Harold 'Sonny' White

And that gets into – maybe we can unpack that in just a little bit. That gets into the idea of how the idea of a space warp works and how that traces back to those two circles on the Venn diagram, quantum mechanics and general relativity. Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah, so maybe what we can do – Jamie, I sent you – there's a slide that's got like a cartoon space warp.

It looks like a little sheet of a mesh or something like that. I don't know how to explain it. If you could pull up – There it is. There it is. Yes. Yes. That's the one. That's the one. So we actually did that graphic on the right for Nature, the journal Nature. They were doing an article on the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and so they asked us to – pull together that graphic.

It looks like a little sheet of a mesh or something like that. I don't know how to explain it. If you could pull up – There it is. There it is. Yes. Yes. That's the one. That's the one. So we actually did that graphic on the right for Nature, the journal Nature. They were doing an article on the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and so they asked us to – pull together that graphic.

It looks like a little sheet of a mesh or something like that. I don't know how to explain it. If you could pull up – There it is. There it is. Yes. Yes. That's the one. That's the one. So we actually did that graphic on the right for Nature, the journal Nature. They were doing an article on the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and so they asked us to – pull together that graphic.

And so this is an illustration of the idea of a space warp. Let me give just a little bit of background. You know, in physics, there is a speed limit that we have to acknowledge when we talk about trying to go somewhere really quickly. And so I like to call it the 11th commandment of physics, thou shalt not exceed the speed of light. It's kind of a hard and fast speed limit.

And so this is an illustration of the idea of a space warp. Let me give just a little bit of background. You know, in physics, there is a speed limit that we have to acknowledge when we talk about trying to go somewhere really quickly. And so I like to call it the 11th commandment of physics, thou shalt not exceed the speed of light. It's kind of a hard and fast speed limit.

And so this is an illustration of the idea of a space warp. Let me give just a little bit of background. You know, in physics, there is a speed limit that we have to acknowledge when we talk about trying to go somewhere really quickly. And so I like to call it the 11th commandment of physics, thou shalt not exceed the speed of light. It's kind of a hard and fast speed limit.

And so if you talk about trying to get to another star that's four and a quarter light years away, that should automatically set in your mind, well, shoot, we can't get there any quicker than four and a quarter light years. Right. There is a little bit of hope because there's a loophole in general relativity that establishes that hard speed limit.

And so if you talk about trying to get to another star that's four and a quarter light years away, that should automatically set in your mind, well, shoot, we can't get there any quicker than four and a quarter light years. Right. There is a little bit of hope because there's a loophole in general relativity that establishes that hard speed limit.

And so if you talk about trying to get to another star that's four and a quarter light years away, that should automatically set in your mind, well, shoot, we can't get there any quicker than four and a quarter light years. Right. There is a little bit of hope because there's a loophole in general relativity that establishes that hard speed limit.

General relativity says we can expand and contract space at any speed, and we see evidence for this. When we look at the nature of the cosmos, right after the Big Bang 14 billion years ago,

General relativity says we can expand and contract space at any speed, and we see evidence for this. When we look at the nature of the cosmos, right after the Big Bang 14 billion years ago,

General relativity says we can expand and contract space at any speed, and we see evidence for this. When we look at the nature of the cosmos, right after the Big Bang 14 billion years ago,

There was something called an inflationary phase, right, where if you were to pick two random points in this expanding bubble of the early cosmos, you stood on one point and you looked at another point and figured out how fast it was moving away from you. It would move away from you like 10 to the 30th, you know, 10 with 30 zeros times the speed of light. Wow.

There was something called an inflationary phase, right, where if you were to pick two random points in this expanding bubble of the early cosmos, you stood on one point and you looked at another point and figured out how fast it was moving away from you. It would move away from you like 10 to the 30th, you know, 10 with 30 zeros times the speed of light. Wow.

There was something called an inflationary phase, right, where if you were to pick two random points in this expanding bubble of the early cosmos, you stood on one point and you looked at another point and figured out how fast it was moving away from you. It would move away from you like 10 to the 30th, you know, 10 with 30 zeros times the speed of light. Wow.

Yeah, really, really, really fast, right? And so we know from astrophysics and cosmology that this is possible. And so this idea was kind of rattling around in a physicist's brain called Alcubierre, who said, hey, it's interesting. Nature can do it on a grand scale. Can we potentially do it in a purposeful way? And so he published a paper in 1994 that kind of encapsulated the mathematics

Yeah, really, really, really fast, right? And so we know from astrophysics and cosmology that this is possible. And so this idea was kind of rattling around in a physicist's brain called Alcubierre, who said, hey, it's interesting. Nature can do it on a grand scale. Can we potentially do it in a purposeful way? And so he published a paper in 1994 that kind of encapsulated the mathematics

Yeah, really, really, really fast, right? And so we know from astrophysics and cosmology that this is possible. And so this idea was kind of rattling around in a physicist's brain called Alcubierre, who said, hey, it's interesting. Nature can do it on a grand scale. Can we potentially do it in a purposeful way? And so he published a paper in 1994 that kind of encapsulated the mathematics

for this idea. And if you take his mathematics and you put it in a physical form, it's going to look like my little cartoon here on the right. And so you got the little ring that goes around the little surface here. It looks like a wave. And then there's a little central portion there. It kind of looks like a football, let's say.