this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

And to time it right, you need to either not reach light speed, or have some external help to decelerate. Every clock or circuitry you bring with you also slows to a halt

[–] Forbo@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Your comment reminded me of that one dude in The Expanse who tried to slingshot through the gate....

[–] AlfredoJohn@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean it depends on how you reach the speed of light. Straight up propulsion correct but then you cant get the energy required for that, if we can somehow figure out a way to bend space to create a "warp" bubble the internal zone should act as we expect, but the energy requirements there are still fucking enormous and im not sure that would be feasible without us inadvertently creating a singularity that we could never escape from so there are just problems inherently there for either method lol

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you do use a warp bubble (we'd need to figure out negative mass, which likely doesn't exist), your local time will not dilate nearly as much, so the subjective time for the traveling observer might actually be a lot longer

[–] AlfredoJohn@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Would it dilate for either observer, though? If the purpose of it is to just fold space time in essence shrinking the distance traveled I dont think we would see any significant time dilation occur for either point of reference as in that hypothetical scenario you would be using the fold in space time produced by such a drive to make two points in space closer together so in theory you never travel significantly close to the speed of light and time should flow pretty much "normally" for both points of reference. What I do wonder is would anything that gets touched by the horizon of that bubble/wave be effected, and such a drive would have to cause massive gravitational waves like a boat that moves through the ocean, what would be the effects from such a drive functioning in that manor be to anything near it or that it touches. And I'll state I'm in no means a physicist by any means so I could be completely of the mark here any many ways lol

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

What I'm saying is that warp drives are well within the science-fiction category, and not really applicable to the meme. In a warp bubble, you're never actually reaching a significant fraction of the speed of light. The meme specifically talks about time dilation, and so did my caveat