Warp Drives May Come With a Killer Downside

An anonymous reader writes "Alcubierre warp-drives (theoretically) allow rocket ships to travel faster than the speed of light, while staying within the rules of Einstein's general theory of relativity. New research (PDF) has shown that as such warp-drives zip through the universe, they gather up particles and radiation, releasing them in a burst as the warp-drive slows down. This is bad news for family and friends waiting for the ship to arrive, as this intense burst will fry them."

Re:This is why you drop to impulse in a solar syst

[mcgrew]

If this is our biggest barrier to developing one tomorrow, then why don't we have these already?

Because nobody has figured out exactly how one would warp space, only that it's theoretically possible.

Conservation of energy

[rrohbeck]

I hate to be the party pooper, but:
All the energy for those high energy particles has to come from somewhere, which means that it'll take ridiculous amounts of energy to create an Alcubierre drive, it it's possible at all.

Re:Fermi Paradox

[kurzweilfreak]

Also, this from tfa:

“Any people at the destination,” the team’s paper concludes, “would be gamma ray and high energy particle blasted into oblivion due to the extreme blueshifts for [forward] region particles.”

So maybe that's exactly what we have been seeing! :D

Re:Fermi Paradox

[ModernGeek]

Just like a sonic boom when breaking the sound barrier, traveling faster than light may create a burst of light and radiation.

l33t

Re:Fermi Paradox

[quacking duck]

After reading the "bad news" I immediately thought of how even Star Trek had already addressed this: the Bussard collectors at the front of all warp drives are designed to scoop up interstellar particles and radiation for fuel replenishment.

Obviously Trek is a work of fiction, but the collectors are based on actual theoretical Bussard ramjets/ramscoops [wikipedia.org] proposed in 1960.

And yet 52 years later, with Star Trek providing at least speculative options and real-life regenerative braking on electric and hybrid cars around us, the write-up didn't even think to speculate about somehow collecting and using that energy.