Negative Matter Propulsion

And where to find these exotic particles in the universe

Negative matter can help manipulate spacetime, allowing a warp drive to travel at superluminal speeds. Image from No Man’s Sky.

Negative matter is the key to everything.

Like a strange, golden treasure chest, finding negative matter in the universe would make even the wildest science fiction ideas a possibility. It would make fickle, snaking wormholes traversable, power warp drives to propel humans forward at remarkable speeds. With its naked singularities negative matter could even help reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity to create one all-encompassing, beautifully succinct theory of everything. Our faster-than-light ships would use this matter to create artificial gravity that would keep us grounded on our flights to far away worlds, or on trips backwards in time. And the ships — the ships it could power are what’s most unbelievable of all.

A negative matter space drive doesn’t need reaction mass or an energy source. Yet it grants the ship unlimited acceleration in any one direction. These drives hold the same glamour and grimness of perpetual motion machines. What they offer is fantastical, but perpetual motion machines which continue to function without any energy input are violations of our laws of physics. Negative matter space drives are not. Scientific papers by physicist Robert L. Forward show that not only does negative matter not violate our laws of conservation in regards to momentum and energy, but it might even exist already in the deserted bellies of the universe’s empty voids.

These exotic particles may be elusive but they are not at all prohibited by general relativity. In fact, Einstein himself in coming up with his iconic equations theorized that a negative counterpart to positive matter could exist. Since then negative matter has tumbled in and out of scientific papers, more recently cropping up as a possible explanation for both dark matter and dark energy.

While antimatter has also been proposed as a possible fuel for a space drive, it retains a positive mass and so it isn’t negative matter. The main difference between matter and antimatter is that the electrical charges are flipped. Pulsars, like the one in the artist’s illustration above, are thought to be the source of some antimatter particles. Image by Nahks Trehnl.

It’s a simple enough idea. Negative matter is the opposite of everyday, positive matter. It has negative mass instead of positive mass. Positive matter has a gravitational pull on objects around it and, like the moon to the Earth, the gravitational field…