Adam Frank: uncertainty

Transcript context

…So, is it possible we can detect anomalies in spacetime? Well, you could detect, and there’s been some work on this with the Alcubierre drive, these proposals for warp drives, and we can talk about that later, I’m skeptical of those. Because it may really be possible, you just can’t go faster than the speed of light. But people have done work on what would be the signature of an Alcubierre drive? What would be the signature? Could you detect if you’re using a drive like that, then you certainly are distorting spacetime, which means any light that’s passing by, its trajectory has gotten altered because it had to pass through the distorted spacetime. So yeah, there are possibilities along with that. One of the funny things, I don’t know if they’ve gotten past this, but somebody calculated the problem with the Alcubierre drive or this warp drive was that if you dropped out of warp, there would be this spray of gamma rays that would sterilize any planet in front of you. So, it’s like, “Well yeah, you probably don’t want to do that,” but that would be a great bios or techno signature, another planet obliterated. So, you think it’s not possible to travel fast than the speed of light?…

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