Is The Alcubierre Warp Drive Possible? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios

Why HN readers recommended it

HN points to it as a short, approachable starting point on warp drive physics from a channel commenters like.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

PBS Space Time

Topic

alcubierre warp drive

Format

explainer

Level

intro

HN recommenders in dataset

3

HN mentions in dataset

3

Recommendation years in dataset

2020–2023

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• Mathematically yes, actually probably not. I'd suggest looking into Alcubierre Warp Drive, cool story on why the guy came up with it and shows how to wrap spacetime around a spaceship to make it go faster than light. The ship wouldn't go faster than light …

• There's an episode of PBS Space Time about this, "The Speed of Light is NOT About Light" [1], which comes pretty close to making the same points you are making. It might be useful to watch this earlier episode, "Are Space and Time an Illusion?" …

• The issue seems to be that the alcubierre drive requires things like external negative energy which are 'theoretically possible' but have never been detected and probably should have been already if they existed. Also, even if they worked, the negative energy requirements is something like …