The Use of Lasers Could Detect Alien Warp Drives

VIVA – Scientists have proposed using lasers for the world's largest gravitational wave observatory to scan for ripples in space-time left over from a giant alien spaceship.

Gravitational waves come out when massive objects move through space. Larger objects, such as planets, neutron stars, or black holes that produce more prominent gravitational waves, have mass moving through space. Larger objects, such as planets, neutron stars, or black holes, produce more prominent gravitational waves.

These space-time ripples were first directly detected in 2015, but since then, scientists have gotten better at detecting the waves as they spin through our cosmic landscape.

Now, new calculations published on December 5 to the preprint database arXiv suggest that the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) can look beyond conventional sources for these space-time ripples. Colossal alien spacecraft traveling at high speeds, or pushed along by warp drives, would also produce the telltale vibrations, the authors said, as reported from Live Science site, December 23, 2022.

The LIGO detector sees gravitational waves from the tiny distortions they make in space-time as they pass through. It consists of two intersecting L-shaped detectors each with two arms 2.48 miles (4 kilometers) long and two identical laser beams inside.

The experiment is designed so that if gravitational waves pass through the Earth, the laser beam on one arm of the detector will be compressed. While the other would expand, creating a small change in the relative path length of the beam arriving at the detector.

However, the curvature of space-time created by even the largest gravitational waves is very small. This means that LIGO is extremely sensitive and requires strict maintenance and calibration.

To see how far this sensitivity can be stretched, the scientists made calculations of the smallest object, which would produce gravitational waves that could be detected on Earth. Moreover, to be detected by LIGO, an alien mothership would have to weigh roughly the same as Jupiter, travel at one-tenth the speed of light, and be within 326,000 light-years of Earth.

The physicists also note that advanced alien warp drives would create gravitational wave patterns that are distinguishable from natural sources and if detected, these alien waves could give humans clues on how to reverse engineer the technology.

“This is because the shape of the GW signal is entirely dependent on the trajectory of the object. Thus, as a burst signal is detected, one can attempt to reason the qualities of the transportation mechanism present based on the shape of the GW signal." the researcher stated.