A potential model for a true physical chain reader

Two Applied Physics researchers created what they describe as the first general model of distortion, a model for a spacecraft that could travel faster than the speed of light, without breaking the laws of physics. Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire wrote an article outlining their ideas for a distortion reader and published it in IOP’s Classical and quantum gravity.

In the 1960s, viewers first became familiar with the idea of ​​a warp drive through the “Star Trek” TV show. When the crew needed to get somewhere quickly, Captain Kirk gave his famous order (“Mr. Sulu, execute”), and the ship was quickly pushed to another distant destination. However, physicists scoffed at the idea of ​​a true warp drive because it suggests traveling faster than light. But in reality, as the name of the drive suggests, such a motor was not actually pushing the craft faster than the speed of light; instead, it was simply distorting space-time in a way that allowed for a shortcut. Imagine a towel. If you were to go through its entire surface, it would take a while. But what if you fold the napkin in half and move through and through the folds? You could get to your destination in no time. In this new effort, the researchers took an earlier idea based on the warping of spacetime a step further to create a model of distortion control that they believed might be achievable in the future.

Bobrick and Martire start from the idea of ​​an Alcubierre warp drive, a concept developed by Miguel Alcubierre in 1994 – he envisioned it as a spacecraft that could contract space-time in front of the vehicle while expanding it. behind the machine. But such a craft would require a massive amount of negative energy, which would not be feasible for a real spacecraft. Bobrick and Martire instead suggest that a massive gravitational force could be used to bend space-time. The trick is to find a way to compress a mass the size of a planet to a manageable spaceship mod size in order to use its gravity. Due to the implied difficulties, a distortion reader created from the model developed by the researchers could not be built today, but it suggests that one day it may be possible.

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