Let’s suppose we have a wish granting genie that gives us a working Alcubierre drive. The drive is turned on and the bubble is staying stationary to our frame of reference (so, it’s turned on on our imaginary helipad and it’s just sitting there). What could an outside observer expect to see when they look at the bubble? I.e. would light get redshifted or distorted, since it has to pass through space that’s expanding faster than the surrounding space? If I shine a laser pointer directly at the bubble, does it lens around the bubble and stroke the far wall, or will it pass through and strike what’s inside? Further, could one expect any ill effects from approaching or passing through the bubble, or would that even be possible? Would an Alcubierre drive in motion create a gravitational wave or something very much like it, since it works by distorting space?

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
    51·
    22 days ago

    looking forward to someone else smarter than me coming along to explain how i’m wrong and what is more likely to happen, but until then i’m going to hypothesize that you won’t see anything abnormal at all.

    Neither until, nor unless, the warp field is actually inflecting the spacetime within it vs your frame of reference… in which case, it will not be stationary to you.

    If it begins inflecting spacetime enough to measure, its relative velocity to our observation point would be too great to measure.

    and if it simply flattens all curvature in spacetime within its radius, it will float off as the earth’s rotation drops its surface, us, and our helipad away from under it… since what we call gravity is just a slope in spacetime and all of a sudden its spacetime has zero slope.