Star Trek-style warp drive may be possible
Travelling faster than the speed of light, zooming to other planets with warp drive and bending the fabric of space-time itself may all be possible in the near future. Scientists at NASA are working to make Star Trek-style warp drive a reality.
NASA physicist Harold White presented his findings at this year’s 100 Year Starship Symposium, a government-funded program geared toward exploring and creating interstellar travel within the next 100 years.
White’s research is a further look into Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre’s ideas from 1994. Alcubierre theorized that warp drive could be achieved by creating enough energy to bypass an actual need to travel faster than the speed of light (which is thought to be impossible), by bending space-time itself and traveling through the wrinkle. Alcubierre’s problem was the amount of energy that it would take to create this bend is more energy than exists in the universe.
However, White says he’s reconfigured the equations to only need a reasonable amount of energy.
White and his team are already testing small-scale ways to create space-time warps.
Mollie Paige is an intern working at the Toronto Standard. You can follow her on twitter @MolliePB