Warp Drive Question

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

Not necessarily, the kinds of energy that could hypothetically be required are staggering.

Seems to depend strongly on the details. That's true of Alcubierre's original metric, but other people have modified the metric to require much less energy. A mere three solar masses -- but wait, there's also a 700 kg solution -- and a modification of the 3 solar mass one that needs only a few milligrams of negative mass. Oscillating the field can also supposedly reduce the mass requirement. The amount of energy required doesn't seem to be a settled question. It depends on the exact shape and behavior of the warped area. Any solution to GR that we know of that allows FTL requires negative energy, but we don't really understand exactly how much or how it has to behave.