00:02hey out there space fans welcome back to another week of space mysteries where we dive into some
00:07of the unsolved questions in spaceflight astronomy who knows what we get into this
00:13week i'm joined again by my good friend author podcaster journalist micah hanks
00:19brett how you doing always good to be here with you doing great buddy and this one i know is
00:23a
00:24very special topic that's near and dear to our hearts we've both reported on this
00:28for years this week we're going to be looking at whether warp drives the things we've seen in
00:34science fiction that allow people to travel vast distances between stars could these warp drives
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01:10the description below to get protected today now micah let's dive into this could a warp drive be
01:18possible we've both looked into this for years what does the science say well the short answer is yes
01:24warp drives are at least feasible they look good on paper the problem is how do you do that in
01:31real
01:31life how do you make a functional warp drive now most of us know the warp drive concept from popular
01:37science fiction portrayals brett there's no better example than star trek and this is really the idea
01:44and its genesis in terms of popular media although we traced the roots for the article recently all the
01:49way back to the early part of the last century with you know early science fiction writers who thought hey
01:54maybe there are some advanced propulsion mechanisms that hypothetically could carry people across you know
02:00vast interstellar distances now despite the roots in science fiction we do know that although there are
02:07obvious limitations and this all comes from Einstein the idea that essentially there's sort of this universal
02:12I guess speed limit with light speed and the idea that relativity according to Einstein prevents at
02:19least locally speaking an object with mass from accelerating beyond light speed but physicists have
02:27long wondered well you know I mean there there might be conditions where we could overcome this for instance if
02:31we think about the big bang there may have been periods early in the universe where there was actual
02:37expansion occurring in the universe where space itself was carried along quicker than the speed that light
02:43could propagate so that was kind of the root of the idea what if there are conditions we could create
02:48maybe even engineer where we could allow something to move faster than light speed or at least to be
02:54carried in ways that don't essentially conflict with what Einstein told us was possible under relativity
03:00now it sounds like though if we're trying to recreate conditions that were around at the time of the big
03:06bang
03:06we're shortly after we're going to need incredible amounts of energy or some sort of exotic matter to fuel this
03:12right well that's one of the real problems with a functional warp drive because you know as you and I
03:18both know having dug into this subject back in 1994 the Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre
03:24looked into this and he wrote a groundbreaking paper where he said hey look if we were to sort of
03:29engineer a space called and this is what he called it warp bubble and we could place some kind of
03:36a
03:36spacecraft in that space effectively you could actually engineer this such that space is warped
03:42around the object and that carries it across distances as opposed to the object traveling in a
03:48conventional sense but in order to achieve this in order to create the warp bubble I mean we have to
03:54also have a lot of other kinds of things like you know energy sources and this gets into a lot
03:59of very exotic
04:01physics concepts which currently our technology essentially makes infeasible we haven't gotten to that
04:06point yet where we can account for exactly what would be required although there are of course theories
04:11but again the problem that we face is how do you have that power source how do you have the
04:16the energy
04:17systems that can drive the hypothetical warp bubble right and you know this is something that
04:23NASA the U.S. government even the U.S. intelligence agencies have looked into right when you really start
04:29looking into the history of warp drive theory and theoretical research into this I mean it's a deep
04:35deep rabbit hole well everybody looks at it and the reason why is because we're never going to get to
04:41that point you know what is presently hypothetical only works in theory we'll never get to that point
04:46until we continue to advance our understanding of it and work toward reaching a functional prototype
04:53now currently what we see NASA and other space agencies working on primarily involves nuclear or electric
04:58propulsion those are the ones that in terms of you know the present day are the most feasible for
05:03future space missions but a very intriguing prospect has emerged because we also have you know
05:08gravitational waves and things that we're learning more and more about each year and so some physicists
05:13have said physicists have said look if somebody else out there you know another advanced civilization
05:19if they're more advanced than we are and significantly so they may have already cracked the warp bubble
05:25conundrum and if so we might be able to detect some signatures from that technology and so
05:30one application for this one approach toward trying to study the feasibility is actually looking for
05:37warp bubbles warp spacecraft in other words that may have been engineered by another intelligent
05:42civilization as far out as that idea seems some of the physicists we talked to have actually looked
05:46at that possibility as well right and you know there we both know from looking into the UFO lore over
05:52the
05:53years some people have said that well maybe some of these devices some of these craft could have
05:57crashed on earth and perhaps the government is hiding evidence of them but you know I don't think we've
06:02seen any any proof of that just yet so you know do you ever feel like we live in kind
06:08of one of the worst
06:09eras of space flight and astronomy by that I mean we have the ability to look so far into the
06:15distant
06:16universe but we can't reach it yet humanity can't go there yet does that ever I don't know make you
06:21feel sad
06:22oh sure it does because you know what we see in science fiction I mean Brett if you gave me
06:27a warp drive
06:28or a TARDIS like Doctor Who or if I could you know you know go on board the Starship Enterprise
06:33I would be
06:33out there traveling I would be out there exploring I'm sure you would be too oh yeah but it is
06:38the dreamers
06:38among us those who have continued to look at this and look at the feasibility of what science actually says
06:43that to me remains so hopeful and you know one of them Alexei Bobrik who's with Applied Physics the think
06:49tank that
06:49looks at all these very sorts of hard problems of today which may forge you know new avenues for
06:54propulsion and for space exploration tomorrow Alexei and I talked about this and he says listen
06:59you know we aren't to that point yet but we are working on these issues so that one day we
07:05can make
07:05these actual and in fact in 2021 Alexei and the CEO of Applied Physics Johnny Martier they wrote a really
07:12intriguing paper I've talked to both these guys about this many times and they looked at you know both what
07:18is
07:18known about warp bubbles but also placing some constraints on Alcubierre's original metrics
07:24and in fact according to Alexei he says you know the sad news is you're still going to need some
07:29sort of form of propulsion even for a warp drive spacecraft so we are still advancing our understanding
07:35we're a long ways from making a functional one yeah but I think that if we keep working on this
07:40problem at very least the hopeful side of this Brett future generations they may be able to engage in
07:45this kind of space travel that was once relegated to Star Trek and science fiction
07:49well you know it wasn't too long ago maybe 150 years ago that some of the top scientists in the
07:54world
07:54were saying you know powered flight was impossible heavy there heavier than air flight would be impossible
08:00so who knows what we'll see in the near future Micah as always thanks for another week of space mysteries
08:06always a pleasure bud
08:08you
