Faster Than Light Speed Travel With Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Music] science fiction writers have given us  many examples of spaceships traveling   through space at the speed of light or even  faster the reality however is a bit different so is traveling at the speed of light  and beyond even theoretically possible   in star trek they got around this  problem because they had warp drives   so if this is like the galaxy and they're on  one side and they want to get to the other   side and so they put on their wall engines  and they would bend the fabric of space   because the diameter of the galaxy  is a hundred thousand light years   if you traveled as fast as light it would take  you a hundred thousand years to cross the galaxy   so what they did was they bend space and then take  a little bridge across there and then they unbend   it back and that's how they get across the galaxy  during the tv commercial we don't have anything   like that the fastest hunk of hardware we have  ever launched it's going like four times escape   velocity from earth it's a tiny spacecraft on  the largest engines in our arsenal you combine   those two facts laws of physics say this thing is  going to be hauling if you hitched a ride on that   you would reach the nearest stars in about 35  000 years if we look at the einstein's special   relativity theory the speed of light in vacuum has  constant velocity of 186 282 miles per second if   you could travel at this speed you could go around  the earth seven and a half times in one second   if you travel fast enough you can actually  leap forwards in time relativity specifies that   you travel a good fraction of the speed of light  time will tick more slowly for you than all your   loved ones back on earth if your journey is too  long you might be gone for 10 years and everyone   else on earth ages 100 so you've effectively gone  into the future and then everyone you knew when   you left earth is now dead since light travels at  finite speeds when we observe distant objects we   are literally looking into the past most of the  stars that are visible to the naked eye in the   night sky are 10 to 100 light years away thus  we see them as they were 10 to 100 years ago   we observe andromeda the nearest major spiral  galaxy to our own milky way galaxy as it was   about two and a half million years ago so  if we could travel at the speed of light   it would take us around 2.5 million years to reach  andromeda the nearest star alpha centauri is 4.37   light years away even nasa's voyager 1 space probe  traveling at 10 miles per second which became the   first spacecraft to enter interstellar space back  in 2012 would take around 70 thousand years to   get there the distance between stars is vast we  would need to understand something new about the   fabric of the space-time continuum and exploit  that in order to expect to travel to the stars   so of course in real life if we want to be able  to you know live the life of science fiction and   travel to other stars how might we actually do it  old school science fiction is you have a rocket   ship could you build a rocket ship and use it  to travel to another star so the short answer is   not really the way the space shuttle worked is  it has it's full of fuel and you light that fuel   and you get a massive explosion you direct the  explosion out the back and the gas flows out that   way and you get a reaction if you push the gas up  that way you go that way okay so it's very simple   brute force technology and it pushes the space  shuttle up into space and that you needed all   this incredible fuel just to get 300 kilometers  above the earth's surface so you still haven't   even escaped from the earth's gravity let alone  escape the sun let alone travel to another star   so even if you could build a rocket  that had everything you needed on it   to travel to another star and you built  the fastest rocket that's ever been built   it would take about 20 000 years  to get even to the nearest star   if travel to distant stars within an  individual's lifetime is going to be possible   a means of faster than light propulsion will  have to be found in 1994 miguel alcubierre   proposed a method that would take us beyond the  speed of light limit in his mathematical theory   he used two points in space-time to demonstrate  the expansion and contraction of space fabric the idea of alcubeer's theory is that we could use   this space-time warp to make an  object travel faster than light this theory is also known as alcubierre drive  shift space around an object so that the object   would arrive at its destination more quickly than  light would in normal space without breaking any   physical laws instead of going faster than  light the spaceship would remain stationary   at a time in which the space in front of it  is moving faster than light the ship would   effectively ride the supersonic wave to get to its  destination without exceeding the speed of light   it was postulated that this warp drive would  require a negative energy or exotic matter thus   making it practically impossible to achieve under  the current laws of energy and thermodynamics the other problem with this theory is that  the space-time warp would damage any planets   or stars it passed near the energy released by  the warp drive could be strong enough to rip   nearby planets apart or even trigger the  formation of a black hole at its destination   in march of 2021 dr eric lentz a researcher at  germany's university of guitenberg published a   paper where he showed the existing research and  claims to have discovered gaps in previous warp   drive studies lentz noticed that there existed  yet to be explored configurations of space-time   curvature organized into so-called solitons  that have the potential to solve the puzzle   while being physically viable he believes to  have found a way to permit super fast travel   by creating a series of solitons that can provide  the basis for a powerful propulsion system   these solitons in theory could maintain  their shape and move at constant velocity   using sources with only positive  energies that can enable travel at any speed [Music] several other attempts  and hypotheses have been proposed in   the past to explain the long-standing  problem of faster-than-light travel einstein's theory of special relativity states  that energy and mass are interchangeable and speed   of light travel is impossible for material objects  that unlike photons have non-zero rest mass in 1935 einstein and his colleague nathan rosen  proposed a hypothetical wormhole theory in which   two separate points in spacetime are bridged  together in essence this would form a tunnel or   shortcut through space-time einstein's theory  of general relativity mathematically predicts   the existence of wormholes but none have been  discovered to date even if a wormhole could form   it would most likely be very unstable wormholes  are still speculative and nobody really knows   if you could pass through it the math suggests  that you need some sort of exotic material to   pry the throat of the wormhole opening so that it  won't collapse on itself even then it is possibly   unstable for a simplified notion of a wormhole  imagine taking a strip of paper and folding   it over you have created a tube-like shape now  imagine this tube allows for two points in space   that are far apart to connect together in some way  this is how a wormhole could theoretically work in a new theory physicists at the university of  oldenburg have shown that microscopic traversable   wormholes could exist without having to rely  on exotic matter or a new theory of gravity   their model permits the existence of a wormhole  traversible by matter provided that the ratio   between the electric charge and the mass of the  wormhole exceeds a certain limit however this type   of wormhole as postulated by the researchers would  probably not be suitable for interstellar travel   there are many bizarre theories that have become  reality over the years of scientific research   however faster than light travel although  an interesting and creative idea for science   fiction for the near future remains just a dream  thanks for watching did you like this video then   show your support by liking subscribing and  ringing the bell to never miss videos like this [Music]

Channel: Science Time

Views: 869,452

Keywords: neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, neil tyson warp speed, faster than light speed, light speed, Alcubierre drive, Einstein, relativity, worm hole, interstellar travel, cosmos, universe, space, future spaceship, science, science time

Id: kHusZ5QWFrQ

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021