/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7071097

Alcubierre's warp is constructed of hyperbolic tangent functions which create a very peculiar distortion of space at the edges of the flat-space volume. In effect, new space is rapidly being created (like an expanding universe) at the back side of the moving volume, and existing space is being annihilated (like a universe collapsing to a Big Crunch) at the front side of the moving volume. Thus, a space ship within the volume of the Alcubierre warp (and the volume itself) would be pushed forward by the expansion of space at its rear and the contraction of space in front.

http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw81.html

>>7071119
Wait so it actually completely removes the space in front of it? As in, gone from existence?

>>7071128

oh, im not that kind of smarts... but,

its hypothetical what happens in the path of the drive, but it has a "strong gravitational" effect.

within the field, its smooth sailing, but the collapsed / annihilated space at the front of the drive is likened to the Big Crunch.

imho i think of it as like a weird shaped black hole's event horizon. the space in front is distorted, presumably something like spaggetification. but no i dont think annihilated means removed from existence, because then that missing energy could be used to power the Drive itself. it just kind of crushes everything around it.

>>7071097

Great, other of those bullshit threads.

No, none of those things. If you actually look at the math you'll see that you just need to apply enough energy to generate a distortion around the payload, so it would be like shooting a bunch of exotic matter bombarded with absurdely high energy in a very specific pattern where most of it would be in the direction you want to propel the thing and a significative chunk of it on the opposite direction to stabilize the geometry, and on top of all that once the required energy levels are reached the thing travelling and the reacting exotic masses propelling it couldn't interact in any way.

From an external observer it would probably look like an awful lot of very bright explosions in sequence that would fade and distort very quickly as the spacetime curves around the thing being propelled until it disappear, leaving a blurred background distortion in its wake similar to gravitational lensing.

There's no way to tell with any degree of certainty how it would look from inside as we never experienced anything even remotelly similar, but it would be extremelly hot, and thus possibly intensely bright - assuming anything that could make such measurements would survive the trip.

Some models also predict that once the exotic matter reaction can no longer sustain the distortion around the payload it would release a huge blast of energy, as the space time bubble is adiabatic when fully formed and thus the energy lost during the trip dissipated inside it, being released once it loses integrity.

>>7071157
>No, none of those things.

can you show us a paper anon?

cause from the rest of what you said it sounds like you made it up, or have misunderstood what the concept is...

>>7071157
>Some models also predict

these models being?

:/

>>7071097
>What's a good way to visualize the way the Alcubierre drive works?
Okay, so picture a rock. Like, some perfectly ordinary stone, just laying on the ground.

Now imagine that you think that it will allow you to make a space ship that travels faster than light.

But it's just a rock.

>>7071157
>>7071163
That's actually pretty much correct. Anon just gets off on sounding super smart to other people, and evidently completely missed the point of the post.

OP wants a way to visualize what happens in a simple way so he can explain it in layman's terms.

>>7071195

im not sure..

like a lot of the words are the same as wikipedia, but like, the paper itself doesnt say anything about it getting "hotter". it says that ship needs radiation shielding, but the gravitation effect is minimal within the center of the Warp space.

"This is the basis of the model for hyper-
fast space travel that I wish to present here: create a local distortion of spacetime that
will produce an expansion behind the spaceship, and an opposite contraction ahead of
it. In this way, the spaceship will be pushed away from the Earth and pulled towards a
distant star by spacetime itself."

http://members.shaw.ca/mike.anderton/WarpDrive.pdf