Southern California Conferences for Undergraduate Research

Southern California Conferences for Undergraduate Research

Conformal Gravity and the Alcubierre Warp Drive

Author:

Zily Burstein

Mentor:

Gabriele Varieschi, Professor of Physics, Loyola Marymount University

Conformal Gravity and the Alcubierre Warp Drive
Author: Zily Burstein, Loyola Marymount University
Mentor: Gabriele U Varieschi, Department of Physics, Loyola Marymount University

The Alcubierre Warp Drive metric, proposed in 1994 by Miguel Alcubierre, states that it is possible for a spaceship to travel faster than the speed of light. This is achieved by expanding and contracting space-time behind and in front of the spaceship respectively, while the spaceship remains in a region of flat space-time called the warp bubble. However, Alcubierre’s theory, which is based on Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, has a gap: such speeds can only be obtained with large quantities of exotic matter—matter with negative mass which (with our current knowledge) only exists in small quantities. To improve upon this theory, we approach the Warp Drive idea under the framework of Conformal Gravity, an extension to Einstein’s Relativity based on the invariability of the universe’s space-time fabric. With a Mathematica program we designed to calculate tensor quantities in both General Relativity and Conformal Gravity, we have observed that the latter does not require exotic matter for certain shaping functions which describe the form of the warp bubble. These results suggest that if Conformal Gravity is a correct extension of General Relativity, faster-than-light interstellar travel via an Alcubierre metric might be a realistic possibility.


Presented by:

Zily Burstein

Date:

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Time:

3:45 PM — 4:00 PM

Room:

Bell Tower 1602

Presentation Type:

Oral Presentation

Discipline:

Physics
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