In one minute

José Natário notes that the warp drive spacetime illuminates general relativity, but its meaning as a gravitational field is unclear. Newtonian limits are a standard tool for understanding and interpreting relativistic spacetimes. He therefore seeks a Newtonian limit of the warp drive spacetime. He defines Newtonian spacetimes with a potential function and shows they closely mirror their counterparts in Newtonian theory, especially with a dust source and cosmological constant. Such spacetimes always have a Newtonian limit with the same potential. He finds a class of warp drive spacetimes with Newtonian limits and applies the same method to the Schwarzschild solution and flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmologies.

Newtonian limits of warp drive spacetimes