Do Alcubierre Drives Mandate Time Travel, or Just Allow it?

So, I've heard that while Alcubierre drives might present a semi-plausible way of getting around the light speed limit (if you can get ahold of negative energy), they do so at the expense of creating backwards time travel. Is this an inevitable consequence of using such a drive, or just a possible way of using it? If you plan on using an Alcubierre drive to travel faster-than-light to a distant location, and then travel faster-than-light back to your starting point, will the nature of your drive mean that, no matter what you do, you'll have gone back in time?

I'm running off the assumption that, if there's a way to use an Alcubierre drive without violating causality, then I can handwave in an explanation about how attempts to use such drives to go back in time create insane amounts of radiation which vaporize everything inside the warp bubble, creating a practical barrier to use of them for time travel.

posted about 5 years ago

FlyingLemmingSoup‭

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