Warped Drives and Dark Matter Proposals
Added 2022-12-14 20:15:01 +0000 UTCLooking for Warp Drives with LIGO?
A new pre-print claims that LIGO could detect warp drives. Alas, the analysis in the paper isn’t about warp drives, it’s about any massive accelerated object. It is correct that such an object would emit gravitational waves and if it’s large enough, that might be measurable. This isn’t new though and has been studied before.
It is extremely questionable that a reasonably-sized propelled space-craft would create gravitational waves in LIGO’s sensitivity range. I therefore suggest you remain skeptical of the claims in the paper and wait whether it passes peer-review. I explained the status of warp drives in this video.
Yet Another Proposal For a Dark Matter Detector
A group of physicists has proposed to send two precise atomic clocks into the inner ranges of our solar system to look for a halo of ultralight dark matter. Press release here, preprint here, published paper here. It’s unclear whether dark matter is made of particles. Even if it is, we have no reason to think that it’s made of ultralight particles in particular, and not all of them form halos around the sun. All that to say, I don’t think this is a promising experiment.
The Other Side of Physics
Last month, I gave a talk at TEDxNewcastle about some topics in my new book. The recording is now available on YouTube.
