Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Did NASA accidentally invent a warp drive?

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Did NASA accidentally invent a warp drive? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, what's your first reaction when you see a
0:11
Speaker 1: dramatic science headline? M M, I guess it's a superposition
0:15
Speaker 1: of excitement and skepticism. The quantum reaction. What do you
0:20
Speaker 1: mean by skepticism is part of you assume the study
0:23
Speaker 1: is not real? No, it's more skepticism because I think
0:26
Speaker 1: the news coverage might not be fair. Wait what he's saying?
0:31
Speaker 1: The news media is biased. I get this constant stream
0:34
Speaker 1: of articles sent to me by listeners who asked me like,
0:36
Speaker 1: is this for real? Can I believe this headline? But
0:40
Speaker 1: somehow I believe you. Well, I think we've earned more
0:43
Speaker 1: trust than some of those websites called like coffee or
0:46
Speaker 1: die dot com or link zilla dot org. I've never
0:49
Speaker 1: been to those sites, but thanks for the reference. I'm
0:51
Speaker 1: always looking for ways that Icetein was wrong. I hear
0:54
Speaker 1: there are ten reasons you won't believe the seventh one.
1:12
Speaker 1: Hi am more handy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comments. Hi,
1:16
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at
1:18
Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and I'm dying to find out why Einstein
1:22
Speaker 1: was wrong. You're dying to find out you would give
1:25
Speaker 1: up your life find out why Einstein was wrong. I
1:28
Speaker 1: guess it's more figuratively dying to find out. But I
1:31
Speaker 1: do get a lot of emails from people who say
1:32
Speaker 1: they have figured out how Einstein was wrong, and every
1:36
Speaker 1: time inside me there's this little flash of hope. Maybe
1:39
Speaker 1: this is the person who has figured it out. Yeah,
1:41
Speaker 1: you never know, right, I mean, Einstein was just some
1:44
Speaker 1: dude working in a pen office, and he figured out
1:47
Speaker 1: that everybody else was wrong. Einstein was a very smart dude.
1:50
Speaker 1: But yes, you're right, he was just a human being
1:52
Speaker 1: with a human brain thinking about the way the world
1:54
Speaker 1: works and coming up with a more beautiful and more
1:57
Speaker 1: compact and more effective description of reality. But we're also
2:01
Speaker 1: pretty sure his ideas weren't the final ideas. So you
2:05
Speaker 1: think he is wrong. I'm very sure that Einstein is wrong.
2:08
Speaker 1: I just don't know who's right. So what do you
2:10
Speaker 1: do with those emails? Do you a fact check them?
2:13
Speaker 1: Do you go through them? Yeah? Absolutely, I read them.
2:16
Speaker 1: I scan through them. I give them some feedback on
2:18
Speaker 1: the science. Do you encourage them to submit it to
2:20
Speaker 1: a journal or at least a coffee or died dot com.
2:23
Speaker 1: Most of them aren't really in journal ready format yet,
2:26
Speaker 1: so I give them some tips about how they might
2:28
Speaker 1: get there. I see you give them a tech or
2:31
Speaker 1: word processing tips. Welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge
2:34
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in
2:37
Speaker 1: which we try to figure out how Einstein was wrong
2:40
Speaker 1: and also how he was right. Our goal is to
2:43
Speaker 1: explore how the universe works, to wonder about all of
2:46
Speaker 1: its crazy mysteries, those fundamental questions about the very nature
2:50
Speaker 1: of reality, what rules all those particles are following. We
2:54
Speaker 1: want to weave them all together into a deep and
2:57
Speaker 1: beautiful understanding of this cosmos, and we want to explain
3:01
Speaker 1: all of it to you. That's right. It is a
3:03
Speaker 1: vast universe full of mysteries, and our understanding of these
3:06
Speaker 1: mysteries is constantly changing. Science is not a constant thing,
3:10
Speaker 1: and science is not done, still working hard to figure
3:12
Speaker 1: out how things actually work, because the way we think
3:15
Speaker 1: it might be working doesn't always pin up. That's right,
3:18
Speaker 1: and it also doesn't make progress in a steady fashion.
3:21
Speaker 1: It's not like every day we get five more units
3:24
Speaker 1: of science. There are moments in the history of science
3:27
Speaker 1: when somebody has a flash of insight, when years of
3:30
Speaker 1: struggle finally coalesced into some progress and we make a
3:33
Speaker 1: great leap forward in our understanding. And you never know
3:37
Speaker 1: what day is going to be one of those days. Yeah,
3:40
Speaker 1: everybody tunes into the science news of the day to
3:43
Speaker 1: see if a great new discovery has been made, or
3:46
Speaker 1: if scientists figure out how to do some amazing thing,
3:49
Speaker 1: or if it's just linzila dot org spamming us again,
3:53
Speaker 1: giving us clickbait. But there are always interesting news headlines,
3:56
Speaker 1: sometimes on the on the regular news, and sometimes they
3:59
Speaker 1: spill over onto the mainstream media, right, Yeah, And sometimes
4:03
Speaker 1: they seem like click bait, but they are real. You know,
4:06
Speaker 1: scientists measure gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of reality.
4:10
Speaker 1: That sounds like it was made up by a copy
4:13
Speaker 1: editor working in a basement somewhere, but that was real. Yeah.
4:16
Speaker 1: Science does make a lot of progress, and people are
4:18
Speaker 1: excited when something really big happens. But sometimes those headlines
4:23
Speaker 1: are a little bit overblown. That's right. You can't believe
4:25
Speaker 1: everything you read in all of the popular media about
4:28
Speaker 1: scientific progress. Sometimes they're just trying to get you excited
4:32
Speaker 1: and make you click on their link. We had a
4:35
Speaker 1: whole episode about how to critically read popular science articles,
4:39
Speaker 1: the upshot of which was develop a few sources of
4:42
Speaker 1: information that you really trust and check those Wait, wait,
4:45
Speaker 1: are you trying to tell people that you're the only
4:48
Speaker 1: person they can trust? Is that what it is? Isn't
4:51
Speaker 1: that how how cults work? I do think we are
4:54
Speaker 1: a pretty reliable and even handed source of information about
4:57
Speaker 1: science progress. But there are other places you you can
5:00
Speaker 1: get your science news. I like the coverage in the
5:02
Speaker 1: New York Times and in the l A Times, and
5:04
Speaker 1: also in Quantum Magazine, often very insightful and always very
5:08
Speaker 1: well informed, but also false and non informed at the
5:12
Speaker 1: same time. Because it is a quantum magazine, they try
5:14
Speaker 1: to deliver one quantum of understanding at a time. But
5:17
Speaker 1: there's a lot of information and news out there, and
5:19
Speaker 1: it's kind of like you say, it's hard to figure
5:21
Speaker 1: out what is real and what is not, or maybe
5:23
Speaker 1: what is real but exaggerated. I think that's maybe a
5:27
Speaker 1: lot of what happens in these news headlines, right, there's
5:30
Speaker 1: like some neggat of truth, but they sort of emphasized
5:32
Speaker 1: the extreme interpretation of these things. Yeah, often they have
5:36
Speaker 1: removed the coffee AATs and the qualifiers, and so you know,
5:40
Speaker 1: somebody does like a simulation of a black hole universe
5:44
Speaker 1: on their computer one afternoon and writes a paper about it,
5:47
Speaker 1: and then the news headline is like graduate student plunges
5:51
Speaker 1: entire universe into a black hole or something similar. Well,
5:54
Speaker 1: that's probably only exciting for that gratitude. Well, you have
5:57
Speaker 1: a whole ted talk once. I think about the scientific
6:00
Speaker 1: news cycle and how this happens, how real scientific research
6:04
Speaker 1: gets sort of filtered and amplified. Yeah, and then how
6:07
Speaker 1: it all comes back to your grandma and how she
6:10
Speaker 1: ends up wearing tinfoil hat. So we do think it's
6:13
Speaker 1: very important that everybody out there have a sense for
6:15
Speaker 1: what's real and what's exaggerated. So when a bunch of
6:18
Speaker 1: listeners all send me the same article, I think maybe
6:20
Speaker 1: it's sound to do an episode about one particular piece
6:23
Speaker 1: of research. Yeah, and then months later the episode comes out.
6:26
Speaker 1: Sometimes we rush it right. Sometimes we if it's a
6:29
Speaker 1: hot topic, we'll ask my hard to put it out quickly.
6:32
Speaker 1: That's right. We do sometimes try to be responsive to
6:34
Speaker 1: the real world. And so recently there's been a pretty
6:37
Speaker 1: incredible sounding headline that a lot of people wrote to
6:39
Speaker 1: you about. Right. I guess people look to you to
6:42
Speaker 1: know if something is overblown or real, because I'm certainly
6:45
Speaker 1: not getting those emails. How do you know? Are you
6:48
Speaker 1: reading your emails these days? But every morning in my
6:50
Speaker 1: inbox I certainly get a pile of email from listeners
6:54
Speaker 1: who say I saw this headline? Is this real? Or
6:56
Speaker 1: could you do an episode explaining this to me? Because
6:58
Speaker 1: I still don't understand it. Yeah. Pretty recently there's been
7:01
Speaker 1: a pretty exciting sounding headline about warp drives and NASA.
7:06
Speaker 1: To the question we'll be technic today is did NASA
7:14
Speaker 1: just accidentally build a warp drive? Nathaniel? Which part is
7:19
Speaker 1: maybe not real? The accidental part? Did they build one
7:22
Speaker 1: on purpose? Actually, let's see the parts about this headline.
7:25
Speaker 1: They're not real, are the NASA part, the accidental part,
7:28
Speaker 1: and the warp drive part? So they did build something?
7:33
Speaker 1: Did build something? No, they didn't even actually build. So
7:38
Speaker 1: let's see which works are left here? Um might have
7:41
Speaker 1: did something? Might have happened. So I'm looking at a
7:44
Speaker 1: web page from Coffee or Die dot com and the
7:47
Speaker 1: headline is DARBA and NASA scientists accidentally create warp bubble
7:52
Speaker 1: for interstellar travel. There's no might or maybe, Well, we'll
7:55
Speaker 1: dig into this headline, but first, we were wondering how
7:58
Speaker 1: many people out there had her about this or think
8:01
Speaker 1: it's real. So thank very much to everybody who volunteers
8:05
Speaker 1: to answer these questions for this section of the podcast.
8:07
Speaker 1: We really appreciate you speculating about things you haven't had
8:10
Speaker 1: a chance to prepare for, and hope everybody else out
8:14
Speaker 1: there enjoys them. If you would like to participate for
8:16
Speaker 1: future episodes, please don't be right to me. Two questions
8:20
Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about it
8:22
Speaker 1: for a second. Do you think Naha just accidentally or
8:26
Speaker 1: on purpose build a warp drive? Here's what people had
8:29
Speaker 1: to say. I'm pretty sure they did not discover a
8:31
Speaker 1: warp drive, only because that would be pretty big news,
8:34
Speaker 1: and as far as I know, I've heard nothing about it,
8:37
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna say no, No, they definitely did not
8:39
Speaker 1: accidentally discover a warp drive. I would love that to
8:43
Speaker 1: be true, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
8:46
Speaker 1: Since you're asking, I think the answer is yes, but
8:49
Speaker 1: I haven't heard about it. I don't think that's I
8:52
Speaker 1: can do mistakes like this, at least not now, probably
8:57
Speaker 1: in the future. But I don't think this accident just happened.
9:01
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I kind of hope so, because
9:03
Speaker 1: I think that would be amazing to be able to
9:05
Speaker 1: travel really far, really fast. All Right, a lot of
9:08
Speaker 1: excitement and either way, people are like, I don't know,
9:11
Speaker 1: but that sounds awesome. Yeah, just like me. Everybody wants
9:14
Speaker 1: this to be true. And I think that's one of
9:16
Speaker 1: the reasons that these articles are successful is that it
9:19
Speaker 1: touches the excitement inside people. People are hopeful for this
9:23
Speaker 1: kind of leap forward in technology. Yeah, I mean, I
9:25
Speaker 1: guess at least the people who read Science News probably
9:28
Speaker 1: also are fans of Star Trek, and so that that's
9:31
Speaker 1: where kind of maybe the idea of warp drives first
9:34
Speaker 1: god spread into the popular culture, and so people are
9:37
Speaker 1: excited for this to happen because a lot of exciting
9:39
Speaker 1: things happen in Star Trek. You think people are more
9:41
Speaker 1: excited about warp drives or like the holidack. Well, the
9:44
Speaker 1: holiday already exists, Daniel. You have a holidack. It's called
9:48
Speaker 1: the metaverse. Well, that's right, and we recently took a
9:51
Speaker 1: trip to the metaverse, so we should know all about it. Yeah,
9:54
Speaker 1: it's nice and cozy there, But war drivece would be
9:56
Speaker 1: pretty amazing, right, because they would let us travel to
9:58
Speaker 1: other stars and their planets and maybe other galaxies. It
10:01
Speaker 1: would be really incredible because one of the disappointing things
10:05
Speaker 1: about the universe is that it's so big that everything
10:07
Speaker 1: is so far away. We're limited to travel slower than
10:11
Speaker 1: the speed of light, which seems really fast, but even
10:13
Speaker 1: in comparison to the vast distances between stars or between galaxies,
10:18
Speaker 1: it's not really fast enough to get us interesting places
10:21
Speaker 1: in the reasonable amounts of time. So a warp drive
10:23
Speaker 1: would be a wonderful way to like zip around the
10:25
Speaker 1: galaxy or the universe and just learn so much about
10:29
Speaker 1: what's going on out there. That would be super cool.
10:32
Speaker 1: Although Daniel, I feel like you shouldn't be disappointed at
10:34
Speaker 1: the universe for for being so big. That feels a
10:36
Speaker 1: little mean, you know, like maybe it's our fault for
10:39
Speaker 1: not being fast enough or big enough. Yeah, maybe disappointed
10:41
Speaker 1: is too judgmental. I'm just frustrated. I feel like there's
10:45
Speaker 1: information out there. You know, there are either aliens living
10:48
Speaker 1: on other planets and crawling around of those services or not,
10:51
Speaker 1: and the facts are out there. They either are or
10:54
Speaker 1: they aren't, and we could know it if we could
10:56
Speaker 1: just like get there and see these things. But everything
10:59
Speaker 1: is so rustratingly distant. It's like somebody has answers to
11:02
Speaker 1: the deepest questions about the universe, but they're keeping them
11:05
Speaker 1: in a locked box and you can't see them. Yeah,
11:08
Speaker 1: unless you go to coffee or die dot com. They
11:10
Speaker 1: seemply have the key. It would be pretty cool, and
11:12
Speaker 1: it is pretty prevalent in science fiction movies warp drives
11:16
Speaker 1: because I guess it solves pretty much any plot that
11:20
Speaker 1: the problem that you might have in setting up a
11:23
Speaker 1: space story, right, because without a warp drive, you pretty
11:26
Speaker 1: much can't have any space stories because it would just
11:28
Speaker 1: take too long to get between planets or between parts
11:31
Speaker 1: of the galaxy. What's an interesting question with a few nuances.
11:34
Speaker 1: I mean, in one hand, you can't realistically have like
11:36
Speaker 1: a galactic empire. You can't make decisions for a set
11:40
Speaker 1: of stars that are many, many light years apart, because
11:43
Speaker 1: when you make a decision, it takes like years and
11:46
Speaker 1: years even for that information to propagate across the galaxy.
11:49
Speaker 1: Or how can you like move your army from one
11:52
Speaker 1: star to another, or gather resources in one place and
11:54
Speaker 1: move them somewhere else. It really effectively limits you to
11:58
Speaker 1: operating in a single soul or system. Yeah, Like even
12:01
Speaker 1: just to send an email to the other side of
12:03
Speaker 1: the galaxy would take a hundred thousand years, right, that's right,
12:06
Speaker 1: So you can't really coordinate across different parts of the
12:09
Speaker 1: galaxy due to the speed limit of the speed of light.
12:12
Speaker 1: But you know, if you're patient, you could send out
12:15
Speaker 1: explorational teams which could discover those other star systems, so
12:18
Speaker 1: you could realistically still have like first contact stories, but
12:22
Speaker 1: you can't zip back and forth between stars that are
12:24
Speaker 1: really far apart. I wonder if it just maybe our
12:27
Speaker 1: point of view about time, Like if we live to
12:29
Speaker 1: be a million years old, you know, maybe a hundred
12:32
Speaker 1: thousand years old to send an email wouldn't be that bad. Yeah,
12:35
Speaker 1: that's a really good way of thinking about it. The
12:36
Speaker 1: speed of light really is a relationship between time and distance,
12:41
Speaker 1: And so if time isn't much of an issue for
12:43
Speaker 1: you because you're gonna live to be a million years old,
12:45
Speaker 1: then the universe is a lot more local than if
12:48
Speaker 1: you live very short lives like we do. Well, regardless
12:51
Speaker 1: of how old you live, having a war drive would
12:53
Speaker 1: be pretty handy for exploring the universe. For sending emails
12:57
Speaker 1: to the other side of the galaxy. And this headline
12:59
Speaker 1: that people are sending and you seems to say that
13:01
Speaker 1: NASA may have accidentally build a warp drive. I wonder
13:05
Speaker 1: wh where the accidentally comes from. Are we going to
13:07
Speaker 1: cover that. We are going to cover that. Absolutely yes.
13:10
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty tantalizing headline. And so let's dig
13:13
Speaker 1: into this idea first of all, and let's start with
13:15
Speaker 1: the basics. Daniel, what is the technical definition of a
13:18
Speaker 1: warp drive? So a warp drive sounds like science fiction
13:21
Speaker 1: because we hear about it in science fiction, and usually
13:24
Speaker 1: you hear scientists saying that it's impossible that you can't
13:27
Speaker 1: go faster than the speed of light. And so a
13:29
Speaker 1: warp drive just sounds like, you say, a science fiction
13:33
Speaker 1: plot saver a way to just like dot dot dot
13:35
Speaker 1: your way to distant stars without worrying about the limitations
13:39
Speaker 1: of the speed of light. But in the last few decades,
13:41
Speaker 1: there has been a lot of progress in imagining how
13:44
Speaker 1: we might build a warp drive using actual science, using
13:48
Speaker 1: real technology. It's not like we have plans for a
13:51
Speaker 1: warp drive right now, but we have sort of a
13:53
Speaker 1: direction that theoretical physics points as towards that suggests it
13:57
Speaker 1: might be possible. What are you saying that NASA has
13:59
Speaker 1: accident proven that warp drives are possible. I'm saying that
14:02
Speaker 1: we're like step one out of three million towards building
14:05
Speaker 1: a warp drive. Are you saying that NASA has taken
14:08
Speaker 1: the first steps towards building a war drive? There are
14:10
Speaker 1: some theoretical physicists that have laid the foundation, yes, which
14:13
Speaker 1: may eventually lead to actual warp drives being constructed. What
14:18
Speaker 1: are you saying that that's I will eventually build a
14:20
Speaker 1: war drive. I think you've had too much coffee or
14:22
Speaker 1: die this morning. No, I'm just kidding. Let's maybe be
14:25
Speaker 1: super clear about this, right, this is an idea where
14:28
Speaker 1: you have something aboard your spaceship, right, and this device
14:31
Speaker 1: that you have on your spaceship somehow, let's you cut
14:34
Speaker 1: through space, right, or go faster than the speed of light.
14:37
Speaker 1: That's the idea of warp drives, right, Because it's maybe
14:39
Speaker 1: different than like the warmhole gate that some science fitch
14:42
Speaker 1: and stories used to go between spots in the galaxy. Yes,
14:45
Speaker 1: so you do have to follow the rules of relativity.
14:47
Speaker 1: And the cool thing about the warp drive is that
14:49
Speaker 1: it does follow the rules of relativity. We're used to
14:52
Speaker 1: relativity telling us that you can't move through space faster
14:54
Speaker 1: than light, and that doesn't change. We can't avoid that.
14:57
Speaker 1: But relativity also tells us that space isn't just flat,
15:01
Speaker 1: that it can do weird things, that the relative distances
15:04
Speaker 1: between points in space can change. When we talk about
15:08
Speaker 1: space curving or bending, that's really what we mean. We're
15:12
Speaker 1: changing the relative distances between points. Remember that space isn't
15:16
Speaker 1: like relative to some external rulers, So when we talk
15:19
Speaker 1: about the distances between things, these are really just intrinsic
15:22
Speaker 1: bending of space. You often see this rubber sheet analogy
15:26
Speaker 1: where somebody puts like a bowling ball on a rubber
15:27
Speaker 1: sheet and it bends the rubber sheet. That's helpful for
15:30
Speaker 1: thinking about bending, but it's also quite misleading because in
15:33
Speaker 1: that example, the rubber sheet is bending in relation to
15:36
Speaker 1: some third external dimension. Here, were really just talking about
15:40
Speaker 1: changing the relative distances between points in space, and that's
15:44
Speaker 1: something that we know can happen. That's something that we
15:46
Speaker 1: have observed. We see it happen in gravitational waves, which
15:49
Speaker 1: are ripples in space. We see it happen in gravitational waves,
15:53
Speaker 1: which are ripples in space. We see it happening in
15:55
Speaker 1: the expansion of the universe, which is increasing the relative
15:58
Speaker 1: distance between it's in space. So there was a guy
16:01
Speaker 1: named al qb Air a few decades ago who came
16:04
Speaker 1: up with a sort of arrangement of space that would
16:08
Speaker 1: allow you to move like a chunk of space relative
16:11
Speaker 1: to other bits of space to sort of like create
16:13
Speaker 1: a warp bubble which would itself move relative to space.
16:17
Speaker 1: So you could sit inside that warp bubble and it
16:20
Speaker 1: would transport you to your destination. Yeah, there's this idea.
16:23
Speaker 1: I guess that space is not like empty and immovable
16:27
Speaker 1: and fixed and super stiff or or rigid, but space
16:31
Speaker 1: is kind of squishy, right, like for example, black hole
16:33
Speaker 1: sort of squishes the space around self, bending space and
16:37
Speaker 1: maybe creating some weird kind of shortcuts through space. Yeah.
16:40
Speaker 1: Einstein's big idea was that the whole concept of gravity
16:43
Speaker 1: is not a force the way Newton imagined it. It
16:46
Speaker 1: was just that things move in response to the shape
16:49
Speaker 1: of space. That space has a shape, it's not just flat.
16:53
Speaker 1: And so because we can't see that shape directly, like
16:55
Speaker 1: you can't look at space and say, oh, I see
16:57
Speaker 1: that it's curved, but we can see how space changes
17:00
Speaker 1: the motion of things that go through it. We discover
17:03
Speaker 1: that gravity is just like an apparent force. It looks
17:05
Speaker 1: like there's a force on stuff, but it's really just
17:07
Speaker 1: stuff moving through curved space. And you can do much
17:10
Speaker 1: more than just curve so that the Earth goes in
17:12
Speaker 1: a circle around the Sun, for example. It can ripple
17:15
Speaker 1: like gravitational waves, and it can expand like dark energy,
17:18
Speaker 1: and it maybe even more amazing things like warp drives
17:21
Speaker 1: and wormholes. Yeah, you're saying that scientists in recent years
17:24
Speaker 1: have taken these ideas about relativity and figure out maybe
17:28
Speaker 1: a way that you can make a warp drive using relativity.
17:32
Speaker 1: And it's specifically something called a war bubble that might
17:35
Speaker 1: let us use it to actually get to other places
17:38
Speaker 1: in the galaxy or even the whole universe. And so
17:41
Speaker 1: let's get into the details of this warp bubble. But
17:43
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break or I we're talking
17:58
Speaker 1: about the headline NASA accidentally build a warp drive part
18:03
Speaker 1: of Yes, you know you are giving too much credit
18:06
Speaker 1: to this headline. It's not asking the question did NASA,
18:09
Speaker 1: It says NASA scientists accidentally create war bubble for interstellar travel.
18:14
Speaker 1: What did they say might have or did they actually
18:16
Speaker 1: did it? It says they created it. That's what the
18:18
Speaker 1: headline says. Well, we are digging into this headline to
18:22
Speaker 1: see if it's true or not. And we've talked a
18:24
Speaker 1: little bit about what a war drive would look like
18:26
Speaker 1: and what it would be, and it sounds like so
18:28
Speaker 1: far scientists have only come up with one possibility for
18:32
Speaker 1: making a warp drive, and that is to make a
18:34
Speaker 1: war bubble. And it's based on a special concept you
18:37
Speaker 1: were talking about. Yes, So a few decades ago, there
18:40
Speaker 1: was a gravitational theorist, Miguel al Kubier, who said, what
18:44
Speaker 1: if you could bend space in a very particular way,
18:47
Speaker 1: And so he took a spaceship and he bent space
18:50
Speaker 1: around that spaceship so that the space around the ship
18:53
Speaker 1: itself was flat, but then there was a bubble around
18:56
Speaker 1: the ship that moved that flat space through space is itself.
19:01
Speaker 1: So it's like you take a chunk of space and
19:03
Speaker 1: you sort of slide it through other space and so
19:07
Speaker 1: that you can just sort of sit inside that bubble
19:09
Speaker 1: and then you get to your destination and inside the bubble,
19:12
Speaker 1: you don't feel like crazy acceleration or anything. It just
19:15
Speaker 1: feels like you're sort of floating there. So his question was, like,
19:19
Speaker 1: what shape of space do we need in order to
19:22
Speaker 1: accomplish that? And the cool thing was that he figured
19:24
Speaker 1: one out. He figured out a way to be consistent
19:27
Speaker 1: with Einstein's equations and also compress space in front of
19:30
Speaker 1: this bubble and expands space behind the bubble, so the
19:33
Speaker 1: bubble effectively moves relative to the rest of space. Yeah,
19:38
Speaker 1: I know we've covered this in our book, maybe both books.
19:40
Speaker 1: We can. We ask questions about the universe and we
19:42
Speaker 1: have no idea and this, I have to say, this
19:45
Speaker 1: always kind of puzzled me a little bit. So maybe
19:47
Speaker 1: let's step people through it. So the day is that
19:49
Speaker 1: you're on your spaceship during space and you flip the
19:52
Speaker 1: switch or you pull the lever forward on your warp
19:55
Speaker 1: drive device, and what it's doing, you're saying, is that
19:58
Speaker 1: it compresses this space in front of you and it
20:01
Speaker 1: expands the space behind you, and somehow that moves you
20:05
Speaker 1: through space faster than the speed of light. Remember when
20:07
Speaker 1: we say compressed or expand we're not like making space
20:11
Speaker 1: more dense or anything. What we're doing is changing the
20:13
Speaker 1: relative distances between points. That's what general relativity in Einstein's
20:17
Speaker 1: equations do. They start from a certain distribution of matter
20:20
Speaker 1: and energy, and they say, if you have a blob
20:22
Speaker 1: of stuff here and a blob of stuff there, how
20:24
Speaker 1: will space curve? What are the relative distances between any
20:27
Speaker 1: two points? So that's called the metric. The solution to
20:31
Speaker 1: Einstein's equations is the metric, which is just another word
20:33
Speaker 1: for like how to space curve, or another way to
20:36
Speaker 1: think about like the relative distances between two points. So
20:39
Speaker 1: Alcubier's warp bubble says, is there a way to shrink
20:42
Speaker 1: distances in front of this warp bubble and expand distances
20:45
Speaker 1: behind it? Okay, so let's say I'm in my spaceship,
20:48
Speaker 1: I'm orbiting the Earth, and let's say you just want
20:50
Speaker 1: to take a short hop over to Jupiter. So I
20:53
Speaker 1: engage my warp drive, I pushed the lever forward, I
20:56
Speaker 1: put on my seat belt, and suddenly the space in
21:00
Speaker 1: front of me between me and Jupiter, instead of being
21:02
Speaker 1: millions of miles, suddenly it's three miles. Is that what
21:05
Speaker 1: you're saying, Like, somehow I am affecting the space between
21:08
Speaker 1: me and Jupiter, so that what used to be billions
21:13
Speaker 1: of miles is now just a few miles. Is that
21:15
Speaker 1: the idea? That's the idea, and that only works for
21:18
Speaker 1: me or for anyone like caught in the middle or
21:21
Speaker 1: anyone who hops in behind me. Do you know what
21:24
Speaker 1: I mean? Am I just affecting the space relative to
21:27
Speaker 1: me as an observer? Or am I actually affecting the
21:29
Speaker 1: space between here and Jupiter? So it works for anybody
21:32
Speaker 1: within the war bubble. It creates this sphere around the spaceship,
21:36
Speaker 1: and that sphere then gets slid along through space, so
21:40
Speaker 1: it sort of gets moved, so it gets rearranged. Its
21:43
Speaker 1: relationship to the rest of space changes, right, It's now
21:46
Speaker 1: closer to Jupiter and further from Earth, and so anything
21:51
Speaker 1: inside that war bubble has the same experience. Does that
21:55
Speaker 1: mean that the bubble needs to encompass Jupiter? Or am
21:58
Speaker 1: I just compressing the distance between here and the edge
22:01
Speaker 1: of the bubble? Inside the bubble, everybody hangs out and
22:04
Speaker 1: SIPs their coffee. The bubble's edge is where space is
22:08
Speaker 1: being compressed, So between the bubble and Jupiter space is
22:11
Speaker 1: being compressed, that distance is being shortened, and between the
22:14
Speaker 1: other edge of the bubble which is sort of behind you,
22:17
Speaker 1: that space is being expanded. What if there's something right
22:20
Speaker 1: in front of me outside of the bubble, but between
22:23
Speaker 1: me and Jupiter, Like let's say there's a satellite there
22:26
Speaker 1: or an old Grammar crossing this interstellar street, Like, what
22:29
Speaker 1: happens to that person in between? Did they get squished
22:32
Speaker 1: or do they not even see this, this bending of
22:35
Speaker 1: space that's happening to me or to my bubble? Yeah,
22:37
Speaker 1: this would be bad news for space Gramma for sure.
22:40
Speaker 1: I mean this is very destructive changing of the shape
22:43
Speaker 1: of space. Basically, anywhere between your warp bubble and Jupiter
22:48
Speaker 1: and the same thing between you and behind what get squished?
22:51
Speaker 1: It would get squished absolutely. Oh so between so I
22:54
Speaker 1: mean a bubble, let's say invent bubble is the spaceship.
22:57
Speaker 1: So anything inside the specip is normal, anything outside gets
23:00
Speaker 1: bent around, and so the space between the spaceship and
23:03
Speaker 1: Jupiter gets compressed. And but then wouldn't that affect the
23:06
Speaker 1: other planets as well? You're saying anything caught in the
23:09
Speaker 1: middle will get squished, But would it affect like the
23:12
Speaker 1: orbits of planets and everything else in the near vicinity
23:14
Speaker 1: of your ship? It certainly does affect things. So things
23:16
Speaker 1: in your path definitely do get affected, So you know
23:20
Speaker 1: warnings to all the space. Grandma's out there taking a walk,
23:22
Speaker 1: and anything very close by is going to get affected.
23:25
Speaker 1: But the shape of the work bubble is quite tight,
23:27
Speaker 1: so it doesn't like affect the gravity of things very
23:29
Speaker 1: far away. Well, let's get into what would happen to
23:31
Speaker 1: Grandma she gets like squished flat or or what or
23:36
Speaker 1: would she even noticed because you know, she's spaces just
23:39
Speaker 1: changing her runner and so her molecules also change space.
23:42
Speaker 1: Grandma would be very unlikely to survive this encounter because
23:45
Speaker 1: the space she's in its metric would be changing, and
23:48
Speaker 1: so that's likely to tear her apart. Changes in the
23:51
Speaker 1: shape of space can have an effect on the objects
23:53
Speaker 1: in that space. That's how, for example, we discover gravitational waves.
23:57
Speaker 1: We see that space is shaking a little bit, changes
23:59
Speaker 1: the relative distance, for example, between mirrors that are hanging
24:02
Speaker 1: underground miles apart, and so you probably don't want that
24:06
Speaker 1: to happen to your space. It's happening all the time
24:09
Speaker 1: right now. Space is expanding out from under us because
24:11
Speaker 1: of dark energy, but it's very very gentle, and our
24:14
Speaker 1: molecules are powerful enough to hold ourselves together. If that
24:18
Speaker 1: was much more rapid, then you would get torn apart.
24:21
Speaker 1: And so that's what's going to be happening behind the
24:23
Speaker 1: work bubble, and the opposite is what's happening in front
24:25
Speaker 1: of the warp bubble. So yes, that will be quite destructive.
24:28
Speaker 1: I guess that's why you need crosswalks even in space.
24:31
Speaker 1: So then the space in front of me between here
24:33
Speaker 1: and Jupiter suddenly goes from a few million miles to
24:36
Speaker 1: two miles. And then you're saying the space behind me.
24:39
Speaker 1: You know, I was an orbit around Earth, but now
24:41
Speaker 1: suddenly the space behind me, me and Earth goes from
24:44
Speaker 1: a few miles to a few million miles. Is that
24:46
Speaker 1: the idea? Exactly? And that's basically travel, right. You've gone
24:50
Speaker 1: from far away from Jupiter too close to Jupiter. Yeah,
24:53
Speaker 1: But then I guess what's the next step. Do I
24:54
Speaker 1: then move the few miles and suddenly I'm in Jupiter?
24:57
Speaker 1: Or do I just turn it off and suddenly I'm there? Yeah,
24:59
Speaker 1: you just turn it off. I mean your goal was
25:01
Speaker 1: to get close to Jupiter, right, So you've rearranged space
25:03
Speaker 1: and now you're close to Jupiter, right, you're two miles
25:05
Speaker 1: from Jupiter and two million miles from Earth instead of
25:08
Speaker 1: the opposite. It is weird because I compressed space in
25:11
Speaker 1: front of me, but don't I need to expand it again.
25:14
Speaker 1: Remember that compressing space is changing the relative distance, right,
25:18
Speaker 1: So that is already accomplishing your goal. Right. Your goal
25:21
Speaker 1: is I want to be close to Jupiter and far
25:23
Speaker 1: from Earth. And so that's what the war bubble has
25:26
Speaker 1: done for you. It's rearrange space so that now you
25:29
Speaker 1: are close to Jupiter and far from Earth. It feels
25:32
Speaker 1: kind of like magic, like you just said, like, hey,
25:34
Speaker 1: I want to be there, so you're there. It's not
25:36
Speaker 1: exactly magic, but it's also not exactly science yet. I Mean,
25:40
Speaker 1: what al Kubire did was just say, is there a
25:42
Speaker 1: way to arrange space in a manner that still is
25:45
Speaker 1: a solution to Einstein's equations? Like do Einstein's equations prohibit
25:50
Speaker 1: this from happening? And the answer is no. What he
25:52
Speaker 1: didn't do is figure out how to make it happen.
25:55
Speaker 1: Like Einstein's equations go in one direction, they say, if
25:58
Speaker 1: you have this arrangement of mass and stuff in universe,
26:01
Speaker 1: what is the shape of space around it? Cool? And
26:03
Speaker 1: then how does things move in that space? What they
26:06
Speaker 1: don't do is tell you, if you want a certain
26:08
Speaker 1: shape of space, how do you build it? And so
26:11
Speaker 1: Alcubier just said, well, is it possible to have this
26:14
Speaker 1: shape of space? And Einstein's equations say yes, that would
26:17
Speaker 1: satisfy the equations, But it doesn't tell you how to
26:20
Speaker 1: arrange stuff in the universe to make space do that.
26:23
Speaker 1: That might be impossible, And in Alcubier's paper he discovers
26:26
Speaker 1: that the only way he could come up with to
26:28
Speaker 1: make this happen was to have some weird kind of
26:31
Speaker 1: matter that has negative mass or negative energy density, which
26:35
Speaker 1: as far as we know, doesn't exist in the universe.
26:38
Speaker 1: I see you're saying, Einstein's equations what we know to
26:41
Speaker 1: be true. We know it works, but it doesn't tell
26:43
Speaker 1: us that we can't do magic. Basic like, it tells
26:47
Speaker 1: you that it's possible to be here close to Earth,
26:49
Speaker 1: and it's also possible to be there close to Jupiter. Uh.
26:52
Speaker 1: And so technically you might be able to figure out
26:55
Speaker 1: a way to make those two things sequential in time
26:59
Speaker 1: very quickly. Yeah, And it's a little bit more than that, right.
27:02
Speaker 1: He did show that it doesn't violate Einstein's equations, which
27:05
Speaker 1: means space says, sure, I can do that if you
27:08
Speaker 1: assemble mass and energy in the right configuration to make
27:11
Speaker 1: me do that. I won't tell you how to arrange it, right,
27:14
Speaker 1: I won't tell you what the recipe is. But in principle,
27:17
Speaker 1: let's not off the table. So that's like a big
27:20
Speaker 1: hole in the argument. We don't know how to build
27:21
Speaker 1: this thing, but the universe's list of rules don't explicitly
27:24
Speaker 1: prohibit it. But what does the recipe? What does it
27:27
Speaker 1: actually say? You're saying it needs like negative energy or
27:30
Speaker 1: negative mass, And then what do I do that? Do
27:33
Speaker 1: I just put it in front of me? Do I
27:34
Speaker 1: need to lay it out between here and Jupiter? Do
27:37
Speaker 1: I need to you know, spit it out in front
27:39
Speaker 1: of me? You know? And like what does it say
27:42
Speaker 1: about how to use this or how you would need
27:45
Speaker 1: to use this negative energy? So since the original paper,
27:48
Speaker 1: there's been a proliferation of really cool ideas about how
27:51
Speaker 1: to do this and how to do it more efficiently.
27:53
Speaker 1: So far, every solution, every paper I've read, requires using
27:57
Speaker 1: some kind of negative energy density matter behind you in
28:00
Speaker 1: order to expand space, and some sort of positive energy.
28:04
Speaker 1: The entity matter of like normal matter like me and
28:06
Speaker 1: you in front of you to compress space. So basically
28:09
Speaker 1: you have to build a track of matter in front
28:12
Speaker 1: of you that compresses the space, and then you have
28:15
Speaker 1: to have negative matter behind you to expand the space.
28:18
Speaker 1: So I do, I do have to lay out the
28:20
Speaker 1: whole track, the whole highway for the world drive to work.
28:24
Speaker 1: And you need to have positive energy mass in front
28:26
Speaker 1: of you and negative energy mass behind you. All right.
28:30
Speaker 1: We talked about this once on an episode about whether
28:32
Speaker 1: you could use a warp drive to escape a black hole. Basically,
28:35
Speaker 1: you have to build the track out of the black
28:37
Speaker 1: hole first in order for this to work. All right,
28:39
Speaker 1: So then I have to build a track. I guess
28:42
Speaker 1: I would have to build it. But to build the track,
28:44
Speaker 1: I have to get the Jupiter first. Yeah, exactly, Like
28:47
Speaker 1: you know, to lay out a highway between here and Jupiter,
28:49
Speaker 1: I have to go from your Jupiter exactly, huge caveat there. Right,
28:55
Speaker 1: you have to build this track somehow. I mean it's
28:58
Speaker 1: possible that somebody else could come up with another way
29:00
Speaker 1: to make space do this that doesn't require you to
29:03
Speaker 1: visit that place in advance and sort of be able
29:05
Speaker 1: to track along the way. Remember that Einstein's equations just
29:08
Speaker 1: say space can do that if you can figure out how,
29:11
Speaker 1: And now people are trying to be creative about figuring
29:13
Speaker 1: out how to do that, and so that's one obstacles,
29:16
Speaker 1: like laying this track in front of you. The bigger
29:18
Speaker 1: obstacle is that we've never seen anything with negative energy
29:21
Speaker 1: density before. We don't even know if that's possible to
29:24
Speaker 1: do in the universe. It sounds like it's more of
29:27
Speaker 1: a like a warp train than a warp drive, right,
29:31
Speaker 1: Like you kind of have to lay out the tracks
29:33
Speaker 1: or are you gonna be like those cartoons where you're
29:35
Speaker 1: like going and laying the tracks down at the same time.
29:37
Speaker 1: Leave it to the engineers to figure out some way
29:39
Speaker 1: to make this very effective. The physicists are just like, well,
29:42
Speaker 1: space says we can do this if somehow we can
29:45
Speaker 1: arrange a strange matter in the right configuration. Right. But
29:48
Speaker 1: as as the engineer, I would be mad if you
29:49
Speaker 1: told me like, hey, I can out with a way
29:51
Speaker 1: to make a warp drive, but it's actually a warp train,
29:53
Speaker 1: you know, and then then we brought all the wrong
29:55
Speaker 1: tools to make it. You'd be disappointed in a warp train.
29:58
Speaker 1: I'd still be pretty excited about warp train. I mean,
30:00
Speaker 1: you're right, it's not a warp drive but a warp train.
30:03
Speaker 1: It's still pretty awesome. Yeah, No, I think both. It
30:05
Speaker 1: would be exciting. But you know, if I'm gonna pay
30:08
Speaker 1: for a ticket, I want to know what I'm getting,
30:10
Speaker 1: or if it's going to be a train ride or
30:12
Speaker 1: it's gonna I'm gonna see some fancy star show. All right,
30:15
Speaker 1: So then it seems like it's it is possible, at
30:17
Speaker 1: least from a theoretical perspective, to make a warp something
30:21
Speaker 1: warp driver or train or I don't know, tram. Perhaps
30:25
Speaker 1: how about a warp zip line that would be pretty cool. Oh,
30:28
Speaker 1: there you go. So it seems possible. But the question
30:30
Speaker 1: is how you would make it. And there's this idea
30:33
Speaker 1: of a Casimir effect that might be able to do it,
30:36
Speaker 1: and that's kind of where where this headline all originated. Right,
30:38
Speaker 1: So what exactly did this study that the headline is
30:41
Speaker 1: based on do. This study is trying to make progress
30:44
Speaker 1: on the stickiest part of the warp drive or warp
30:46
Speaker 1: train project, which is negative energy density. Right. By energy
30:51
Speaker 1: density would just mean like how much stuff is there
30:53
Speaker 1: in a certain part of space. Matter has energy to it,
30:57
Speaker 1: right equals mc squared, and so if there's a lab
31:00
Speaker 1: of stuff in space, that's positive energy density. So the
31:03
Speaker 1: warp drives needs something with negative energy density in order
31:06
Speaker 1: to expand the space behind you. And so this project
31:09
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out like, well, is it possible
31:11
Speaker 1: to build things with negative energy density? And here's the
31:14
Speaker 1: accidental part. They weren't actually trying to crack this problem
31:17
Speaker 1: of the warp drive. They were just studying the Cassimir effect,
31:21
Speaker 1: which is a well known and actual thing which we
31:24
Speaker 1: have proven is real. And they were looking at the
31:26
Speaker 1: energy density of the Cassimir effect and they noticed something
31:29
Speaker 1: interesting to them, at least which they connected with warp drives.
31:34
Speaker 1: I see. So this is now jumping off from this
31:36
Speaker 1: idea of a warp train that you can compress space
31:39
Speaker 1: and expanded behind you. But to expand the space behind
31:42
Speaker 1: you you need negative energy. And so these folks were
31:45
Speaker 1: studying negative energy and you're saying they found something, but
31:48
Speaker 1: they did find something interesting, that's true. I mean, I've
31:50
Speaker 1: read their paper. What they were doing is studying the
31:53
Speaker 1: Cassimir effect, which is a really interesting and super awesome
31:56
Speaker 1: quantum effect that appeared between two play that are very
32:00
Speaker 1: very close together. So imagine two like two sheets of
32:04
Speaker 1: metal and bring them like ten nanometers apart. What you
32:07
Speaker 1: discover if you do that is that there's a force
32:09
Speaker 1: between them. Even if they have like no electric charge
32:12
Speaker 1: on them and we're ignoring gravity, you can measure this
32:15
Speaker 1: force which appears between the plates because of this strange
32:19
Speaker 1: quantum effect called the Cassimir effect. Okay, so what is this.
32:23
Speaker 1: What's happening in the Casimir effect is that we're actually
32:25
Speaker 1: interacting with and probing the vacuum energy of space. Remember
32:29
Speaker 1: we've talked about how space is not just empty, it
32:31
Speaker 1: is filled with quantum fields. Like there's a photon in
32:34
Speaker 1: space that's a wiggle in the electromagnetic field. There's an
32:37
Speaker 1: electron in space that's a wiggle in the electron field.
32:41
Speaker 1: But even if you don't have a photon, and even
32:43
Speaker 1: if you don't have an electron, space still has these
32:45
Speaker 1: fields in them, these possibilities for particles to pass through them.
32:49
Speaker 1: And because their quantum fields, they can never actually go
32:52
Speaker 1: all the way down to zero energy. There's always a
32:54
Speaker 1: little bit of fuzz, a little bit of energy. So
32:57
Speaker 1: we call that the vacuum energy, the lowest possible energy
33:00
Speaker 1: in the quantum field, which is not zero, And so
33:03
Speaker 1: people wonder like, is that real, is it really happening
33:05
Speaker 1: or is it just like part of our mathematics. Well,
33:07
Speaker 1: the cool thing about the Casimir effect is that when
33:10
Speaker 1: you bring these two plates really close together, it cancels
33:13
Speaker 1: out some parts of those wiggles between these two sheets.
33:16
Speaker 1: Only certain kinds of wiggles can survive, so it suppresses
33:20
Speaker 1: some kinds of wiggles and allows others. And so because
33:23
Speaker 1: it's suppressing some kinds of wiggles, it like lowers the
33:26
Speaker 1: energy between these two sheets, which creates an energy differential,
33:29
Speaker 1: which is what creates a force. So it squeezes these
33:32
Speaker 1: two plates a little bit closer together because that's a
33:35
Speaker 1: lower energy state. So the Casimir effect is like deleting
33:39
Speaker 1: some vibrational modes of the quantum vacuum between these two
33:43
Speaker 1: plates in a way that ends up pushing them together
33:45
Speaker 1: a little bit. Right. It's sort of like you create
33:47
Speaker 1: a space that is so small that most particles can
33:51
Speaker 1: even fit in them, and so the universe can't create
33:55
Speaker 1: those particles in that space, and so therefore it like
33:58
Speaker 1: it creates almost like a void in space, right where
34:01
Speaker 1: like nothing can happen there, So there's sort of like
34:04
Speaker 1: an emptiness and the rest of the universe is biased
34:07
Speaker 1: towards having a little bit of energy. Then that vacuum
34:11
Speaker 1: somehow creates like a it sucks stuff in. Basically, it's
34:14
Speaker 1: really fascinating because it lowers the energy of space there
34:18
Speaker 1: below the vacuum energy. Right, typically we think the vacuum
34:21
Speaker 1: energy is the lowest, but if you create this special configuration,
34:24
Speaker 1: you can bring the energy of space below the vacuum energy,
34:27
Speaker 1: as you say, prevents those fields from existing in certain modes,
34:30
Speaker 1: and so it lowers the overall energy. You can either
34:33
Speaker 1: think about this in terms of fields, if you like
34:35
Speaker 1: thinking about space is filled with fields, or you can
34:37
Speaker 1: think about in terms of virtual particles, which is really equivalent,
34:41
Speaker 1: if you like thinking about space is filled with all
34:43
Speaker 1: these virtual particles constantly popping in and out of existence.
34:46
Speaker 1: Between these two plates, some kinds of virtual particles are
34:50
Speaker 1: not allowed, and so the energy density is lower between
34:53
Speaker 1: the plates. I see, so you're saying you're not creating
34:56
Speaker 1: a spot of negative energy, You're just creating a spot
34:59
Speaker 1: of lower energy. Then, like the normal amount of energy
35:02
Speaker 1: that the universe has sort of like sound, right, Like
35:04
Speaker 1: you can't have negative sound, but you can make a
35:07
Speaker 1: room that's lower sound than like the average din of
35:10
Speaker 1: the your space of your talent. Yeah, that's exactly right,
35:13
Speaker 1: and some really important nuances there. As you say, it's
35:16
Speaker 1: not really negative. Energy is just lower than the vacuum. Now,
35:21
Speaker 1: if you define the vacuum to be zero, then it's
35:23
Speaker 1: negative energy density, I suppose. But that's a little bit arbitrary,
35:27
Speaker 1: just sort of like where you set your zero. Really
35:29
Speaker 1: it's lower energy than the rest of space around it.
35:33
Speaker 1: It's as an interesting puzzle there because all the physical
35:35
Speaker 1: phenomena we observe this actual force from the Casimir effect.
35:39
Speaker 1: This just relates to the energy difference, like the fact
35:41
Speaker 1: that there's lower energy between the plates is what gets
35:44
Speaker 1: the force. But if you try to do the calculations
35:46
Speaker 1: and ask like, well how much energy is there in
35:48
Speaker 1: the vacuum, you actually run into weird infinities like try
35:52
Speaker 1: to calculate you say, well, there's an infinite number of
35:54
Speaker 1: different possible modes in space, and so in principle there
35:57
Speaker 1: should be infinite energy there, which gets really eared and
36:00
Speaker 1: still nobody understands. So we see the Cassomir effect. We
36:03
Speaker 1: know there's a lower energy density between the plates even
36:06
Speaker 1: in the Casimir effect. We don't really understand what the
36:09
Speaker 1: absolute energy is even in like normal empty space. We
36:12
Speaker 1: just know that it's lower between the plates and the
36:14
Speaker 1: Cassimir effect. All right, So we have this Casimir effect
36:17
Speaker 1: that might be able to give us negative energy, which
36:20
Speaker 1: might let us make a warp should you train? That's
36:22
Speaker 1: how I think scientists you call. So let's get into
36:24
Speaker 1: whether or not someone has actually made this Casimir effect
36:27
Speaker 1: work and whether it can be applied to a warp drive.
36:30
Speaker 1: But first, let's take another quick break. All right, we
36:45
Speaker 1: are warping our way to examining news headlines, and particularly
36:51
Speaker 1: a very specific headline recently that's that NASA might have
36:53
Speaker 1: accidentally built the warp drive. And the study that created
36:58
Speaker 1: this headline was actually looking at the Asimir effect, which
37:01
Speaker 1: is a way to maybe create zero energy or negative
37:05
Speaker 1: energy in the universe. Now, Daniel, this is a kind
37:08
Speaker 1: of a theoretical effect, right, something scientists think it might
37:12
Speaker 1: might happen if you run this experiment. Has anyone actually
37:15
Speaker 1: done this and measured this negative energy? People have actually
37:18
Speaker 1: measured the Cassimir effect, So Casimir predicted it in like
37:23
Speaker 1: by doing a bunch of calculations, and it's a very
37:26
Speaker 1: very small effect, so it took a long time and
37:28
Speaker 1: some real virtuoso experiments. But in n Stephen Lamereaux at
37:34
Speaker 1: Yale actually did this. He was able to measure the
37:37
Speaker 1: force between two objects that really really close together and
37:41
Speaker 1: found the forest was very close to what Casimir predicted,
37:44
Speaker 1: and that's been verified since then. Yeah, there have been
37:47
Speaker 1: other experiments that verified, and they've done it with various
37:50
Speaker 1: different configurations. It's really hard to actually do it with
37:54
Speaker 1: like two sheets that are like an animeters apart, so
37:56
Speaker 1: instead they use like one sheet and a sphere for example. Experimentally,
38:00
Speaker 1: it's just sort of easier to manipulate and at separations
38:03
Speaker 1: of like ten nanometers, which is like a hundred times
38:06
Speaker 1: the size of an atom, the Cassimir effect produces a
38:09
Speaker 1: force about equivalent to like an atmosphere of pressure. So
38:13
Speaker 1: you're saying we can create spots of negative or zero
38:16
Speaker 1: energy in the universe, and does that mean then that
38:19
Speaker 1: the space in that spot gets expanded like in an
38:22
Speaker 1: award drive like it would do an a warp drive.
38:24
Speaker 1: So we can create spots which have lower energy density
38:28
Speaker 1: than normal empty space, right, and it does cause the
38:31
Speaker 1: Casimir effect, and we've measured that and that's real. We
38:35
Speaker 1: don't know if that actually means their negative energy density, right.
38:38
Speaker 1: We don't know how to set the zero to try
38:41
Speaker 1: to calculate the energy of all the space. You get
38:43
Speaker 1: infinities which don't make sense, So we don't know how
38:45
Speaker 1: to do those calculations. So an open question about the
38:48
Speaker 1: Cassimir effect is what it means for gravity. Remember that
38:52
Speaker 1: gravity is a classical theory. Einstein's theory of gravity doesn't
38:56
Speaker 1: even know how to deal with particles, not to mention
38:58
Speaker 1: like an infinite number of virtual particles. We don't actually
39:01
Speaker 1: know how to calculate the impact of this kind of
39:03
Speaker 1: arrangement on gravitational fields and on the shape of space.
39:07
Speaker 1: We don't know the answer to your question of does
39:09
Speaker 1: this expand the space between those two sheets? But I
39:12
Speaker 1: guess in theory it is right because energy, in general
39:16
Speaker 1: it compresses space. So you have something where a spot
39:20
Speaker 1: where you have less energy than technically that space would
39:23
Speaker 1: not compressed as much, which would be the same as
39:25
Speaker 1: expanding space. It depends on whether the general relativistic concept
39:30
Speaker 1: of energy density is the same as the quantum mechanical one.
39:34
Speaker 1: Remember the quantum mechanical one. Here, we don't know if
39:36
Speaker 1: this is negative or positive energy density, and we don't
39:39
Speaker 1: know how to do those calculations because we don't have
39:41
Speaker 1: a theory of quantum gravity. People have tried to do
39:44
Speaker 1: those calculations and they get crazy predictions like oh, there's
39:47
Speaker 1: infinite energy here, so you get singularities everywhere in the universe,
39:50
Speaker 1: and so it's just sort of an open problem in
39:52
Speaker 1: theoretical physics, sort of gravitational implications of the vacuum energy.
39:57
Speaker 1: So you can create a spot of almost zero or
40:00
Speaker 1: negative energy, but you don't know if it's expanding or
40:03
Speaker 1: compressing space, but it is that if it is, and
40:05
Speaker 1: you could use it to maybe make a warp drive maybe,
40:08
Speaker 1: because we don't really even know if it counts as
40:10
Speaker 1: negative energy density and a gravitational sense. Again, it's just
40:13
Speaker 1: relatively lower energy than the rest of the vacuum. And
40:16
Speaker 1: so in this paper, what they were doing was thinking
40:19
Speaker 1: about the energy density from the Cassimir effect, and they
40:21
Speaker 1: were doing a bunch of simulations. So in this paper
40:23
Speaker 1: they didn't build anything right, They didn't like create a
40:26
Speaker 1: lab and build something. They were just doing calculations on
40:29
Speaker 1: the computer, thinking about what is the energy density between
40:32
Speaker 1: objects that are really close together, thinking about the Cassimir effects.
40:36
Speaker 1: That they were doing a bunch of calculations. So then
40:38
Speaker 1: what did they find in their simulations and why do
40:40
Speaker 1: people use that to make the headline that NASA created
40:43
Speaker 1: a warp drive. So they were doing a bunch of
40:45
Speaker 1: calculations and they saw a plot and I had these
40:47
Speaker 1: funny shapes in it. And one person who's working on
40:49
Speaker 1: the project is also really interested in warp drives and
40:52
Speaker 1: remembers seeing a similar shape in a paper about warp drives,
40:55
Speaker 1: and we said, oh, this figure here, this shape of
40:58
Speaker 1: the energy density looks kind of like the shape you
41:02
Speaker 1: would need for a warp drive. Well, maybe step us
41:06
Speaker 1: through with more detail here. What is there's a plot
41:08
Speaker 1: of just a plot of the energy density between two surfaces,
41:11
Speaker 1: Like in the Casimer effect, you bring two surfaces very
41:13
Speaker 1: close together and you get lower energy density between the
41:17
Speaker 1: surfaces than around it. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean actually
41:20
Speaker 1: negative energy density from a gr perspective, but had like
41:24
Speaker 1: an interesting shape and it had sort of the same
41:27
Speaker 1: shape as a figure from a warp drive paper. That said,
41:30
Speaker 1: here's the negative energy density profile. You would need to
41:33
Speaker 1: expand the space behind the warp bubble. So it just
41:36
Speaker 1: sort of like, oh, we have a crescent in this plot.
41:38
Speaker 1: We have a crescent in that plot. Maybe they're the
41:41
Speaker 1: same thing, but they're not at all, right, It's just
41:43
Speaker 1: sort of vaguely similar. And this is just a qualitative
41:47
Speaker 1: comparison of two things that might not even be related.
41:50
Speaker 1: It's just like saying, oh, the Casimir effect creates this
41:52
Speaker 1: crescent shape negative energy density. I also have a cookie
41:55
Speaker 1: of that shape, So maybe the Casimere effect makes cookies. Well,
41:59
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to warp cookie? But what's a little
42:02
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe it's a little bit more than that, right,
42:04
Speaker 1: because you know what they saw in this simulation. It
42:07
Speaker 1: seems like it is that if you bring these two
42:10
Speaker 1: plates together and measure the Cassomer effect, you get a
42:12
Speaker 1: dip in the energy between the two plates. Right, That's
42:16
Speaker 1: probably what they saw, like a dip in the energy.
42:18
Speaker 1: And if you plot the energy between the two plates,
42:20
Speaker 1: you'll see a dip. And he's saying, well, to make
42:22
Speaker 1: a warp train, you need to also kind of create
42:26
Speaker 1: this dip in energy behind you. You certainly do, but
42:28
Speaker 1: we don't know again if the Casomer affects relative decrease
42:33
Speaker 1: in energy density would actually create the kind of expansion
42:36
Speaker 1: of space we need for the work bubble, and the
42:38
Speaker 1: work bubble needs to sort of general relativistic negative energy density,
42:42
Speaker 1: which requires like particles of negative mass, for example, whereas
42:46
Speaker 1: the Casimir effect creates a relative shift in the quantum
42:49
Speaker 1: vacuum and we don't know the impact of that Gravitationally,
42:53
Speaker 1: all this paper is doing is saying, oh, look, I
42:56
Speaker 1: made a shape of relative decrease of energy density that's
42:59
Speaker 1: similar to the actual negative energy density in a warp
43:02
Speaker 1: bubble metric. Right, So then I guess what would be
43:04
Speaker 1: the idea is that you somehow create a whole bunch
43:07
Speaker 1: of these plates really close together behind you, and somehow
43:10
Speaker 1: that decreases the density behind you and somehow that compressive space.
43:14
Speaker 1: Is that kind of where they were going with this.
43:16
Speaker 1: That's sort of where they were going with this. But
43:17
Speaker 1: you know there's a lot of leaps there, right. First
43:19
Speaker 1: of all, Number one, this is just a simulation. Haven't
43:21
Speaker 1: built anything, haven't demonstrated that their calculations are correct. But
43:25
Speaker 1: you said that Cassimer effect has been proven experimentally. Yeah,
43:28
Speaker 1: the Casomer effect has been proven experimentally, but that doesn't
43:31
Speaker 1: mean that everybody who's doing Casimir effect calculations is correct.
43:35
Speaker 1: And this particular team has a bit of a spotty
43:37
Speaker 1: history in publishing papers. This is the same team that
43:40
Speaker 1: was working on the e M Drive, an attempt to
43:42
Speaker 1: build a rocket that violates Newton's third law, you know,
43:46
Speaker 1: propellant less rocket. So you know, you've got to take
43:49
Speaker 1: everything they do with a bit of a grain of salt.
43:51
Speaker 1: And they also haven't shown a really crucial step, which
43:54
Speaker 1: is that the Casimir relative decrease in energy density actually
43:57
Speaker 1: does provide the negative energy density you need for general
44:01
Speaker 1: relativity to create this wark bubble. They just have not
44:04
Speaker 1: shown that at all. So I passed this paper to
44:08
Speaker 1: an expert in a friend of the podcast and Baroxter Scheney,
44:11
Speaker 1: who's a professor of cosmology and gravitational physics, and his
44:14
Speaker 1: review was, this paper is a pure nonsense. How this
44:18
Speaker 1: paper passed pure review is completely beyond me harsh, I mean,
44:26
Speaker 1: let's not mince words. It's a pure nonsense. That was
44:30
Speaker 1: his evaluation. He was not very impressed with this paper. Well,
44:34
Speaker 1: from a theoretical point of view. Yes, I feel like
44:36
Speaker 1: from what I'm understanding here from you today is that, Yeah,
44:38
Speaker 1: they skipped over the fact that we don't have confirmation
44:42
Speaker 1: that lower energy leads to a expansion of space. But
44:46
Speaker 1: everything seems to kind of point to that, right, that's
44:48
Speaker 1: kind of how the universe works. More energy you have,
44:50
Speaker 1: more space gets compressed, I suppose. But we don't know
44:53
Speaker 1: how to do the calculations to predict the impact on
44:56
Speaker 1: the curvature of space of lower quantum feel the energy.
45:00
Speaker 1: Remember again that g R is a classical theory can't
45:03
Speaker 1: handle quantum particles, not to mention infinite towers of virtual particles.
45:08
Speaker 1: People have tried to do those calculations and gotten crazy
45:11
Speaker 1: bonkers results, which suggests that what we need is a
45:14
Speaker 1: new theory of quantum gravity that might let us do
45:18
Speaker 1: this and it might work. Right. It might be that
45:20
Speaker 1: the Casimir effect does decrease the local energy density in
45:24
Speaker 1: such a way that a theory of quantum gravity would
45:26
Speaker 1: predict the expansion of space in just the right way
45:29
Speaker 1: to give you a warp bubble. But this paper doesn't
45:31
Speaker 1: show that, right, It doesn't show that. But you know,
45:33
Speaker 1: they're just presenting the results of their simulation and saying
45:37
Speaker 1: there's maybe a link to war drive. Maybe the real
45:39
Speaker 1: problem was that it got picked up by the media
45:41
Speaker 1: and then the headline got over blown because if you
45:44
Speaker 1: read the title of the paper, it's not like, hey,
45:46
Speaker 1: we made a warp drive, it's how would here because
45:47
Speaker 1: you sent to me worldline numerics applied to custom Casimir
45:51
Speaker 1: geometry generates unanticipated intersection with al Kabir warp metric. Yes, absolutely,
45:56
Speaker 1: the title their paper is much better than the title
45:59
Speaker 1: of a Coffee or Die article that says that they
46:02
Speaker 1: accidentally create warp bubble for interstellar travel. I completely agree.
46:08
Speaker 1: And they have the word numerics here, so they are
46:10
Speaker 1: saying that it is a simulation. Now, that's right. A
46:12
Speaker 1: lot of the misunderstanding lies in the coverage of this paper.
46:16
Speaker 1: This paper definitely doesn't show that NASA accidentally created a
46:19
Speaker 1: warp bubble. It just shows that the Casimir effect in
46:22
Speaker 1: certain configurations can generate decreases in local energy density to
46:27
Speaker 1: have a similar shape qualitatively to what you would need
46:31
Speaker 1: for a warp bubble. And again it's just qualitative. They
46:33
Speaker 1: didn't even like analyze quantitatively to say like, is this
46:36
Speaker 1: actually the shape they need? It just sort of like
46:38
Speaker 1: looks the same on the page. Right, So then you
46:41
Speaker 1: might say that NASA might have accidentally built the war drive. Well, also,
46:46
Speaker 1: these guys aren't at NASA. Like nobody here works at NASA.
46:49
Speaker 1: I mean most people who work in NASA to work
46:51
Speaker 1: at NASA, right, They're not like working for NASA. This
46:53
Speaker 1: is not a NASA funded study. This was a study
46:55
Speaker 1: funded by DARPA, however, So that's where the headline made.
46:58
Speaker 1: The mistake should have been the government might have accidentally
47:02
Speaker 1: built a warp drive. Some people in a garage that
47:04
Speaker 1: previously have made outrageous claims did a calculation that looks
47:08
Speaker 1: to them on the screen similar to something they remember
47:11
Speaker 1: being relevant to warp bubbles. Now you're being ours there.
47:15
Speaker 1: I thought anyone could come up with a great idea.
47:18
Speaker 1: Absolutely anybody can, are you say, anybody? If I work
47:20
Speaker 1: at my garage, I can't come up with a good idea.
47:23
Speaker 1: But though these people are at a university, right, some
47:25
Speaker 1: of these folks are. Some of them are in the
47:27
Speaker 1: engineering department at Texas and m which is near NASA.
47:30
Speaker 1: Kind of right, If any two places in Texas are
47:33
Speaker 1: adjacent to each other, then sure, maybe because they have
47:35
Speaker 1: a warp drive ensuring that distance between spots in Texas.
47:39
Speaker 1: Maybe they can't. And absolutely, you're right. Anybody could come
47:42
Speaker 1: up with a great idea and it might be that
47:43
Speaker 1: in somebody's garage one day a warp drive is built.
47:46
Speaker 1: All right, Well, it sounds like the very date here
47:49
Speaker 1: is that the science as it is is not super exaggerated, right,
47:55
Speaker 1: because they are doing simulations and they are just saying
47:57
Speaker 1: there is a qualitative connection there. But sounds like maybe
48:00
Speaker 1: the headline that picked it up did overblow the implications
48:04
Speaker 1: of it or the probability that it might be translated
48:07
Speaker 1: into an actual warp drive. Yeah. I think that's a
48:10
Speaker 1: generous reading of it. Yeah, we already know your harsh
48:12
Speaker 1: reading of it and your friends. Well, let's hope that
48:17
Speaker 1: somebody builds a warp train one day, and you know,
48:20
Speaker 1: we have like a new character on Thomas the train,
48:23
Speaker 1: we have like the warp engine. I think the conclusion
48:25
Speaker 1: here is that maybe these websites that picked it up
48:27
Speaker 1: warp reality a little bit. Yeah, and not accidentally, I imagine.
48:32
Speaker 1: So be careful where you get your science news, but
48:35
Speaker 1: feel free to send us any headline you see that
48:38
Speaker 1: it makes you wonder or it gets you excited, We're
48:40
Speaker 1: happy to digest it for you and give you a
48:42
Speaker 1: sense for whether or not it's the next big breakthrough.
48:45
Speaker 1: That's right, and we need tips on how to use
48:47
Speaker 1: word to make their paper or a tax. You can
48:50
Speaker 1: also email Daniel that's right. Send us your questions about
48:54
Speaker 1: warp drives, about space physics, and about a tech two
48:57
Speaker 1: questions at Daniel and Jorhea dot com. Have you enjoyed that?
49:00
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening,
49:11
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
49:14
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast for
49:17
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