5/8/2023 0 Comments Ftl best ship![]() ![]() Star Trek provided that energy with a made-up element called dilithium: in crystal form, it is supposedly able to contain enormous, explosive reactions of matter and antimatter. Just as wormholes would require massive amounts of energy - and some as-yet unknown material to sustain it - so would warp drives. Unfortunately, Alcubierre's proposal raises the same theoretical problems as wormhole travel. By contracting space ahead of the ship and expanding it behind, a spacecraft could “ride a wave” forward. Inspired by Star Trek, Alcubierre described an engine creating an energy field with lower density than the vacuum of space. In 1994, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a means of FTL space travel consistent with general relativity. The invention of the warp drive in the late 21st century is presented as a turning point for human civilization akin to the agricultural revolution or the printing press.Īnd, outlandish as it sounds, warp technology may be possible in reality. Without warp technology, as we saw in the movie Star Trek: First Contact, humans never would have met spacefaring races like the Vulcans or founded the United Federation of Planets. Any speed above seven risks damage to the engines or the ship itself. Warp six is common cruising speed for the USS Enterprise NCC-1701. According to the writer’s guide for The Original Series, warp factor one is equal to breaking the light barrier warp two is equal to 8x the speed of light warp three is 27x light speed. Star Trek’s different warp speeds aren’t just technobabble (opens in a new tab). The Enterprise is basically riding a bubble of regular 3-D space while the universe changes around it. It compresses space in front of the craft and expands it behind. Instead, a warp drive bends space itself. Like an Einstein-Rosen bridge, warp technology skirts around the impossibility of accelerating a ship past the speed of light. Even if you’re not a fan of the various Starfleet adventures that have hit our screens over the last 50 years, you’re probably familiar with terms like “warp factor five.” Warp technology is synonymous with the Star Trek series. Fairly high, considering how many of Einstein's predictions have been proven right. ![]() On the other hand, physicists like Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne have theorized wormholes could be theoretically stabilized with the right amount of energy. Fuller argued such a bridge would collapse too quickly. A 1962 paper by John Archibald Wheeler and Robert W. Some spoilsport scientists claim a wormhole caused by some sort of supermassive black hole would likely be too unstable to go through. Einstein-Rosen bridges are key to Rick and Morty’s various misadventures the mad scientist’s portal gun can open doorways to other galaxies and parallel realities. Wormhole theory also allows for the possibility of traveling between universes. 2, while the Revengers escape from Sakaar through “The Devil’s Anus” in Thor: Ragnarok, described by Bruce Banner as “a neutron star colliding with an Einstein-Rosen Bridge” (read: plot device). Similar doorways are shown as part of a galactic superhighway system in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. Invading aliens open a wormhole-like portal over New York city in The Avengers. The Bifrost that allows Thor to travel from Asgard to Earth is explicitly described as an Einstein-Rosen bridge by Dr. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is littered with wormholes. Here are some of the most popular kinds of fictional FTL travel, and how they rate in reality. Others just kind of made it up as they went along. Some writers have drawn on real science and principles to explain their physics-bending technology. The genre is full of examples of starships that can zip across the cosmos at speeds that are highly convenient. We haven’t cracked the faster-than-light (FTL) ceiling yet. Let’s just say you’re going to need a lot of podcasts for the trip. (opens in a new tab) We don’t have a spaceship that can go faster than the speed of light the fastest speed we can reach using nuclear power is 4.5 percent of lightspeed. With current technology, it would take us a century to reach Alpha Centauri. Even within our solar system, massive distances make travel timely and difficult to plan. Alpha Centauri – the nearest star system to our own – is more than 4 light years away. Space is big, as Douglas Adams famously wrote (opens in a new tab) in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This post is part of Science of Sci-Fi (opens in a new tab), Mashable's ongoing series dissecting the science (or lack of science) in our favorite sci-fi movies, TV shows, and books. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |