Talk:Spacewarp

message: Concerns about this article:
* The article appears to heavily use terms that are not generally standard within the physics community ("energy strings", "timewarp", "transwarp", and arguably "spacewarp" itself). The closest matches (superstring, time travel, time hole wormhole variant, and Alcubierre drive, respectively) have meanings quite different from the ones apparently intended here, while "space warp" is ambiguous enough to be meaningless.
* The article refers to "several theoreticians", but doesn't name any of them or cite their work.
* The article appears to be trying to present itself as a technical article, but the only citation present is a work of fiction.
* The article claims "spacewarp" and manipulation of "energy strings" are a feature of the "Contact" film/novel, but the actual mode of transportation used in the novel and the movie adaptation involves wormholes.
If there are bona fide physics publications using these terms, please cite them and adapt the article to explain them more clearly. Otherwise, this should probably be deleted.
--Christopher Thomas 06:52, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Original version

message: This article cites a highly selective portion of the extensive literature on warp drives and related concepts like quantum inequalities (relevant to the question of whether large negative energy densities can be attained or sustained).  The current status of this concept is much less optimistic than the article would have you believe.  It is by no means undisputed that problems have been "solved" as claimed in the article.  See the arXiv.
This article appears to be trying to discuss the same topic as Alcubierre metric, but from a biased point of view. ---CH 21:48, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewrite for accuracy and [[WP:NPOV]]

message: They include:
#"Many of the problems with the Alcubierre drive were resolved by Chris Van Den Broeck in 1999 in a paper also published in Classical and Quantum Gravity. By contracting the 3+1 dimensional surface area of the 'bubble' being transported by the drive, while at the same time expanding 3 dimensional the volume contained inside, Van Den Broeck was able to reduce the total energy needed to transport small atoms to less than 3 solar masses."  Actually, this is disputed.
#"Later work by González-Díaz resolved the problem of quantum instability; at least for 2 dimensions. In his paper published in Physical Review D, Vol. 62, González-Díaz proposed considering closed, time-like curves. This refinement allows for multiply-connected spaces, closing the geodesic incompletemeness and satisfying quantum instability requirements."  Likewise disputed.
#"Recently Boris Volfson applied for and was issued a patent for a device he claims works just like an alcubierre drive."  True but very misleading, since the mainstream view is that Volfson is a crank and that this patent was yet another example of bizzare patent issued for a "device" which has no chance of working. 
The mainstream view is in fact that "warp drives" can most likely not be physically realized.  I also point out that it would be very misleading to state (as various WP article state or have stated until I noticed and corrected them) that papers by Alcubierre and others give solutions to the Einstein field equation which exhibit "warp drive" like effects.  In fact, these are Lorentzian spacetimes but they are in no sense "solutions" to the EFE.  I know that there are many enthusiastic fans of "warp drives" out there, but please don't try to mislead WP readers about the scientific status of this concept.  TIA---CH 19:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Misleading claims in current version