Could Interstellar travel be made possible with the Warp Drive? - VastlyCurious

    Our Universe is a vast space and we probably won't find the edge of the universe as it expands endlessly. But what if we had the technology to move faster than the speed of light, where would we go? The speed of light seems to be the universal speed limit, but we might go faster than the speed of light using the warp drive technology. We could explore our stars, galaxies or even visit a habitable exoplanet and we could start our cosmic conquests. Even though the idea of Warp drive is still science fiction, could we build one in our future? And how far can we go?

Going faster than the speed of light using Warp Drive

What is a Warp drive?

    A Warp drive is a device that could distort space-time allowing the spacecraft to move at a speed faster than the light. When this warp drive is equipped with a spacecraft, it would compress the space-time in front of it and also it will expand the space-time to the rear of the spacecraft allowing it to break the cosmic speed limit by actually bending the space-time. If this thing becomes a reality this would be 90 million times faster than the Parker Space probe (the fastest space probe we have ever come across). Recently this concept is found to be possible at least in theory even without the need for the negative mass. This concept could make our interstellar plans easier and make us understand the universe and our place in it.

Going interstellar with the help of Warp drives

    According to Einstein's theory of relativity, the speed of light is the universal speed limit. However, the theory also explains how space is warped by heavy stellar objects in the universe, and so warping space-time might be possible. But constructing this warp drive might not just be easy as it requires an enormous amount of energy in the first place and also we would require negative mass to construct this warp drive. But even with this warp drive technology, we might not see the edge of the universe as our cosmos is huge and is ever-expanding.

How does a Warp drive work?

    

    The rule about the universal speed limit only applies to the objects with masses, but the space doesn't have any mass and thus this rule doesn't apply to the space. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, space can be stretched or distorted and so we could use this idea, to move faster than the speed of light without actually moving faster than the speed of light. We know that Black holes can distort space-time because of their enormous gravitational pull. But we shouldn't use the black hole's gravity to distort the space-time as they would tear the spacecraft apart. We had to find some other way to distort space-time and also travel through them without experiencing any effects.

Artist's illustration of a Spacecraft using Warp Drive. Credit: NASA

    In 1994, Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed the idea of the Alcubierre warp drive which could allow the spacecraft to expand and compress space-time using negative energy. And the best part is his idea theoretically possible to travel to a distant galaxy without getting distorted or shredded to pieces. His idea was to create a space bubble inside of which the distortion doesn't happen. But the greatest problem with his solution is we would need about the mass of the universe to make this idea a reality and even that must be negative mass. We still haven't figured anything about the negative mass and so producing the negative mass in the scale of the universe is mighty impossible.

    But the recent progress in the warp drive came in 2021 when Erik Lentz proposed the idea of using the positive mass to get the same effect as Alcubierre's warp concept.  His idea was to build a bubble of space-time with the positive mass in the shape of the polygon and warp the space around the moving bubble. The spacecraft would be present inside the polygon bubble without getting distorted or torn apart. This idea seems to have solved the problem of the negative mass, but still, we would need 200 times the mass of Jupiter to construct this warp drive which is minute compared to the mass of the universe.

Travelling to other Galaxies

    NASA has planned for an interstellar mission in 2069 in order to commemorate the 100 years of the Apollo mission. It is planned to launch a vehicle of the size of the Voyager one into space with this warp drive technology and it is planned to achieve at least 10% of the speed of light. The destination for this probe will our nearest star Alpha Centauri, which is 4.4 light-years away. This mission is not yet named, but surely this will be an interstellar mission. But what if we could go faster than the speed of light? How far can we go? 

    If we could travel at 10 times the speed of light, it would take about 75 seconds to reach mars and our dream of colonizing Mars would be much easier. So then we might think about going outside our solar system which is going to the Oort cloud which would take us about 72 days. We would reach our nearest star Alpha Centauri in just 83 more days after leaving the Oort cloud. We could observe and research the orbiting exoplanet Proxima Centurari. This planet could be more easily colonized than Mars because this is more habitable than Mars.

Exploring other Galaxies

    We would stop there, we might look out for extra-terrestrial species outside our galaxies and the best place would be on the exoplanets Keplar-442b and Keplar-452b. But going at 10 times the speed of light won't be enough to explore these planets as it would still take around 120 years to reach them. So we might want to accelerate to 1000 times the speed of light, which would still take around 437 days. The universe is vast and it is still expanding. Even our Milkway Galaxy is 200,000 light-years wide, and so even at speeds higher than the speed of light might not be enough to leave our own galaxy. We might just not be able to see the edge of the universe as our observable universe is too vast.