While the allure of warp drives and faster-than-light travel has captivated science fiction enthusiasts for decades, the scientific reality remains elusive. Despite numerous attempts and experiments, achieving warp speed, the ability to propel a spacecraft faster than the speed of light, seems to be an insurmountable obstacle.
One of the primary challenges lies in the concept of negative energy, a hypothetical substance with less energy than empty space. Negative energy is considered essential for warp drives to manipulate spacetime and create the bubble-like structure that allows for faster-than-light travel. However, despite extensive research, no one has yet discovered a way to harness or generate negative energy in the quantities required for warp drives.
While faster-than-light travel may remain a distant dream, the possibility of faster-than-light communication presents a glimmer of hope. Unlike massive spacecraft, communication signals are much smaller and require far less energy to transmit. A recent paper published on the arXiv preprint server suggests that it might be possible to create small amounts of negative energy using current technology.
The paper proposes a concept called hypertubes, hypothetical tubes filled with a precisely configured distribution of negative energy. These hypertubes could theoretically enable the acceleration and deceleration of warp bubbles for superluminal communication. While achieving this for long-distance communication would require specialized devices, the author, Lorenzo Pieri, concludes that the possibility of "fabricating microchips capable of superluminal computing" is tantalizing.
While faster-than-light communication may not be the same as traversing vast distances in a matter of seconds, it would still revolutionize communication and data transfer across the vast expanse of space. The ability to send and receive messages instantaneously, regardless of distance, would have profound implications for scientific collaboration, interstellar exploration, and even our understanding of the universe itself.
Journal Information: Lorenzo Pieri, Hyperwave: Hyper-Fast Communication within General Relativity, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2311.12069