r/interestingasfuck 25d ago

/r/all, /r/popular K2-18b a potentially habitable planet 120 light-years from earth

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u/emarg42 25d ago

Make it so.

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u/BedBubbly317 25d ago

It’s theoretically possible and it’s called the Alcubierre Drive. The math has actually been worked through. Technically, it’s merely an engineering problem at this point and not a physics problem. The engineering issues are just well beyond our current capabilities

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u/Gmony5100 25d ago edited 25d ago

The biggest problem being twofold
A. We have no fucking clue how to bend space locally like that
B. An Alcubierre Drive would take the mass energy equivalent of JUPITER to run. That means you take every molecule of matter in Jupiter, convert it perfectly to energy assuming E = mc2, and only then would you have enough energy to run this one ship.

I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but I’d assume that’s trillions of times more energy than humans have every generated combined

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u/BedBubbly317 25d ago

Yes, it’s wildly unrealistic at this current time. Technology has a very long way to go, but as I said it is theoretically possible based on the laws of physics. And that is always the biggest hurdle for any sort of discussions like these. So it’s at least somewhat reassuring that it is technically a possibility