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Physics
Special and General Relativity
Alcubierre Warp Drive: 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Impossibility?
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[QUOTE="PeterDonis, post: 6024599, member: 197831"] Unfortunately, you can't, at least not if by "frame of reference" you mean "a frame of reference the way it works in special relativity", which is what you appear to be assuming. If there is an Alcubierre drive present, spacetime is not flat, and you can't construct a global inertial frame the way you can in SR. That means you can't use intuitions about the way things would appear in a global inertial frame in SR. You are assuming that photons travel in the presence of an Alcubierre drive the same way they travel in flat spacetime. This is not the case. Consider, for example, a photon emitted directly forward by the spaceship inside the Alcubierre drive's warp bubble. If we take your statement that the ship is traveling at 2c with respect to the "Earth frame" at face value, then the ship should pass that photon and leave it behind. But it won't; the photon will arrive at the ship's destination before the ship does. I'm not sure if anyone has done a detailed analysis of how observers moving at various speeds well outside an Alcubierre drive's warp bubble would see the warp bubble and the ship inside it moving. But I do know that the simple analysis you are trying to make using SR intuitions is not correct. [/QUOTE]
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Special and General Relativity
Alcubierre Warp Drive: 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Impossibility?
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