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15-02-2025, 10:59 PM
Continue from above......
For White, the only solution that would extend the exploration of humanity beyond our solar system is to design a spacecraft that can travel the stars within a fraction of a human lifetime. In other words—warp drive.
Like many technologies White’s beloved Star Trek: The Original Series in the 1960s predicted, such as the flip phones and wireless headsets, warp drive is a science fiction creation that has demonstrated surprising scientific validity.
In the television show, switching to warp drive is as easy as putting your car into a higher gear and allows the U.S.S. Enterprise to blink out of existence as it skips through space-time at speeds quicker than light. Captain Kirk and his crew still have a head start of more than 200 years on this technology, and today’s warp drive science is still nowhere close to this ideal.
Here’s the modern science of warp drive, in a nutshell. Physicist Miguel Alcubierre published the prevailing model of warp drive in 1994, and it shows that warp speed travel could theoretically be possible. However, we first need to manipulate Einstein’s equations of general relativity using a type of exotic matter with negative energy. These equations essentially tell us that massive objects can distort space-time. A warp drive powered by this massive amount of energy would contort space-time into a bubble around the spacecraft, expanding space-time in front of the craft and compressing it behind. This warping would allow the craft itself to jump through interstellar space—without its passengers being any the wiser.
For White, the only solution that would extend the exploration of humanity beyond our solar system is to design a spacecraft that can travel the stars within a fraction of a human lifetime. In other words—warp drive.
Like many technologies White’s beloved Star Trek: The Original Series in the 1960s predicted, such as the flip phones and wireless headsets, warp drive is a science fiction creation that has demonstrated surprising scientific validity.
In the television show, switching to warp drive is as easy as putting your car into a higher gear and allows the U.S.S. Enterprise to blink out of existence as it skips through space-time at speeds quicker than light. Captain Kirk and his crew still have a head start of more than 200 years on this technology, and today’s warp drive science is still nowhere close to this ideal.
Here’s the modern science of warp drive, in a nutshell. Physicist Miguel Alcubierre published the prevailing model of warp drive in 1994, and it shows that warp speed travel could theoretically be possible. However, we first need to manipulate Einstein’s equations of general relativity using a type of exotic matter with negative energy. These equations essentially tell us that massive objects can distort space-time. A warp drive powered by this massive amount of energy would contort space-time into a bubble around the spacecraft, expanding space-time in front of the craft and compressing it behind. This warping would allow the craft itself to jump through interstellar space—without its passengers being any the wiser.
