If warp drives are impossible, maybe faster-than-light communication is still on the table?

I am positive many readers of Universe Right this moment are, like me, followers of the science fiction style. From the sunshine sabers of “Star Wars” to the neuralyzer of “Males in Black,” science fiction has loopy innovations aplenty and as soon as science fiction writers dream it, scientists and engineers try to create it. Maybe the holy grail of science fiction creations is the warp drive from “Star Trek” and it’s truthful to say that many have tried to work out whether it is even potential to journey quicker than the velocity of sunshine. To this point, alas, to no avail but when the warp drive eludes us, what about faster-than-light communication.

Let’s begin with the warp drive. The idea is a drive that may propel a spacecraft at speeds in extra of the velocity of sunshine. In keeping with the “Star Trek” writers, the velocity was described in components of warp velocity the place they’re transformed to multiples of the velocity of sunshine by multiplication with the cubic operate of the warp issue itself. Received it. Don’t be concerned, it isn’t essential to this text. Basically, “warp 1” is equal to the velocity of sunshine, “warp 2” is eight instances velocity of sunshine and “warp 3” is 27 instances the velocity of sunshine and so it goes on. Therein lies the issue; attaining faster-than-light journey.

In makes an attempt to grasp this, quite a few experiments have been undertaken; of notice, Invoice Bertozzi at MIT accelerated electrons and noticed them changing into heavier and heavier till they could not be accelerated any extra. As soon as on the velocity of sunshine, it takes an infinite quantity of vitality to speed up an object additional. The maximum speed he achieved was the velocity of sunshine. In different experiments, synchronized atomic clocks have been taken on board airliners and located that, after touring at excessive velocity relative to a reference clock on Earth, time had run slower. The upshot is that the quicker you go, the slower time passes and on the speed of light, time stops. If time stops, so does velocity. That is tough.

The science of faster-than-light journey apart, plenty of potential warp drive designs have surfaced just like the Alcubierre drive proposed in 1994. Nonetheless, the frequent issue to supply faster-than-light journey is one thing referred to as destructive vitality which is required in copious quantities. The examine of quantum mechanics reveals that even empty space has vitality and something that has much less vitality than empty space has “destructive vitality.” The issue (amongst many) is that nobody is aware of the best way to get destructive vitality in big quantities to energy the warp drives.

It appears the warp drive is a while away but, however may faster-than-light communication work? Accelerating macroscopic objects like spacecraft requires excessive quantities of destructive vitality, however communication, as a current paper explains, which operates at a a lot smaller scale, requires much less vitality—fairly a bit much less, in reality, than is contained inside a lightning bolt. Maybe extra tantalizing is that we may have the ability to create small quantities of destructive vitality utilizing in the present day’s expertise.

One of many methods this may be achieved is to make sure the correct configuration and distribution of destructive vitality to channel communication. The paper, posted to the arXiv preprint server, proposes a tubular distribution of destructive vitality in so-called hypertubes to allow the acceleration and deceleration of warp bubbles for superluminal communication. Reaching this for long-distance communication would require particular gadgets to be designed and constructed however because the creator of the paper, Lorenzo Pieri, concludes, “It’s tantalizing to think about the fabrication of microchips able to superluminal computing.”