“The bottom line is, nature can do it,” said White. “So the salient question is, ‘can we?'”
In the “Star Trek” TV shows and films, the U.S.S. Enterprise’s warp engine allows the ship to move faster than light, an ability that is, as Spock would say, “highly illogical.”
However, there’s a loophole in Einstein’s general theory of relativity that could allow a ship to traverse vast distances in less time than it would take light. The trick? It’s not the starship that’s moving — it’s the space around it.
In fact, scientists at NASA are right now working on the first practical field test toward proving the possibility of warp drives and faster-than-light travel. Maybe the warp drive on “Star Trek” is possible after all. [See also: Warp Drive: Can It Be Done? (Video)]
According to Einstein’s theory, an object with mass cannot go as fast or faster than the speed of light. The original “Star Trek” series ignored this “universal speed limit” in favor of a ship that could zip around the galaxy in a matter of days instead of decades. They tried to explain the ship’s faster-than-light capabilities by powering the warp engine with a “matter-antimatter” engine. Antimatter was a popular field of study in the 1960s, when creator Gene Roddenberry was first writing the series. When matter and antimatter collide, their mass is converted to kinetic energy in keeping with Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc2.
In other words, matter-antimatter collision is a potentially powerful source of energy and fuel, but even that wouldn’t be enough to propel a starship to faster-than-light speeds.
Nevertheless, it’s thanks to “Star Trek” that the word “warp” is now practically synonymous with faster-than-light travel.
Is warp drive possible?
Decades after the original “Star Trek” show had gone off the air, pioneering physicist and avowed Trek fan Miguel Alcubierre argued that maybe a warp drive is possible after all. It just wouldn’t work quite the way “Star Trek” thought it did.
Things with mass can’t move faster than the speed of light. But what if, instead of the ship moving through space, the space was moving around the ship?
Space doesn’t have mass. And we know that it’s flexible: space has been expanding at a measurable rate ever since the Big Bang. We know this from observing the light of distant stars — over time, the wavelength of the stars’ light as it reaches Earth is lengthened in a process called “redshifting.” According to the Doppler effect, this means that the source of the wavelength is moving further away from the observer — i.e. Earth.
So we know from observing redshifted light that the fabric of space is movable. [See also:What to Wear on a 100-Year Starship Voyage]
The Latest Bing News on:
Faster-than-light travel
- Astrophysicist Says It’s Likely We Can Travel Through Wormholeson January 13, 2021 at 2:02 pm
Wormholes, or theoretical bridges connecting distant points in spacetime, are quickly being plucked from the realm of science fiction and brought into scientific reality. Of course, there are lots ...
- Star Trek: Discovery season 3 failed its characters and plotson January 8, 2021 at 7:46 pm
Season 3’s primary conflict is the Burn, a mysterious event that affected dilithium — the element responsible for faster-than-light travel and much of Trek’s other wondrous technology ...
- 200 mph Tesla Model S 'Plaid' may arrive sooner than expected, Elon Musk teaseson January 5, 2021 at 4:01 pm
The Plaid name is borrowed from the sci-fi comedy movie "Spaceballs" where it is used to describe faster-than-light speed. The car features three electric motors with an advertised combined output ...
- Is Time Travel Possible?on January 5, 2021 at 4:00 pm
The way scientists conceive of time has change tremendously since Newton proposed the first concrete picture of time, and these new models open up the possibility of time travel. Want to tell ...
- Ask Ethan: Does The Expanding Universe Break The Speed Of Light?on January 1, 2021 at 11:14 pm
Let’s start with the rule you know: that nothing can travel faster than light. Although this rule is normally attributed to Einstein — it’s a cornerstone of Special Relativity — it was ...
- Matt Gurney: Israel’s hard-earned COVID-19 vaccination prowesson December 31, 2020 at 9:55 am
that’s a Star Trek reference — “warp speed” refers to the space-bending propulsion method that allow starships to travel (much) faster than light, making the entire Star Trek universe ...
- How Far Could A Spaceship Go If We Never Ran Out Of Thrust?on December 29, 2020 at 4:00 pm
preventing us from teleporting or traveling faster than light, might not ever be overcome. Even without invoking any new physics, we’d be able to travel surprisingly far in the Universe ...
- The best sci-fi movies everyone should watch onceon December 17, 2020 at 4:01 pm
Aliens, astronauts, time travel – you name it, there’s a dazzling sci-fi film about it. That makes compiling a list of the best sci-fi nigh on impossible. For one, where do you start?
- Experiment with ‘faster than light’ neutrino particles open dreams of time travelon December 16, 2020 at 4:44 am
Sub-atomic particles apparently travelling faster than light could force a major rethink of theories about how the cosmos works and even allow dreams of time travel and extra dimensions ...
- Tag: Albert Einsteinon November 23, 2020 at 10:54 am
Sub-atomic particles apparently travelling faster than light could force a major rethink of theories about how the cosmos works and even allow dreams of time travel and extra dimensions ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Faster-than-light travel
The Latest Bing News on:
Warp Drive
- Biden chooses former FDA chief Kessler to help lead U.S. vaccine driveon January 15, 2021 at 3:36 pm
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has chosen David Kessler, the ex-head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for a senior role in the new administration's efforts to boost the availability of COVID ...
- Biden taps D.C. veteran David Kessler for vaccination driveon January 15, 2021 at 1:59 pm
David Kessler will replace Moncef Slaoui, who will take on a limited advisory role with the government's vaccine accelerator.
- Biden chooses ex FDA chief Kessler to help lead U.S. vaccine drive - NYTon January 15, 2021 at 9:31 am
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has chosen David Kessler, the ex-head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to help lead the COVID-19 vaccine push Operation Warp Speed, the New York Times reported ...
- Biden taps former FDA chief David Kessler to lead vaccine science, drive to vaccinate Americanson January 15, 2021 at 5:16 am
President-elect Joe Biden has picked a former Food and Drug commissioner to lead vaccine science in his drive to put 100 million shots into the arms of Americans in his administration’s ...
- Biden picks former FDA commissioner Dr. David Kessler to lead Operation Warp Speed, the government's vaccination driveon January 15, 2021 at 2:56 am
Dr. David Kessler has worked closely alongside President-elect Joe Biden as an advisor to his transition team on COVID-19.
- Driving A Koenigsegg One:1 Will Warp Your Understanding Of What’s Possible In A Caron January 13, 2021 at 4:44 pm
Every single car to roll out of Koenigsegg’s factory in Sweden is special, but the limited-run One:1 is certainly one of the most remarkable. Based on the Agera, the One:1 was unveiled at the Geneva ...
- New, bigger store in Creve Coeur gives Warp Drive Toys more possibilitieson January 9, 2021 at 3:51 am
Warp Drive Toys was outgrowing its original Pekin location and has moved to a new, larger premises in Creve Coeur.
- No Warp Drives, No Transporters: Science Fiction Authors Get Realon December 13, 2020 at 9:17 am
"I guess my working principle was, 'What would it really be like?' So no hyperspace. No warp drive. No magical thing that isn't going to really happen to get us there," Robinson says. Over the ...
- Time Warp Drive-In: Strange Christmas 7on December 10, 2020 at 12:39 pm
Explore the more bizarre, demented side of holiday cinema with a duet of disturbed yuletide horrors, the original 1974 Black Christmas and the 1984 Silent Night, Deadly Night.
- Has NASA Really Created A Warp Drive?on April 27, 2015 at 10:09 am
The piece of kit responsible for the sudden warp-drive frenzy is called the Electromagnetic Drive or EM Drive for short. It’s an innovative thruster that was built to steer rockets without the ...