Manipulation of vacuum?

[kelvintyk]

Okay, I just watched this documentary on National Geographic on space stuff. There, these physicists/scientists acting as hosts for the show mentioned a theorised probability of the existance of "warp drives". Now, we all know even if travelling at the speed of light, it's nigh impossible to get anywhere in the galaxy within a short period of time, or at least within boundaries of what we deem as fast, like say hours, days or simply weeks. So these scientists explains these possible warp drives as an extremely fast way to travel through space, faster than what the speed of light can take us. Warp drives achieves this by manipulating the space.

So take for example, a space shuttle is launched into space and say it's position is just maybe around the moon. Now, it wants to travel out of our solar system. However, by norm it would take tons of years given that our current space shuttle can only travel at 17500 miles per hour, or even a probe fastest at 52000 miles per hour. So this warp drive sorta makes it such that the space moves, instead of the space shuttle/probe.

It's hard to explain but i'll try my best. By some means of manipulating the space around the space shuttle, it creates this scenario whereby space is created behind the space shuttle while the front(destination) becomes shorter, or closer to the space shuttle. In this case, the space does the moving, not the shuttle. This is supported by Einstein's theory of general relativity, or so the scientists claim.

So here is my question(sorry if my explanation of warp drive is unclear), if scientists were to try something like this, how would it be feasible? I mean....space is much like vacuum and no more than emptiness, so how would anything be able to manipulate....nothingness? What kinda thing or machine is capable of this, by your imagination and using science as support. Yes, I know this is kinda far-fetched but we gotta dream to advance no? Like back when Leonardo Da Vinci came up with the "man glider", people said he was crazy, but look, 400 years later we are flying. Who knows, when we dream and come up with possible scenarios for such "crazy" stuff, we might actually succeed.

I know this is a long read, but I'm really curious, so I hope you guys might give me some sorta enlightenment?

[Syron]

It's hard to explain but i'll try my best. By some means of manipulating the space around the space shuttle, it creates this scenario whereby space is created behind the space shuttle while the front(destination) becomes shorter, or closer to the space shuttle. In this case, the space does the moving, not the shuttle. This is supported by Einstein's theory of general relativity, or so the scientists claim.

What you are describing is the Alcubierre Drive, an attempt to create a StarTrek-like Warp Drive through known or surmised physics.

So here is my question(sorry if my explanation of warp drive is unclear), if scientists were to try something like this, how would it be feasible? I mean....space is much like vacuum and no more than emptiness, so how would anything be able to manipulate....nothingness?

Who told you space is just a vacuum? When scientists talk about space it does not mean "outer space" but all space, dimensionality. Yes Outer Space has a relative lack of "real" particles, but that does not mean it has no "existence", something that can more properly be represented by energy, not matter/particles.

Clearly it isn't if mass can warp ("empty") space-time.

The main problem with the Alcubierre Drive is the fact it would require a source of Negative Energy, something which it is not certain even exists.

[kelvintyk]

Sorry about my ignorance on space, but yeah. Besides, what is this uh negative energy?

[Elfdude]

Sorry about my ignorance on space, but yeah. Besides, what is this uh negative energy?

Negative energy is a neat little effect of nothing. The Casamir effect, basically it is energy that acts entirely opposite of normal energy. A hypothetical balloon filled with negative energy would fall upwards. It's not well understood nor is it's definition very crystallized. You really need to delve deep into physics for that.

Essentially gravity collapses space time and negative energy expands them.

[Gaidin]

What you are describing is the Alcubierre Drive, an attempt to create a StarTrek-like Warp Drive through known or surmised physics.

To expand on this, it's a rather (in)famous and entertaining medium for physicists to take sci-fi concepts ranging from blasters to lightsabers to warp drives and extrapolate on known physics principles and go into what would be needed to make them work.

[Sensei Kiisu]

Would be nice to hear more information on this..

[removeduser_4536284751384]

just because something contains no matter doesn't mean it doesn't exist

if I had a jar with nothing inside, would the inside of the jar not exist?

[Mr. Crow]

cassimir efect does not involve negative energy, it is mearly the result of diferent quantum lwave lengths in the Aether.

[Agent Miles]

The universe is pervaded by energy, everywhere that you look all the way down to the tiniest microscopic (or quantum) level. Einstein showed that energy and matter are the same. Both have the property of mass and gravity. One can think of the universe as a 3-D spatial grid (with time as an extra dimension) with different levels of energy at different locations. Einstein’s theories also predicted that gravity can warp and bend “space-time”. Too much gravity and space itself collapses into a point where even light cannot escape. So, if you added enough energy to the space in front of a ship, then the space would collapse. If you also used negative energy to remove energy from the space behind a ship, then this space would inflate. The overall effect would cause the ship to sort of “surf” along a wave of space-time.

Also, at the quantum level the energy grid of the universe fluctuates. A particle and a negative particle may borrow energy from the grid, spring into existence for a moment and then collide, annihilating each other and returning the energy to the grid. When two metal plates are placed very close together, fewer of these “virtual” particles are created in the space between the plates than are created outside the plates. This creates a pressure on the plates that drives them together which is called the Cassimir effect.

[Elfdude]

cassimir efect does not involve negative energy, it is mearly the result of diferent quantum lwave lengths in the Aether.

AKA negative energy.