Latest Warp Drive Research: Examining Chronology Protection Conjecture

[James Essig]

TL;DR Summary

Questions as to whether the content of the research of Alexey Bobrick, and Gianni Martire proposed in their paper describing their ideas for a warp drive and published in IOP's Classical and Quantum Gravity lead to possible ways to violate the chronology protection conjecture.

I had some questions about some recently published results on the theoretical aspects of warp-drive.

Does the content of the research of Alexey Bobrick, and Gianni Martire proposed in their paper describing their ideas for a warp drive and published in IOP's Classical and Quantum Gravity lead to possible ways to violate the chronology protection conjecture?

It is my understanding that any methods of achieving superluminal travel can be used to travel back in time and thus in principle violate the chronology protection conjecture.

Also, has the subject research been considered in the context of current theories of quantum gravity?

I presume that quantum gravity mechanisms would prohibit any attempt to travel back in time to change history.

I would be very interested in hearing what folks have to say on these topics.

I understand that the media tends to hype sensationalism and thus it can be hard to distinguish the hype from the ramifications of new research.

Thanks;

Jim

 

[PeterDonis]

the research of Alexey Bobrick, and Gianni Martire proposed in their paper describing their ideas for a warp drive

Please provide a link to the paper.

 

[James Essig]

Here is the link. Already I have read of folks who are skeptical. Separating the media hype from any validity seems to be a bit of a challenge.

Introducing physical warp drives - IOPscience

 

[Keith_McClary]

Here is the link.

Is it the same as:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.06824
?

 

[James Essig]

It is the same paper I believe. Either way it is the same set of concepts that in the previous link I provided. I am almost of the opinion that the theoretical approach does some serious "hand waving" and does not take into account in a rigorous way how quantum gravity mechanisms might be a show stopper. The paper seems to claim that negative energy in some considerations is optional but negative energy would seem to be required to negatively warp space-time, not by lexicographical considerations, but as a means to produce the space-time bubble considered in the paper. Also, it seems a general consensus that any superluminal travel can be used to enable backward time travel which results in various issues with causality.

 

[PeterDonis]

I am almost of the opinion that the theoretical approach does some serious "hand waving" and does not take into account in a rigorous way how quantum gravity mechanisms might be a show stopper.

The paper, although it mentions quantum effects, is using classical General Relativity for all of its actual modeling, not quantum gravity. (Nobody has a good quantum gravity theory at this time in any case, so talk about "quantum gravity mechanisms" is not well-supported by any theory and can only be speculation.)

 

[hilbert2]

You sometimes see these claims for strange gravity effects that could be used in building a "warp drive", and then never hear anything more about them. A good example is this one by M. Tajmar: https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0603033v1

The ideas by Harold G White seem to be a bit more credible, but I'm by no means enough of a professional in general relativity to assess that.