# What's the 3d equation of the Alcubierre warp?

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1. Oct 19, 2015

### Teslanumber1

What I mean by this is what's the 3d equation of the alcubierrie warp effect? You know when space is contracted infront of the ship, and inflated behind it in terms of z like this eqaurion for a rain drop z=(sin(2x+y)+sin(5y+2x))/5? Here's the photo if you don't understand what I'm talking about https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Alcubierre.png

Last edited: Oct 19, 2015
2. Oct 19, 2015

### Staff: Mentor

There isn't a "3d equation" for the Alcubierre warp spacetime. Spacetime is 4-dimensional, not 3-dimensional.

A brief summary of the math is given on the same Wikipedia page that shows the picture you linked to. Have you read that page? Do you have questions about what is said there?

3. Oct 19, 2015

### Teslanumber1

I'm not acfually asking for the eqautions that represent warp drive just the picture I linked which is only 3d dimensional, and which only is supposed to help visualize what happens with a alcubierre drive.

4. Oct 19, 2015

### Staff: Mentor

That picture is not a 3-dimensional picture of anything. It's a way of trying to very heuristically represent what the warp drive does to spacetime, not space.

5. Oct 19, 2015

### Teslanumber1

Yes but the actual picture shown is 3 dimensional is it not? On the x,y, and z plane? I'm simply asking what 3d function would represent that particular picture that just so happens tries to helps us visualize warp. Maybe it would have been better, and more fruitful to ask for examples of some 3d wave functions.

6. Oct 19, 2015

### Staff: Mentor

Not really. It's an attempt to show the geometry of a 2-dimensional "slice" out of a 4-dimensional spacetime, and since the slice is curved, it is shown embedded in a 3-dimensional space. But the 3-dimensional space is not physically real.

7. Oct 19, 2015

### Teslanumber1

I'm really not asking anything about the mathematics, or physics, or intricacies of warp drive as quite frankly that's completely beyond me at my current education level, I am asking what's the 3 dimensional equation used to plot the photo that I linked.

8. Oct 19, 2015

### Staff: Mentor

Well, this is a forum for discussing physics, so we usually assume that's what people come here to discuss.

I don't know. Since that equation isn't physically meaningful, I don't know if it is going to appear in any sources that discuss the physics of the Alcubierre drive.

9. Oct 20, 2015

### PWiz

It's just the intersection of a plane with an elliptical disc at a non-zero angle with some special effects added around the intersection points. There is no one specific set of functions; for example, $\frac {x^2}{4^2} + \frac{y^2}{2^2} =1$ being defined at $z=0$ only and the plane $z=x$ would produce the same thing (except for the special effects).