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submitted 1 day ago by cannedtuna@lemmy.world to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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The Star Trek television series and films use the term "warp drive" to describe their method of faster-than-light travel. Neither the Alcubierre theory, nor anything similar, existed when the series was conceived—the term "warp drive" and general concept originated with John W. Campbell's 1931 science fiction novel Islands of Space. Alcubierre stated in an email to William Shatner that his theory was directly inspired by the term used in the show and cites the "'warp drive' of science fiction" in his 1994 article. A USS Alcubierre appears in the Star Trek tabletop RPG Star Trek Adventures. Since the release of Star Trek: The Original Series, more recent Star Trek spin-off series have made closer use of the theory behind the Alcubierre Drive incorporating warp bubbles/fields into the in-universe science.

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[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

It still violates causality.

Orion's Arm has an elaborate write-up for their wormhole system, to get around this:

https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48545a0f6352a

https://www.orionsarm.com/page/322

When a wormhole is transported to a distant system by linelayer at relativistic speeds, the two ends of the wormhole become displaced in time due to time dilation. In theory this displacement could allow time travel into the past, especialy if the wormhole mouths are subsequently brought close together again or connected via additional wormholes.

In practice time travel into the past is prevented by the so-called Visser effect. The ends of any single wormhole cannot be brought more closely together than the time difference between them; i.e. if one mouth is a year younger than the other, the ends can't come closer than a light-year without causing a Closed Timelike Curve. The formation of such a CTC immediately generates an exponential flux of virtual particles, which destabilises the wormhole and causes a collapse.

This represents an effective event horizon between the (hypothetical) part of the universe which allows time travel and the part of the universe which does not; this horizon is known as a Cauchy Horizon.

chart

In other words, one can't place wormholes in a configuration where they'd violate causality; the act of doing so creates a black hole.

And this includes more complex multi-wormhole configurations that could indirectly generate CTCs. For I time, I thought maybe Star Trek ships were "smartly" routed to avoid violating causality with each other... but this is clearly not the case.

With respect to wormholes, we are like DaVinci -- we have the knowledge to design and construct wormholes. We just lack the tools and materials at present.