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Void Bubble
Technology > Application > Metric Engineering
Technology > Technology Levels > Transapientech / Godtech / Clarketech
Technology > Technology Levels > Transapientech / Godtech / Clarketech
 Image from Steve Bowers |
A warp bubble is a region of space time enclosed in a fold, or bubble, of highly curved space. By expanding the space time metric behind the bubble and contracting the metric in front, the bubble can be made to move without the use of propellant mass. The vessel can apparently be coupled to the warp bubble(s) in various ways; by containing the bubbles wholly within the ship, as in the Displacement Drive; in front of the ship, coupled by gravity and/or magnetism, as in the Halo Drive; or entirely enclosing the ship, as in the Void Drive.
Note that no warp bubble has ever been observed traveling at super-luminal speeds. It is thought that such faster-than-light travel is impossible with void bubbles, because of dynamical instability of the warp metric at speeds greater than light and a suspected high flux of Hawking radiation that would turn anything inside a faster-than-light void bubble into a plasma of fundamental particles.
See article on Reactionless Drives for more info.
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Development Notes
Text by Adam Getchell and Todd Drashner
Initially published on 17 January 2010.
Initially published on 17 January 2010.
