Could you escape a black hole with an Alciuberre drive?

[Sillychris]

A black hole's escape velocity is greater than c... but warp drives can circumvent the cosmic speed limit?

Could a warp drive built with our present day theory get a peek inside a black hole? Let's pretend tidal forces aren't a problem. And maybe time dilation, too. Or discuss those anyway, they're interesting.

[Nuke]

if you are that close to a black hole, you have bigger problems. id hate to get torn in half due to tidal stresses in my own body.

if you are outside of the event horizion, you can escape with any regular old boring rocket engine, other side, you are spaghetti. and thats assuming the radiation doesn't kill you first.

Edited April 17, 2014 by Nuke

[N_las]

if you are that close to a black hole, you have bigger problems. id hate to get torn in half due to tidal stresses in my own body.

if you are outside of the event horizion, you can escape with any regular old boring rocket engine, other side, you are spaghetti.

From my understanding, if you make the black hole bigger, the tidal forces at the event horizont are getting smaller. So they wouldn't be a problem in this thougth experiment.

[SargeRho]

Yes, ironically it's easier to survive falling into a supermassive black hole than into a stellar mass black hole, not that you'd survive either.

[Nuke]

From my understanding, if you make the black hole bigger, the tidal forces at the event horizont are getting smaller. So they wouldn't be a problem in this thougth experiment.

its cool to think about though

[NeoMorph]

Got one for you... If the Alcubierre drive is actually up and running then isn't the craft outside of normal spacetime... i.e. the ship creates its own spacetime that is has compressed in front and expanded behind the craft so the black hole would have no effect on it and no spag hell.

BUT... what if sustaining an Alcubierre drive field is affected by gravity (as I have read it does)... wouldn't that mean the drive wouldn't even work near a black hole due to the gravity well. It would mean that once past the event horizon then you are gone.

But then, what if the black hole is spinning... a whole new possibility arises.

[rtxoff]

Assuming that something absurd like the Alcubierre drive can be realized i thought of many possibilities what could happen:

1.) If the warp field is strong enough it will collapse the black hole. Something simmilar like popping a soap bubble. The field will pierce through the event horizon opening a hole for all the mass inside the black hole to escape. If the gravitational sheer do not kill you, the erupting mass from the black hole will....

2.) The black hole will attach itself to your rear side of the warp bubble and follow you through the void. Where ever you try to escape you won't.

3.) Warp field calculations such near the event horizon fail. Your warpfield will collapse sucking you into the hole. This process however from a far observer will take thousands of years leaving plenty time for them to launch a kerbal rescue mission :-D

4.) Black holes are a lie, there are no such entitys in the universe (proof me wrong if u can)

[Endersmens]

4.) Black holes are a lie, there are no such entitys in the universe (proof me wrong if u can)

Scientist have determined that the only(well since it's science it's not 100 percent sure, but oh well) way that the stars at the center of the milky way could orbit so fast would be if there was a big black hole in the center.

[Ralathon]

Assuming that something absurd like the Alcubierre drive can be realized i thought of many possibilities what could happen:

1.) If the warp field is strong enough it will collapse the black hole. Something simmilar like popping a soap bubble. The field will pierce through the event horizon opening a hole for all the mass inside the black hole to escape. If the gravitational sheer do not kill you, the erupting mass from the black hole will....

2.) The black hole will attach itself to your rear side of the warp bubble and follow you through the void. Where ever you try to escape you won't.

3.) Warp field calculations such near the event horizon fail. Your warpfield will collapse sucking you into the hole. This process however from a far observer will take thousands of years leaving plenty time for them to launch a kerbal rescue mission :-D

4.) Black holes are a lie, there are no such entitys in the universe (proof me wrong if u can)

You have no idea how physics works.

1) An event horizon is created by mass being compressed within its own schwarzschild radius. The event horizon is a result from that, not a cause. You can't 'pop' the event horizon in the same way you can't pop a circular shadow.

2) Why would it do that? Assuming your alcubierre metric is small enough it doesn't include the singularity it has no reason to follow you. In fact, the positive curvature on the backside of the field would push the black hole away. It would only follow you if you make your alcubiere metric so large that the warp bubble contains the singularity. Something that only an idiot would do.

3) No they don't. We know perfectly well how spacetime behaves at the event horizon. It only starts to break down close to the singularity itself, that's where everything goes to infinity and your computer gives you a sadface. And even then, if your warp field is small enough in relation to the black hole you can approximate the local spacetime as a linear system. And alcubiere drives work perfectly well in that environment.

4) Go jump into Sagittarius A* already.

[lajoswinkler]

if you are that close to a black hole, you have bigger problems. id hate to get torn in half due to tidal stresses in my own body.

if you are outside of the event horizion, you can escape with any regular old boring rocket engine, other side, you are spaghetti. and thats assuming the radiation doesn't kill you first.

Nope, the event horizon doesn't neccessarily mean there are huge tidal forces involved. The larger the horizon is, the less prominent they are. The visual experience would be weird, but that's it.

[K^2]

An Alcubierre Drive can, indeed, escape from bellow the event horizon. It has to be a supermassive balck hole, as people have already mentioned, because space-time around the bubble needs to be relatively flat, and there is a limit to how far bellow the event horizon you can go, which is directly related to how much faster than speed of light the drive is capable of going.

The actual physics behind it is that bellow event horizon, all time-like geodesics lead to the center. So no matter can escape. But FTL ship follows a space-like geodesics, and there are some space-like trajectories that allow you to exit a black hole.

[rtxoff]

You have no idea how physics works.

1) An event horizon is created by mass being compressed within its own schwarzschild radius. The event horizon is a result from that, not a cause. You can't 'pop' the event horizon in the same way you can't pop a circular shadow.

2) Why would it do that? Assuming your alcubierre metric is small enough it doesn't include the singularity it has no reason to follow you. In fact, the positive curvature on the backside of the field would push the black hole away. It would only follow you if you make your alcubiere metric so large that the warp bubble contains the singularity. Something that only an idiot would do.

3) No they don't. We know perfectly well how spacetime behaves at the event horizon. It only starts to break down close to the singularity itself, that's where everything goes to infinity and your computer gives you a sadface. And even then, if your warp field is small enough in relation to the black hole you can approximate the local spacetime as a linear system. And alcubiere drives work perfectly well in that environment.

4) Go jump into Sagittarius A* already.

So you want to tell me that you perfectly understand what an Alciuberre drive is and how to build it and how it will work in real life and because of that you can proof all my statements wrong.

I can only laugh at that. I do not want to burst your dreams people, but such a drive is fantasy at the moment at best and i do not see anything relevant that it might be coming at some point in the future.

My 4 statements where ment as an joke but obviously there are people without humor, and no there is no proof that black holes exit. It really does not matter if i believe it or not if they do exist, as long as we have no definitive proof everything is just theory. I would suggest that you open your mind also for other possibility's because you will be very dissapointed if anyone proofs something wrong, which you thought is the fundamental truth.

[K^2]

So you want to tell me that you perfectly understand what an Alciuberre drive is and how to build it and how it will work in real life and because of that you can proof all my statements wrong.

I can only laugh at that. I do not want to burst your dreams people, but such a drive is fantasy at the moment at best and i do not see anything relevant that it might be coming at some point in the future.

Alcubierre Drive is a certainty. Whether we can build one or not is an irrelevant question. We have all the math for it. We know exactly how it will interact with a black hole. Your statements are just a bunch of ignorance coming from somebody who does not understand anything about General Relativity.

[rtxoff]

Alcubierre Drive is a certainty. Whether we can build one or not is an irrelevant question. We have all the math for it. We know exactly how it will interact with a black hole. Your statements are just a bunch of ignorance coming from somebody who does not understand anything about General Relativity.

Someone claiming to understand everything is just an idiot to me, the wise man understands that he does not understand anything.

You disproofed your first sentence with the second one. If the Alcubierre drive is a certainty why don't we have one?

So i have the math to be successful in my business and still there is a chance that i will fail because there is no way to know all variables.

Only because you have them math for Alcubierre drives and for black holes does not proof anything. Also name me one high tech product in the last century that was made because we had the math for it. Wake up, people build things on a try and error basis not because they had the math for it. Or do you really think Werner von Braun had the math for it first rocket? No, he build one and watched it perform then he build a second one that was better and so on. Science works by making mistakes and learning from them not by knowing all the answers before.

Sorry but the only ones ignoring something are the ones claiming that it is reality. You guys make your theories but do not expect anyone to take them seriously until we can proof them or build the stuff you are fantasizing of. Yes i know GRT and SRT are widely accepted theories and no serious scientist would dare to say anything against them but the alcubierre drive, are u kidding me?

First of all what is this exotic matter and how to obtain it? Exotic matter like dark matter at best is something because someone had to invent anything to make his math work.

The alcubierre drive my friends is just something that exists because someone cheated in his calculations and invented something and called it exotic matter to make the math work. It is nothing more and nothing less then that in the moment. Someone failing to see the truth in this is the real ignorant.

That was my last post here, go on and dream away with your stuff and next time better think before you claim on anybody that he does not understand anything at the end you could be the one.

[SargeRho]

Having all the physics of something and Engineering it into a practical application are big, big differences.

[K^2]

We don't have stations with centrifugal gravity, either. Doesn't mean that asking "what happens if I throw a ball on one," is a science fiction question, or something we can only guess on. We know how physics for a space station works. We just can't afford to build one right now. We also know how physics for AD works. There just isn't enough energy in the universe to build one. There are other warp drive configurations that we might, eventually, build. And they will work a little differently. But a question of whether an Alcubierre Drive can get out of a black hole is not something we have to guess on. We can answer it exactly. For any practical warp drive, that would be just an approximation, and something could go wrong. And maybe it's something we will have to do trial and error on, but we aren't just guessing.

Neither was Von Braun guessing on his rockets. He had excellent understanding of fluid dynamics and rocketry. And he did a lot of math before he ever tried to build a rocket. Fact that you cannot account for absolutely everything and have to make corrections during development of a particular machine doesn't mean you go in blindly, or that you are just guessing until you build one. Only a complete fool would think so. That's how we get all of these crackpots with perpetual motion and reactionless drives. We do know what can and cannot work. And we know a lot about warp drives and can answer many questions about them without having to have built one yet. Just like Von Braun was able to answer questions about his rockets before he built one, or nobody would have given him money to build them.

[N_las]

Someone claiming to understand everything is just an idiot to me, the wise man understands that he does not understand anything.

You disproofed your first sentence with the second one. If the Alcubierre drive is a certainty why don't we have one?

So i have the math to be successful in my business and still there is a chance that i will fail because there is no way to know all variables.

Only because you have them math for Alcubierre drives and for black holes does not proof anything. Also name me one high tech product in the last century that was made because we had the math for it. Wake up, people build things on a try and error basis not because they had the math for it. Or do you really think Werner von Braun had the math for it first rocket? No, he build one and watched it perform then he build a second one that was better and so on. Science works by making mistakes and learning from them not by knowing all the answers before.

Sorry but the only ones ignoring something are the ones claiming that it is reality. You guys make your theories but do not expect anyone to take them seriously until we can proof them or build the stuff you are fantasizing of. Yes i know GRT and SRT are widely accepted theories and no serious scientist would dare to say anything against them but the alcubierre drive, are u kidding me?

First of all what is this exotic matter and how to obtain it? Exotic matter like dark matter at best is something because someone had to invent anything to make his math work.

The alcubierre drive my friends is just something that exists because someone cheated in his calculations and invented something and called it exotic matter to make the math work. It is nothing more and nothing less then that in the moment. Someone failing to see the truth in this is the real ignorant.

That was my last post here, go on and dream away with your stuff and next time better think before you claim on anybody that he does not understand anything at the end you could be the one.

Please, everyone who works in an engineering job for more than a few months understands, that half the things you say are wrong. At the time I work in the r&d division at a company that builds micro-mechatronical implants. There is no chanche in hell one would make those by trial and error. There is so much money on the line, that millions are spend just to build models and documentations, until every aspect of the product and the manufacturing process is understood. Have you ever wondered, why most prototypes of products work?

And weter exotic matter is possible is besides the point. The math of the behavior of the alcubierre drive is known, so one can caculate how it will do in a black hole. Nobody is 'claming to understand everything' in the process.

[SargeRho]

There is enough energy in the universe to build an Alcubierre drive, as far as I know it takes the equivalent of Jupiter with Alcubierre's original math, but only as much as a football now.

[K^2]

There is enough energy in the universe to build an Alcubierre drive, as far as I know it takes the equivalent of Jupiter with Alcubierre's original math, but only as much as a football now.

You are confusing several things. "Jupiter" estimate comes from a modified metric, so it's already not strictly speaking an Alcubierre Drive. And Dr. White's estimate is 700kg. The only "football" reference has been made to the shape of the craft.

[rtxoff]

Please, everyone who works in an engineering job for more than a few months understands, that half the things you say are wrong. At the time I work in the r&d division at a company that builds micro-mechatronical implants. There is no chanche in hell one would make those by trial and error. There is so much money on the line, that millions are spend just to build models and documentations, until every aspect of the product and the manufacturing process is understood. Have you ever wondered, why most prototypes of products work?

And weter exotic matter is possible is besides the point. The math of the behavior of the alcubierre drive is known, so one can caculate how it will do in a black hole. Nobody is 'claming to understand everything' in the process.

Well there you said it, half of the things are wrong, so the other half is true. Sure i overdraw the situation but fact is you can't rely purely on math. And no i do not think most prototypes work in fact many prototypes do not work as intended. Saying wether exotic matter is possible is beside the point is like saying that for an battery for a mobile phone. In fact your mobile phone is utterly useless without the power cell. Sorry to say that but very weak minded people here claiming impossible things and proofing where there is no proof.

Accepting the reality can be a very hard thing i know that from experience but you will live better after that.

So if anyone can proof that this exotic matter for the AD exists and that it can be produced i will be the happiest person on earth until then i really do not deserve such hatred from u guys just because i brought you back down to reality.

Watch out because right now you are on the way becoming like this "crackpots with perpetual motion and reactionless drives".

[N_las]

Well there you said it, half of the things are wrong, so the other half is true. Sure i overdraw the situation but fact is you can't rely purely on math. And no i do not think most prototypes work in fact many prototypes do not work as intended. Saying wether exotic matter is possible is beside the point is like saying that for an battery for a mobile phone. In fact your mobile phone is utterly useless without the power cell. Sorry to say that but very weak minded people here claiming impossible things and proofing where there is no proof.

Accepting the reality can be a very hard thing i know that from experience but you will live better after that.

So if anyone can proof that this exotic matter for the AD exists and that it can be produced i will be the happiest person on earth until then i really do not deserve such hatred from u guys just because i brought you back down to reality.

Watch out because right now you are on the way becoming like this "crackpots with perpetual motion and reactionless drives".

Imagine we would live in 1900. If we now talk about the possiblility to call an ambulance with a hypothetical cellphone, than it is entirely besides the point if the battery for the phone is possible or not. Same here. Were are talking about the behavior of an AD in a certain situation. It has nothing to do with its exotic matter. It doesn't even matter if an AD will ever be possible to be build. You say someone here would claim impossible things? Were? Did someone say we can build an AD? Did someone say it is certain that we will build one in the future? At this point, the AD is simply a mathematical possibility in special and general relativity.

Edit: Saying 'I don't deserve the hate' when everyone was civil and polite is pretty rude, in combination with calling others 'weak minded', 'idiots' and 'close minded'.

Edited April 17, 2014 by N_las

[K^2]

So if anyone can proof that this exotic matter for the AD exists and that it can be produced i will be the happiest person on earth until then i really do not deserve such hatred from u guys just because i brought you back down to reality.

Casimir Effect. Just because you are completely ignorant of the underlying theory, doesn't mean everyone else is equally ignorant.

[-Velocity-]

OK, if you're inside a black hole and somehow escape it with this miraculous warp drive, what time will it be in the universe? Won't an infinite amount of time have passed since the universe watched you fall into the black hole with your warp drive turned off?

Sorry if people doubting the validity of the warp drive offends you, but it seems to me that the warp drive offends the core operating principles of the universe. Even if our current theory says they might be possible (and that is still up for debate), I do believe we will eventually discover they are impossible.

Edited April 17, 2014 by |Velocity|

[Accelerando]

Accepting the reality can be a very hard thing i know that from experience but you will live better after that.

It's a massive display of arrogance that you can turn face and push your own views on how the universe works so adamantly immediately after saying that "Someone claiming to understand everything is just an idiot to me, the wise man understands that he does not understand anything". You should ask KASASpace out for dinner; I'm sure you'd have a great time together.

[sal_vager]

Guys, I'm sorry but I'm closing this one, it's an unanswerable question and all anyone can possibly do is speculate.

This would not be a bad thing normally but this thread is turning to arguments, anger and name calling.