The Spacetime Metric

In one minute

Bobrick and Martire model warp spacetimes as moving shells surrounding a flat passenger region, rather than as self-propelling engines. Their 2021 paper develops spherical configurations with positive energy at speeds below light, allowing gravity outside the shell and slower clocks inside relative to distant observers moving with it. They also explore changes to shape, interior volume and clock rates in other geometries. Flattening an Alcubierre configuration reduces its calculated negative-energy requirement, but the superluminal examples still violate the averaged null energy condition, a restriction on energy along light rays. Even their extremely thin examples that meet selected quantum inequalities retain this problem. Changing a shell’s velocity requires propulsion; a stationary geometry alone supplies no acceleration mechanism.

Introducing physical warp drives

  1. Alexey Bobrick(Author)
  2. Gianni Martire(Author)

Publication and identifiers

Work type
Paper
Year
2021
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Edition
Classical and Quantum Gravity 38(10), online20April2021; summary bound to arXiv2102.06824v2 dated17February2021
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Original title
Introducing physical warp drives
Attribution
  1. Alexey Bobrick(Author)
  2. Gianni Martire(Author)
Year
2021
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Edition
Classical and Quantum Gravity 38(10), online20April2021; summary bound to arXiv2102.06824v2 dated17February2021
Identifiers
Original source links

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