I was watching a video on Alcubierre Drives, and it mentioned that they would violate the Weak Energy Condition, but didn’t really explain what it is. So, what is it?
In: Physics
Weak energy condition basically it’s the idea you can’t have negative energy density.
Energy density is, as far as ELI5 is concerned. The same as regular density, only for energy. So it’s just amount of energy in a given volume.
Alcubierre drives hypothetically work, in part, by have an area with a negative energy density. Which obviously violates that.
As far as relativity is concerned this it impossible, everything has positive energy. But there’s some weird quantum stuff that does appear to have negative energy. Whether that could ever be scaled up to create a warp drive is a bit of an open question.
Alcubierre Drives require an exotic matter that has a negative mass. since E=MC^2, this is synonymous with saying it requires a substance with negative energy density,
These substances work fine in our current formulas. they do weird things, but they do work mathematically, but we have never observed one in the real world.
The weak Energy Condition is a conjecture (unproven statement) or assumption (statement assumed to be true) that the reason we never observe negative mass/energy is that it is physically impossible for any region in our universe to have a negative energy density.
so since the Alcubierre Drives use negative mass, and the week energy condition assumes no negative mass exists, they are in conflict and only 1 can exist/be true
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