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.
And all it would require is more energy than exists trapped in all the matter in the galaxy!
I thought someone redid the math a while back and got the energy requirement down to simply the mass of Jupiter.
Corrct, but, it also still requires local negative energy density to be a conceptually and physically possible thing.
Which is... currently not understood to be possible, or exist... so that basically does violate the laws of physics.
There have been even more recent attempts to... reconceptualize the whole idea, which have resulted in less required negative energy density...
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.06824
... but not 0. So this is still sci-fi, untill we discover... anti-energy, or... something like that.
Pretty good recent recap of the current status of this line of research, if you look past the misleading headline:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a71362600/scientists-say-physical-warp-drive-possible/
Negative energy is almost certainly not a thing.
If two objects made up of matter and antimatter collide, they would annihilate each other and release all of their energy as an explosion
If two objects made of energy and anti-energy collided they would also annihilate each other... except there would be nothing afterwards. Total information loss as no energy would escape the impact, since there would be no more energy afterwards.
Wait.
Ok uh... what if...
What if anti-energy + energy = 50.0000...1% matter, and 49.9999...9% anti matter?
We... still don't actually know why matter dominates the universe over anti-matter, right?
... just spitballing here.
Does that even .... possibly make sense?
I don't know.
Yeah I'm inclined to agree.
If negative energy is somehow possible, it causes ... an absurd number of paradoxes, very quickly, if it can just... exist, without bounds.
I am not any kind of actual physicist, but if I had to attempt to concieve of some framework where it even might be possible...
I'd go for some kind of 11, 12, whatever dimensional universe, when it would concievably be possible to have energy be able to bleed off, transfer, through higher dimensions, which might kind of look like 'negative energy' to us 3D spacetime things, but actually wouldn't be.
Of course... all of that is mind bogglingly complex as well, and probably causes paradoxes I am too ignorant to understand.
since energy is a property of matter rather than something on its own, it would be more like a totally inelastic collision.
but while we're on sci-fi, what if negative energy is possible in a moving reference frame?
Sir are you accusing this meme of lying to me?
Just want you well appraised of the facts, sir, up to you to judge the rest.
But in negative energy, which isn't known to exist independently. (You can't take the Casimir effect out from between the plates, etc.)
And a completely hypothetical state of matter and energy.