![]() Still, building a warp drive remains a distant dream. "It is generally believed that for a minuscule fraction of a second at the beginning of the universe, all of space did indeed expand much faster than the speed of light," said Cleaver. As the Big Bang unfolded, the universe is thought to have undergone a period of "inflation," when space rapidly ballooned, an event that helps explain the cosmic structure we see today. ![]() "Objects inside the warp bubble would be at rest with regard to the warp bubble but would also be moving faster than the speed of light with regard to the surrounding space outside the bubble."Īs wild as moving space-time faster than light sounds, it may have happened before. "The warp bubble is a volume of space that might be able to move at speeds faster than light as measured by space surrounding the bubble," said Cleaver. Ī "warp bubble" around a ship, for instance, could make space-time itself contract in front of the ship and expand behind it. "It's one of the little loopholes we think we may have in circumventing the relativity of Albert Einstein," said Obousy. In a nutshell, that's the general relativity-beating concept behind a lot of sci-fi starships. But the theory "places no limits on the speeds at which space itself expands or contracts," said Gerald Cleaver, a professor of physics at Baylor University. General relativity says objects cannot travel faster than the speed of light as measured in local surrounding space. (Ever clever, "Star Trek" writers got around this issue with a path-clearing "deflector dish.")Ī possible solution to the mass, energy and gas-missile issues might be to take space "with" you rather than try to plow through it. ![]() As a result, one would need infinite energy to keep chugging along at light speed, Obousy said.Īnother showstopper: For a ship traveling at near-light speeds, stray, rare atoms of hydrogen gas permeating space would become hull-busting missiles. Most works of science fiction have it right in implying that traveling through "normal space" at superluminal velocities appears impossible.Īccording to general relativity, as an object accelerates toward the speed of light, its mass increases and eventually becomes infinite. "Certain discoveries could lead to exciting technology in the future." "I'm excited by what we’re exploring on the edge of theoretical physics," said Robert Obousy, president of Icarus International, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to achieving interstellar flight by 2100. Will humans ever get to hop between the stars? Scientists do have a few intriguing areas of study that someday could yield a way to skirt or even overturn general relativity.
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