Drive"
      Michael J. Pfenning & L.H. Ford
      e-print: gr-qc/9702026; postscript; pdf;
      Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 14, 1743-1751, (1997)
    8. On the Possibility of a Propulsion Drive Creation Through a Local Manipulation of Spacetime Geometry
      Vesselin Petkov
      e-print: physics/9805028;
      Presented at the 34th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, (1998)
    9. `Operational' energy conditions
      Adam D. Helfer
      pdf; postscript; Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 15, 1169-1183, (1998)
    10. No warp drive
      D. H. Coule
      pdf; postscript; Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 15, 2523-2527, (1998)
    11. Quantum Inequality Restrictions on Negative Energy Densities in Curved Spacetimes
      Michael John Pfenning
      e-print: gr-qc/9805037; Doctoral Dissertation, (1998)
    12. Hyperfast Interstellar Travel in General Relativity
      S. V. Krasnikov
      e-print: gr-qc/9511068; postscript; pdf;
      Physical Review D, vol. 57, 4760, (1998)
    13. Superluminal travel requires negative energies
      Ken D. Olum
      e-print: gr-qc/9805003; postscript; pdf;
      Physical Review Letters, vol. 81, 3567-3570, (1998)
    14. Hyper-fast travel without negative energy
      Eric Baird
      e-print: gr-qc/9903068; (1999)
    15. Warp drives, wavefronts and superluminality
      Eric Baird
      e-print: physics/9904019; (1999)
    16. A traversable wormhole
      S. Krasnikov
      e-print: gr-qc/9909016; (1999)
    17. Speed Limits in General Relativity
      Robert J. Low
      e-print: gr-qc/9812067; postscript; pdf;
      Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 16, 543-549, (1999)
    18. Null geodesics in the Alcubierre warp drive spacetime: the view from the bridge
      Chad Clark, William A. Hiscock & Shane L. Larson
      e-print: gr-qc/9907019; postscript; pdf;
      Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 16, 3965-3972, (1999)
    19. A `warp drive' with more reasonable total energy
      Chris Van Den Broeck
      e-print: gr-qc/9905084; postscript; pdf;
      Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 16, 3973-3979, (1999)
    20. On the warp drive space-time
      Pedro F. Gonzalez-Diaz
      e-print: gr-qc/9907026; postscript; pdf;
      Physical Review D, vol. 62, 44005-44012, (2000)
    21. On the (im)possibility of warp bubbles
      Chris Van Den Broeck
      e-print: gr-qc/9906050;
      Summary of talk delivered at STAIF-2000, (2000)
    22. Reduced Total Energy Requirements for a Modified Alcubierre Warp Drive Spacetime
      F. Loup, D. Waite & E. Halerewicz Jr
      e-print: gr-qc/0107097, (2001)
    23. Warp Drive With Zero Expansion
      Jose Natario
      e-print: gr-qc/0110086; postscript; pdf;
      Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 19, 1157-1166, (2002)
    24. A Causally Connected Superluminal Warp Drive Spacetime
      F. Loup, R. Held, D. Waite, E. Halerewicz, Jr., M. Stabno, M. Kuntzman & R. Sims
      e-print: gr-qc/0202021, (2002)
    25. Weak Energy Condition Violation and Superluminal Travel
      Francisco Lobo & Paulo Crawford
      e-print: gr-qc/0204038, (2002)
    26. On the Problems of Hazardous Matter and Radiation at Faster than Light Speeds in the Warp Drive Space-Time
      C.B. Hart, R. Held, P.K. Hoiland, S. Jenks, F. Loup, D. Martins, J. Nyman, J.P. Pertierra, P.A. Santos, M.A. Shore, R. Sims, M. Stabno & T.O.M. Teage
      e-print: gr-qc/0207109, (2002)
    * The dates indicated within parenthesis refer to the last known uploaded or published version of the paper.
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2008
  9. prometheuspan

    prometheuspan Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2008
    yes, i do live
    The Canonical List of StarDrives

    If you want to roll your own, you might find the following useful. Noted physicist and Hugo & Nebula award-winning SF author Geoffrey A. Landis has created a catalog of every kind of StarDrive that has ever existed in science fiction. It appears here with Dr. Landis' permission.

    Last edited: Sep 18, 2008
  10. prometheuspan

    prometheuspan Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2008
    yes, i do live
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2008
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Mar 15, 2001
    ^^Umm, it's probably against board policy to quote huge chunks of text from other sites like that. And it's definitely improper online etiquette. Note that the site you copied from says that Landis's list appears there with his permission. You do not have Landis's permission to post it here, nor do you have the permission of Marcelo Ribiero or Winchell Chung to copy large portions of their sites, especially without attribution. You should only provide links to those sites, as I did, and quote reasonably brief portions, enclosing them in quote boxes to make the attribution clear.
  12. prometheuspan

    prometheuspan Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2008
    yes, i do live

    i'm going to sleep now, and when i come back, I'm going to try not to feel like a moron.
  13. shipfisher

    shipfisher Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2006
    The 180 IQ thing shows mate, though if you'll excuse me for saying, all that quoting above is sort of turning into a "pissing" contest. Many posters here are out past my CPU's capacity (I barely rate Mensa membership), but sometimes the layman's point of view can be worth tossing into the fray.

    Trying to explain trek warp drive in terms of present day physics is probably akin to having Archimedes explain a transistor. A new paradigm is needed to explain warping space without energy expenditure of stellar magnitude and black hole strength grav fields. Basic trek tech (which is all just good fun - this ain't the CERN forums) has coils composed of milanium or verterium cortenide converting em energy to "subspace field stress" in some far less violent manor than Alcubierre or any of his mates would say was likely.

    Steer the 180 IQ toward sorting out unified field theory (or what ever it becomes) for the less gifted of us, and then see what FTL "slight of hand" the universe offers up. :)
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2008
  14. SonicRanger

    SonicRanger Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Feb 17, 2001
    Minneapolis, MN
    Except for the oh-so-minor detail that transistors are real, and Trek warp drive is imaginary. Of course, prometheuspan is using imaginary physics, so that's okay. One simply can't confuse the imaginary and the real (which, I am afraid, is happening a lot in this thread).

    The schizophrenic man screaming at cars on the street corner thinks that he is making sense -- that doesn't mean he is.
  15. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Mar 15, 2001
    Actually Trek warp drive is a lot closer to being un-imaginary than you'd think. At least, depending on what model you're using. In 1978, NASA propulsion engineer and ST:TMP science advisor Dr. Jesco von Puttkamer wrote a production memo explaining warp drive in terms grounded in real physics -- and his model was based on essentially the same principle as the one that Alcubierre proposed in Classical and Quantum Gravity 16 years later. Since Alcubierre is a confessed Trekker, I wonder if he was aware of Puttkamer's warp model.

    Never underestimate the power of science fiction to inspire real scientific and technological innovations.
  16. SonicRanger

    SonicRanger Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Feb 17, 2001
    Minneapolis, MN

    That's all fine and good, Christopher.

    But there is no consistent model of how Trek warp works, which is not surprising -- after 40+ years, too many people have added their two cents. The result is a moderately to wildly inconsistent mess that technically oriented fans must go to great lengths to explain and make consistent.

    But, as Timo has pointed out, saying things like...

    ... in the initial post of a thread title "WARP derived from known physics" is a joke. One cannot pretend that these uneducated statements are anything less than fantasy. Reading speculative physics books and articles and cut 'n' pasting bits and pieces together doesn't constitute a coherent argument. It is the equivalent of a kidnapper's ransom note cut out of newspaper clippings -- the words have been shuffled around to mean something that the original writers never intended.
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2008
  17. shipfisher

    shipfisher Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2006
    You mean confusing the real and the imaginary isn't what this forum is all about? :D
  18. Albertus

    Albertus Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Apr 30, 2008
    East Sussex, UK
    Its really nice to see that such intelligent people can be reduced to gibbering idiots. The only 'real world' scenario is 'zero point', or 'vacum energy'. Start talking about that as a 'Warp' alternative, and I am with you.
  19. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Mar 15, 2001
    ^^If you're talking about extracting energy from the vacuum as a power source, that's a fantasy that violates the law of conservation of energy. At best, you could get a more concentrated amount of energy out of it, but you'd need to put in a greater amount of energy than you could get out.

    You're also blurring two different categories. ZPE is a power source; warp is a propulsion system. Just getting zero-point energy doesn't make you go anywhere; it would simply give you the power you needed to fuel whatever drive you did use, whether a warp field, a wormhole, or something different.

    However, the Casimir effect does depend on vacuum fluctuations, and has been proposed as a means of producing the negative energy (at least relative to the surrounding space) that's required to create stable warp and wormhole metrics. So the quantum vacuum is being taken into account in multiple cutting-edge FTL theories, including the Cleaver-Obousy warp proposal.
  20. prometheuspan

    prometheuspan Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Sep 10, 2008
    yes, i do live
    Had i known that my capacity to edit would end on some time frame i hardly would have left those posts in such condition.

    It has become increasingly clear that you guys are not interested in the subject, just mocking me.

    This does not motivate me to bother to explore it any further.

    Nor does it bode well for my continued participation on this board.

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