The Physics of FTL Travel

Can humanity ever travel faster than light, or does every shortcut through spacetime break causality itself? We explore warp drives, wormholes, tachyons, and why the universe pushes back.

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Credits:

The Physics of FTL Travel

Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur

Editor: Lukas Konecny

Music Courtesy of Stellardrone & Chris Zabriskie

Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images

Chapters

0:00 Intro

0:12 Faster Than Light Is the Wrong Question

4:18 Spacetime Engineering: Moving the Map Instead of the Ship

5:24 Warp Drives: Surfing Spacetime

11:46 Wormholes: Shortcuts with a Side of Time Travel

13:20 Hyperspace: Shortcuts Through the Bulk

15:11 Solitons: The Positive Energy Challenge

17:35 The Krasnikov Tube: Building a Star-Road

20:30 Natural Relativistic Loopholes: Cosmic Strings and Tipler Cylinders

25:05 Tachyons: The Simplest Way to Break Time

28:04 Vacuum & Time-Advance Effects: When Causality Bends, Just a Little

32:19 Quantum Red Herrings

35:42 Nebula

36:54 Why the Universe Pushes Back: Chronology Protection and Self-Defeating Physics

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