# Could a warp drive escape a black hole?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [July 31, 2026, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037 "2026-07-31T03:15:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/21 "2026-07-31T11:49:51Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#):
>
> If it was on paper it seems like somebody would have noticed it by now.
Lots of things have been theorized on paper before being found (e.g. black holes).
I would not hold my breath on this one though.
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/22 "2026-07-31T12:48:03Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#):
>
> Lots of things have been theorized on paper before being found (e.g. black holes).
[ ](https://media.tenor.com/4p0UTKrptHsAAAAM/flew-over-your-head.gif)
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/23 "2026-07-31T12:57:16Z")
Lots of methods for effectively exceeding the speed of light have been proposed which are consistent with general relativity. The one that most closely resembles a fictional “warp drive” is the Alcubierre one, but all of them involve the use of negative mass. Which not only has never been observed, but if it were possible, it would have all sorts of other extremely unsubtle effects, such that we would expect to have observed those effects already.
Also, in relativity, anything that can get you from point A to point B faster than light could get there in a vacuum can also be used to time travel into the past, and vice-versa.
> [@eburacum45](#):
>
> My preferred method for escaping a black hole is via a wormhole. If you can multiply-connect two distinct regions of space with a wormhole they stay connected so long as the wormhole persists; it doesn’t matter if one of those locations is inside a black hole, in another universe or even in the distant past or future.
I’m not actually sure this one works… I think that if you did have a wormhole, and fed one end into a black hole, the result would just be a horizon forming around both ends of the wormhole. I guess you could change which black hole you were stuck in, but you’d still be stuck in a black hole.
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/24 "2026-07-31T13:14:09Z")
That was a joke???
Get a better sense of humor.
At least you are easily amused so I guess that’s good.
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/25 "2026-07-31T13:29:49Z")
I disagree.
Warp drives create a bubble in space-time, with the ship traveling like a surfer on a wave, at the leading edge.
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### Author:  [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/26 "2026-07-31T13:31:43Z")
Moderating:
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#):
>
> [](https://media.tenor.com/4p0UTKrptHsAAAAM/flew-over-your-head.gif)
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#):
>
> That was a joke???
>
> Get a better sense of humor.
>
> At least you are easily amused so I guess that’s good.
Both, stop with the personal attacks. You know better.
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### Author:  [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/27 "2026-07-31T14:48:43Z")
I’m mildly surprised this hasn’t become a “no true Scotsman” discussion. We all know that a TRUE warp drive could escape a black hole. If it can’t, it’s not a warp drive.
It’s right there in the Federation of Planets Handbook.
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### Author:  [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/28 "2026-07-31T15:09:45Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> Not locally. Space isn’t expanding against the “grid” of spacetime faster than the speed of light. It’s just that if it’s expand everywhere by even a tiny amount, over vast enough differences, those tiny amounts will add up to greater than the speed of light.
True; if we were to build a spaceship that could travel at nearly the speed of light, we could travel towards the edge of the known universe and eventually reach a region where expansion would carry us away from Earth at faster than c. No additional negative energy required; just the natural ‘dark energy’ that seems to be a fundamental feature of the universe.
Eventually expansion/dark energy would carry us to a location where we could never return to Earth, but we would be so far away at that point in time and space that this would be a minor consideration.
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> I think that if you did have a wormhole, and fed one end into a black hole, the result would just be a horizon forming around both ends of the wormhole.
I have heard this described as a _Cauchy horizon_; a barrier that forms around two regions of space-time that must be kept apart at all costs. You might be right.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/29 "2026-07-31T22:18:50Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> 1. Could you please tell us, via either specific fictional depiction or non-fiction article, what you mean when you say “warp drive”.
> 2. Could you be a bit more specific when you say “black hole”, because they are not all the same.
1. Alcubierre drive.
2. Kerr black hole, since those are the ones we can expect to realistically encounter.
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/30 "2026-07-31T22:29:13Z")
I do not think an Alcubierre Drive creates a “bubble.” It just shrinks space in front of it…if it was a real thing.
Star Trek has “warp bubbles” but I think that sci-fi is mostly an Alcubierre Drive.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2026, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/31 "2026-07-31T23:51:45Z")
The Alcubierre drive does have a bubble. That is, there is a spherical shell with a small thickness, such that all of the considerable curvature is confined to that shell, with space inside and outside of that shell both flat or nearly so.
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2026, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/32 "2026-08-03T23:09:08Z")
There was this paper
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.04495](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.04495)
which purports to describe that a warp bubble can intersect a black-hole horizon
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### Author:  [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2026, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/33 "2026-08-04T17:26:14Z")
I think it could work. But you would probably need to route power through the deflector dish and initiate an inverse tachyon pulse. And maybe reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
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### Author:  [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2026, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-warp-drive-escape-a-black-hole/1032037/34 "2026-08-04T17:43:22Z")
Kirk: OK, Scotty, when can you do that?
Scott: I’m workin’ as fast as I can, Captain!
Spock: The ship will be crushed by the black hole in 4.37 minutes
Kirk: Work faster or you’re fired
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