Ever since the Sci-fi TV series Star Trek telecast, the show has left people baffled with thousands of questions.
The science fiction series has always been intertwined between real-life science since the past decades. It has inspired technologies that people use daily.
Of many remarkable events shown in the series, warp drive was one of the many futuristic ideas that caught the attention of many people across the globe. In fact, it was the very first theory proposed in Star Trek, allowing it to travel faster than light across the galaxy. Thus, opposing Einstein’s Theory of Relativity – prevents anything from moving faster than light.
Miguel Alcubierre, a theoretical physicist in 1994 developed a theory called the Alcubierre drive. He created a bubble within space-time that would twist distances making it possible for anything to travel long distances within the bubble. Most people thought this made perfect theoretical sense, but practically it wasn’t workable.
However, to prove them wrong, Joseph Agnew, an undergrad from the University of Alabama wanted to test the theory. Joseph says, “Mathematically if you fulfill all the energy requirements, they can’t prove that it doesn’t work.” “Suppose you have a craft that’s in the bubble,” he continues, quoted in a university press release on the talk. “What you would do is, you’d compress space-time ahead of the craft and expand space-time behind it.”
But don’t you think Einstein’s theory of relativity throws a wrench into the whole thing since there’s nothing that can travel faster than the speed of light. As such, when an object travels faster, they tend to get heavier. And the heavier they get, the harder it is to achieve acceleration. In short, it is not at all possible to get to the speed of light.
But what is warp drive?
Arguably, the warp drive is said to be the holy grail of space exploration. It is said to possess the capability of having a propulsion system that can travel faster than light speed travel. With this, don’t you think it will be possible for humans to reach any corner of the galaxy whenever they want?
Considering Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, it sure does look it will be highly impossible to break the concept. But will it?
