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8 star trek warp drives (& which is the fastest).

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Star Trek: First Contact Mystery Of How First Warp Ship Landed Is Solved

Everyone in star trek who beat the borg, star trek's next show can rediscover ds9's lost klingon relic.

• Warp drive is the standard FTL engine in Star Trek, reaching up to Warp 10 cap, but may harm subspace.
• Starfleet explores Transwarp options, like Borg conduits & Quantum Slipstream, for faster travel.
• Proto-Drive & Spore Drive offer instant travel, each with unique pros & cons, pushing Starfleet ahead in FTL tech.

In order to seek out new life and new civilizations, Star Trek starships generally use warp drive to achieve faster-than-light (FTL) travel, because sub-light impulse engines would not have reached any alien civilizations within a human lifespan. Zefram Cochrane's (James Cromwell) 2063 flight of the Phoenix, Earth's first warp-capable vessel, in Star Trek: First Contact attracts the attention of the Vulcans, who initiate First Contact with Earth after witnessing the achievement. In Star Trek 's 24th century, warp drive is common on spacefaring vessels, with the USS Enterprise-D able to maintain a cruising speed of Warp 9.2 in Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Warp drive became the reliable means of propulsion used in the majority of Starfleet vessels, as well as the metric by which civilizations are deemed mature enough to be brought into the galactic neighborhood, according to General Order One, Starfleet's Prime Directive of non-interference with developing societies. As Starfleet explores further into the galaxy, more efficient warp engines can achieve higher warp factors to reach longer distances in shorter amounts of time. Like many other technologies, Star Trek 's warp drive continues to evolve, and newer propulsion systems that are variations on standard warp drive can take Star Trek starships further -- and faster -- than before.

Zefram Cochrane became the first human to achieve warp flight in Star Trek: First Contact, but how did his ship, the Phoenix, make it back to Earth?

8 Standard Warp Drive

The standard faster-than-light engine throughout star trek.

Standard warp drive covers a range of propulsion technology in Star Trek that operates on essentially the same principle of warping space to achieve FTL travel. In Starfleet vessels, warp drive operates by combining matter and anti-matter in the warp core reactor, where the output is mitigated by dilithium crystals and becomes plasma. Warp plasma powers all systems aboard a starship, in addition to being routed to the warp nacelles to generate the warp field that propels the starship. Warp is also achievable via other means, such as Romulan warp technology being powered by an artificial quantum singularity.

Between the 23rd and 24th centuries, the warp scale was reconfigured to accommodate the increasing capabilities of standard warp drive engines, with a cap of Warp 10. The technology that powered the warp drive remained the same. In an alternate future ( TNG season 7, episodes 25 & 26, "All Good Things") the warp scale was again reconfigured, but as of Star Trek: Picard , no such reconfiguration has occurred.

Standard warp drive can refer to the warp capabilities utilized by Starfleet's vessels, the starships operated by United Federation of Planets member worlds , and starships belonging to non-Federation species. While warp drive was invented on Earth by Zefram Cochrane in the 21st century, other Star Trek species invented warp drive much earlier than Earth did . Vulcans and Klingons, for example, had their own versions of warp drive centuries before Earth did. Starfleet continued to improve upon standard warp drive, reaching higher warp factors in far less time than their warp-capable predecessors did, and even began studies into transwarp technology.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

7 starfleet transwarp drive, star trek iii's failed experimental transwarp drive.

Transwarp drive is an umbrella term for any advanced warp drive that exceeds the normal cap of Warp 10. Starfleet has conducted two notable experiments with transwarp drives, both of which were unsuccessful. The first was in 2285, when the USS Excelsior was outfitted with an experimental Starfleet transwarp drive in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock . The experiment failed due to dilithium becoming unstable at speeds above warp 10, and the Excelsior was refitted with a standard warp drive after 2 years.

6 The Warp 10 Threshold Experiment

Star trek: voyager's infinite velocity in infinite mutations.

Starfleet's second attempt to achieve transwarp was an independent project conducted by Lt. Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) in Star Trek: Voyager season 2, episode 15 , "Threshold". The Cochrane, a Class 2 shuttle outfitted with an experimental warp drive using a new type of dilithium found in the Delta Quadrant, did achieve infinite velocity, but the experiment had the troubling side effect of mutating humans into amphibians. This was enough to shelve the project, despite the potential it held for returning the USS Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant sooner.

5 Borg Transwarp Drive

The borg use transwarp conduits through subspace.

The Borg Collective had a better handle on transwarp technology than Starfleet did, having assimilated the technological distinctiveness of several civilizations into their own in their quest for perfection. To achieve velocity beyond warp 10, the Borg utilize a system of transwarp conduits within subspace, which converge at a central transwarp conduit hub. New transwarp conduits can be generated by vessels with a deflector dish modified to emit tachyon bursts at the resonant transwarp frequency within a subspace field.

Borg transwarp conduits are characterized by a green color in Star Trek: Voyager season 5, episodes 15 & 16 "Dark Frontier", but become blue by Star Trek: Voyager season 7, episodes 25 & 26, "Endgame", due to the Borg assimilating quantum slipstream technology.

Any vessel equipped with Borg transwarp coils can use Borg transwarp conduits. While getting that technology is usually prohibitively difficult, Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) successfully scavenges a perfectly functioning transwarp coil from a damaged Borg ship in Star Trek: Voyager season 5, episodes 15 & 16 "Dark Frontier". The transwarp coil is later installed on the USS Voyager after tests on the Delta Flyer provide proof of concept, but Voyager isn't able to sustain the coil's operation.

The Borg were the deadliest enemy to face Starfleet and the Federation in a century, but many Star Trek heroes have defeated them to save the universe

4 Quantum Slipstream Drive

Star trek: voyager's flawed fast track home.

Unlike a traditional warp drive or transwarp drive, the quantum slipstream drive requires no anti-matter to achieve propulsion. Similar to Borg transwarp technology, the quantum slipstream drive redirects energy through the main deflector to penetrate the quantum barrier and open a slipstream, which carries the vessel through subspace like a current. Navigating through a quantum slipstream is difficult, and requires constant adjustment to match the slipstream's phase variance, much like navigating a raging river.

In Star Trek: Prodigy , a new USS Dauntless commanded by Admiral Kathryn Janeway is outfitted with a quantum slipstream drive capable of being used for brief amounts of time.

The USS Voyager crew learns about the existence of the quantum slipstream drive in Star Trek: Voyager season 4, episode 26, "Hope & Fear", when Starfleet seems to send the USS Dauntless to the Delta Quadrant, outfitted with a quantum slipstream drive. While this Dauntless is a Trojan horse, Lt. B'Elanna Torres spearheads the development of a quantum slipstream drive installed on the USS Voyager in Star Trek: Voyager season 5, episode 6, "Timeless". This quantum slipstream drive takes the USS Voyager only 300 light-years before a warning from the future prevents Voyager's destruction.

Star Trek: Voyager

3 proto-drive, powering starfleet's delta quadrant return in star trek: prodigy.

Starfleet's 2380s return to the Delta Quadrant requires the development of a new kind of faster-than-light travel. Enter the proto-drive, a propulsion system powered by a protostar within a containment field. When activated, the proto-drive engages in "proto-jumps" that traverse several thousand light-years in mere minutes, making travel between quadrants relatively easy. The proto-drive is designed for brief jumps only, with the expectation that only one jump at a time is required to carry out a mission on the opposite side of the galaxy, with another jump providing the return trip. To that end, standard warp drive is still the primary propulsion system on starships with a proto-drive.

The USS Protostar, Starfleet's experimental starship equipped with a proto-drive, is lost in time during its first mission back to the Delta Quadrant, which is commanded by Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran). In Star Trek: Prodigy season 1 , the Protostar itself is recovered in the present by a group of Delta Quadrant adolescents who use the proto-drive to seek out the Federation in the Alpha Quadrant, but Chakotay and the original Protostar crew remain stranded in the future. The proto-drive's success, however, prompts the construction of Starfleet's Protostar-class starships, each outfitted with a proto-drive.

Star Trek: Prodigy

2 spore drive, the displacement-activated spore hub drive in star trek: discovery.

With its instantaneous travel, Star Trek: Discovery 's spore drive is the clear winner as the fastest warp drive alternative in Star Trek . The USS Discovery was one of two Starfleet vessels outfitted with an experimental spore drive, designed by Commander Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Straal (Saad Siddiqui). Unlike standard warp drive, which warps space around the starship, Star Trek: Discovery 's spore drive physically displaces the USS Discovery into the mycelial plane, where it can jump instantaneously to any point in space along the sprawling mycelial network. After the destruction of the USS Glenn, the USS Discovery remained the only Starfleet ship to have a spore drive.

Spore drive presents an obvious tactical advantage in that it allows the USS Discovery to go where starships normally would not be able to go, and provides the element of surprise in both its arrival and departure. The spore drive is useless, however, without a sentient navigator who has a connection to the mycelial network. Stamets achieved this by injecting himself with tardigrade DNA, and Cleveland Booker's (David Ajala) Kwejian empathy also suffices, but these are unsustainable stopgap solutions to a long-term problem.

Star Trek: Discovery

1 pathway drive, star trek: discovery's post-burn warp alternative.

As Starfleet's newest faster-than-light engine in Star Trek: Discovery 's 32nd century, the Pathway Drive was designed to operate without the use of dilithium crystals to mediate the matter/anti-matter reaction that powers warp drive. The 31st century Burn rendered most of the galaxy's dilithium inert, making travel by standard warp drive difficult and inconvenient. A new source of active dilithium was found at the end of Star Trek: Discovery season 3, but dilithium remained a rare, non-renewable resource, necessitating the development of an alternative faster-than-light engine for Starfleet vessels.

Commander Stamets' spore drive was one such option, but the spore drive's reliance on a sentient navigator made it unsustainable as a long-term solution for Starfleet's warp drive alternative. Instead, Starfleet leaned into developing the Pathway Drive as Star Trek: Discovery 's spore drive replacement , which was successfully installed on the USS Voyager-J. Besides its independence from dilithium, not much is known about how Star Trek 's Pathway drive operates. The Pathway Drive represents a new era for Star Trek , with a shrinking galaxy that new forms of FTL travel and warp drive alternatives will no doubt provide access to, as Star Trek boldly goes into its own future.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Discovery are streaming on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Prodigy is streaming on Netflix.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek: First Contact are streaming on Max.

What happens when your warp drive fails? Scientists have the answer

A collapsing warp bubble like the one seen in Star Trek would set space ringing with gravitational waves.

New research "boldly goes" where physicists have never gone before, suggesting what would happen to the space around a failing warp drive.

Science fiction fans are more than familiar with the concept of a " warp drive ," a device that allows spacecraft to travel at velocities faster than light , aka so-called "superluminal" speeds. These instruments are typically written as being able to manipulate the very fabric of space and time, or spacetime. Yet, even hard-core sci-fi aficionados may be surprised to learn there are a few theoretical musings about warp drives in true science as well. The most famous example is Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre's " Alcubierre drive ."

In addition, a team from the Queen Mary University of London, Cardiff University, the University of Potsdam and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Gravitational Physics also discovered that if spaceships out there were already using superluminal warp drives, we could detect them via tiny ripples in spacetime called " gravitational waves " created if and when these drives break down.

"Even though warp drives are purely theoretical, they have a well-defined description in Einstein's theory of general relativity , and so numerical simulations allow us to explore the impact they might have on spacetime in the form of gravitational waves," team leader Katy Clough from Queen Mary University of London said in a statement.

Related: 'Warp drives' may actually be possible someday, new study suggests

Science fiction vs. science fact

Warp drives in both science fiction and true science are usually rooted in Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, known as general relativity. Postulated in 1915, general relativity suggests that objects with mass cause the four-dimensional fabric of spacetime to be warped. The effects of gravity that we experience arise from this warping.

The more mass an object has, the more extreme the curvature of space it generates and, thus, the stronger its gravitational effect. Light and other objects with mass are forced to journey around the complex warping of space.

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General relativity also suggests that when objects accelerate, they cause spacetime to "ring" with gravitational waves. However, objects on a planetary scale, like an accelerating car, have too little mass to create significant gravitational waves. However, massive objects like black holes and neutron stars that swirl around each other in binaries and eventually collide do create gravitational waves that can be detected here on Earth .

Clough and colleagues suggest that warp drives could also emit gravitational waves, especially if they fail.

Furthermore, Einstein based general relativity on his 1905 theory of special relativity ; the foundation of special relativity is that nothing with mass can move faster than the speed of light. 

That means sci-fi writers have to introduce circumstances that allow this rule to be broken, or at least slightly twisted, in order to consider faster-than-light travel. In DC Comics , for instance, there exists a ubiquitous field outside spacetime called the "speed force" that gives Wally West, the Flash, the energy needed to outrace light (and Superman , if you ask me). In Star Trek , exotic matter with negative mass allows the USS Enterprise to travel at faster-than-light or "warp speeds" by generating a warp bubble around the ship in which spacetime is warped, compressed ahead of the ship, and stretched out behind it. That means the USS Enterprise bends and warps spacetime itself, thus not breaking Einstein's special relativity rules, unlike the Flash and his speed force. 

This team looked at what would happen if a warp bubble like the one used in Star Trek either collapsed or if the containment of this hypothetical concept failed. To do this, they started with creating numerical simulations of spacetime.

They found that such an event would generate a burst of gravitational waves that is more high frequency than the "chirp" of spacetime ripples created when binary black holes or neutron stars collide and merge. 

Just as some light is too high frequency to be seen by our eyes, this high-frequency burst of gravitational waves would be beyond the detection capability of interferometers like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).

However, future gravitational wave detectors could be capable of detecting them.

"In our study, the initial shape of the spacetime is the warp bubble described by Alcubierre," team member Sebastian Khan of Cardiff University said. "While we were able to demonstrate that an observable signal could, in principle, be found by future detectors, given the speculative nature of the work, this isn't sufficient to drive future instrument development."

The team also found that a collapsing warp drive would emit alternating waves of "negative energy matter," then positive energy waves. Should these waves interact with ordinary non-exotic matter, that would give scientists another way of hunting for failed warp drives.

— How 'Star Trek' technology works (infographic)

— Warp speed: The hype of hyperspace

— What is dark energy?

The team now intends to investigate how the gravitational wave signal would change when considering other models of warp drives and the consequences of a collapse occurring while traveling at superluminal speeds.

Of course, all this is speculation, albeit well-founded and mathematically robust, as there is no real evidence warp drives could exist. But that doesn't mean these findings are without applications.

"For me, the most important aspect of the study is the novelty of accurately modeling the dynamics of negative energy spacetimes and the possibility of extending the techniques to physical situations that can help us better understand the evolution and origin of our universe," team member Tim Dietrich from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Gravitational Physics said in the statement.

The team's research was published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics.

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Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

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• Unclear Engineer I wonder what would happen inside a "warp bubble" if the warp drive fails. Seems like the occupants might get severely "warped" bent out of survivable shape in the deceleration process. Reply
• Delphince I'm flabbergasted Robert Lea decided to reference Star Trek 's technology without even knowing the basics of that technology. "In Star Trek, exotic matter with negative mass allows the USS Enterprise to travel at faster-than-light or "warp speeds" by generating a warp bubble around the ship in which spacetime is warped, compressed ahead of the ship, and stretched out behind it." No, and no. That's the Alcubierre drive, not a ST warp drive. "Negative mass" isn't used anywhere in the system, and nowhere in canon does it say that the warp field stretches and compresses spacetime, only that it creates a distortion with a propulsive effect due its shape. Reply

Delphince said: I'm flabbergasted Robert Lea decided to reference Star Trek 's technology without even knowing the basics of that technology. "In Star Trek, exotic matter with negative mass allows the USS Enterprise to travel at faster-than-light or "warp speeds" by generating a warp bubble around the ship in which spacetime is warped, compressed ahead of the ship, and stretched out behind it." No, and no. That's the Alcubierre drive, not a ST warp drive. "Negative mass" isn't used anywhere in the system, and nowhere in canon does it say that the warp field stretches and compresses spacetime, only that it creates a distortion with a propulsive effect due its shape.

Unclear Engineer said: I wonder what would happen inside a "warp bubble" if the warp drive fails. Seems like the occupants might get severely "warped" bent out of survivable shape in the deceleration process.

• Unclear Engineer What is the effect of "gravitational waves" on living tissue? The article states that they would be very high frequency gravitational waves. But, I would think they would also have extremely large amplitudes if they came from a spatial disruption that could move a space ship faster than c. So, if your head is "free falling" in the opposite direction from your "free falling" chest with sufficient amplitude to separate them by several inches, would there be any damage? This is just another aspect of the issues that arise from assumptions about space "inflating", with arguments about whether atoms get bigger or not, and so on for larger physical entities that are in the space that is having its size changed. "Waves" would change size in different amounts in different places at the same time. Reply
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What if you Flew Your Warp Drive Spaceship into a Black Hole?

Warp drives have a long history of not existing, despite their ubiquitous presence in science fiction. Writer John Campbell first introduced the idea in a science fiction novel called Islands of Space. These days, thanks to Star Trek in particular, the term is very familiar. It’s almost a generic reference for superliminal travel through hyperspace. Whether or not warp drive will ever exist is a physics problem that researchers are still trying to solve, but for now, it’s theoretical.

Recently, two researchers looked at what would happen if a ship with warp drive tried to get into a black hole. The result is an interesting thought experiment. It might not lead to starship-sized warp drives but might allow scientists to create smaller versions someday.

Remo Garattini and Kirill Zatrimaylov theorized that such a drive could survive inside a so-called Schwarzschild black hole. That’s provided the ship crosses the event horizon at a speed lower than that of light. Theoretically, the black hole’s gravitational field would decrease the amount of negative energy required to keep the drive going. If it did, the ship could pass through and somehow use it to get somewhere else without getting crushed. Furthermore, the mathematics behind this idea points the way toward the possible creation of mini-warp drives in lab settings.

What’s a Warp Drive?

Could scientists build a micro- or mini-warp drive in the lab? Good questions. To understand the team’s work, let’s look at the major players in this research: warp drives and black holes.

The idea is inspired by the fact that nothing can go faster than light speed. Given the distances in space, traveling to the nearest star would take years (if we could go at light speed). Going across a galaxy or to more distant galaxies would take years and many lifetimes. So, if you want to be a space-faring species, you must travel faster than light (FTL).

How would you do that? This is where warp drives come in. Theoretically, they allow you to put your spaceship inside a bubble that could slip through space at FTL speeds. That’s how the starships in Star Trek (and other SF stories) get across huge distances so quickly. The Star Trek ships use an energy source in a “warp core” to power warp field generators. They create the warp bubble in subspace. The ship uses that to go wherever the crew needs to be.

Do Physicists Like Warp Drive?

Such a warp drive is a tantalizing idea with many caveats. For example, generating a warp field requires an insane amount of energy. Some physicists suggest that it would take more energy than we’re capable of generating. Creating that energy would require huge amounts of exotic matter—something like “unobtanium”. So, that’s a problem right there.

Others say that creating such a drive goes against our current understanding of spacetime physics. However, that hasn’t stopped anybody from speculating on ways to make it happen. For example, Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre had an idea for such a drive in 1994. He suggested that it could create a bubble that would shift space around an object. He has continued his research about a ship that could get somewhere faster than light. However, he and others still point out various problems with both creating and sustaining a warp drive. That includes the idea that such a drive effectively isolates itself from the rest of the Universe. Among other things, it means the ship can’t control the drive that’s making it go. So, there are a still few bugs to work out.

About Black Holes

We are most familiar with black holes in terms of stellar mass and supermassive ones. These also sport accretion disks that convey material into the black hole. For example, the central supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A* in our own Milky Way Galaxy periodically gobbles down material. Then, it emits a belch of radiation. Other, more active galaxies send out jets of material emitted as the central supermassive black hole feeds continuously.

A black hole is a concentration of mass with gravity so strong that nothing, even light, can escape. In their study about black holes and warp drives, the authors used Schwarzschild black holes. These so-called simple “static” black holes curve spacetime, have no electric charge and are non-rotating. Essentially, they are good approximations for mathematical explorations of the characteristics of slowly rotating objects in space.

When A Ship with Warp Drive Crosses into a Black Hole

The Schwarzchild black hole is the “perfect” black hole to use in this theoretical exploration of a warp drive crossing the event horizon. To figure out the scenario, Garattini and Zatrimalov decided to mathematically combine the equations describing the black hole and the ones describing the warp drive. Among other things, they found that it’s possible to “embed” the warp drive in the outer region of the black hole. The warp bubble itself is much smaller than the black hole and needs to be moving toward it. The black hole’s gravity affects the energy conditions needed to create and sustain the warp drive. That means you can theoretically decrease the amount of negative energy required to sustain the warp bubble. In addition, the researchers suggest that if the warp bubble is moving at less than the speed of light, it effectively erases the black hole horizon.

The research team also described the idea that such an occurrence could evoke the conversion of virtual particles into real ones in an electric field. If so, it could lead to the creation of mini warp drives in the lab.

Changing the Black Hole a Bit

Interestingly, the team also suggests that, if the warp bubble is moving slowly and is much smaller than the black hole horizon, it could increase the entropy of the black hole. However, as they state in their closing arguments, “there are potential problematic issues in other physical situations: namely, when the warp drive is completely absorbed by the black hole, it may decrease its mass, and, therefore, its entropy.

Likewise, when there is a larger warp bubble passing through a black hole, it would produce a ”screening” effect and de facto eliminate the horizon, making it impossible to define the black hole entropy in the Hawking sense. If warp drives are possible in nature, these issues indicate that we still do not understand them from the thermodynamic point of view.”

Warp Drive Technology Remains to be Seen

So, while this research may prove valuable theoretically, and could lead to lab production of mini black holes, many questions remain. Perhaps in the future, when we understand the quantum mechanics behind both of these objects, we might find warp technology a slam-dunk. If so, then, as ships travel through black holes, we could face a weird time. For example, signals from inside a black hole could get carried out by a warp bubble merging from the singularity. That would allow us to send images or recordings of what it’s like inside the event horizon—something nobody knows about today. There’s also a chance that those fearsome black holes could make a warp drive less difficult to achieve since they won’t need so much exotic “negative energy” source material.

For More Information

Black Holes, Warp Drives, and Energy Conditions The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast Travel Within General Relativity Schwarzschild Black Hole Simulatio ns

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Star Trek's Science Advisor Reveals How Starfleet Quietly Fixed Relativity

It’s all about the warp bubbles.

In order for every ship in the Star Trek universe to boldly go, traveling at several times the speed of light is a must. Since before the original Star Trek even debuted, back in its very first pilot episode, “The Cage,” in 1964, Gene Roddenberry struggled with how relativity would work with an interstellar Starfleet. Assuming the Enterprise and other starships traveled at several times the speed of light, wouldn’t that also mean they would be skipping over the regular flow of time? In other words, when everyone in Star Trek warps from planet to planet, they all generally agree that it's the exact same time everywhere . But how?

Einstein’s theory of special relativity tells us that moving through space means alternations in the flow of time, and that time will move differently for those on planets rather than those in space. In the Star Trek universe, this means that the relative ages of Starfleet heroes should be all over the place. But they’re not. And now, after exactly sixty years of the franchise hand-waving this issue, 2024 became the year that Star Trek addressed the warp speed/relativity conundrum. In both Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 and Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 , the Trek universe is getting real about relativity. Inverse caught up with the Star Trek franchise's resident science advisor, astrophysicist Erin Macdonald to get clear answers on how warp drive’s relationship with relativity has finally been addressed.

Star Trek resident science advisor and astrophysicist Dr. Erin Macdonald in 2019, speaking about the importance of STEM education.

“What's great about Warp Drive is it scientifically could work,” Macdonald tells Inverse . “And the reason is that we are limited by the speed of light by traveling on the surface of space-time. So if you think of our universe as a sheet, the heavier you are, you dip it down and then that's harder to travel through. The lighter you are, it's easier. And then if you don't weigh anything, you just coast in a straight line, which is light. What warp drive is it's like, well, nothing says that space-time itself can't go faster than the speed of light.”

This is where things get interesting. In Star Trek: Prodigy , the USS Protostar uses a literal protostar in its core to go even faster than Star Trek’s regular warp drive. The dense gravity of an actual protostar is part of what makes this work, since manipulating gravity — a key player when it comes to time dilation — would be essential if you wanted to avoid the aging effects of relativity during spaceflight.

“We can always bring in relativity and space-time physics. Those are the relativistic aspects that you were talking about. Things like the Twin Paradox ,” Macdonald explains. She’s referring to the classic physics problem that states if one twin stayed on Earth and another twin traveled at a speed approaching the speed of light, the second twin would age slower than the first twin, and thus seem younger when meeting the twin still on Earth. So, why isn’t this happening in Star Trek constantly?

Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) contemplates the problems of space-time in Discovery Season 5.

“Those problems all happen when you're traveling close to the speed of light, but not when you're doing something like Warp Drive,” Macdonald says. “The idea with Warp is that your ship could barely be moving, it doesn’t have to be moving very fast. And the physics inside your Warp Bubble, you still have a normal sheet of space-time in there. But that has always been a question in Star Trek — like, we have to be messing with time somehow. And it’s true!”

What Erin Macdonald helped the Trek franchise formalize was the idea that the Warp Bubble acts as an insulation from all those relativistic paradoxes. In this year’s Discovery episode “Face the Strange,” Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) suggests breaking the Warp Bubble to help out with a time-loop problem. And in this moment — which Erin Macdonald helped write — Burnham says this: “[the warp bubble] is what protects us from the effects of relativity.”

It’s a quick line, but it’s one that hasn’t been uttered quite like that in the Trek franchise, ever.

“I feel like the time nonsense would happen scientifically when you're creating the Warp Bubble, and then when you're dissipating the Warp Bubble,” Macdonald says.

Back in 1964, in “The Cage,” the first Star Trek ever tried to address this question because, at that point, Captain Pike didn’t refer to “warp factors,” but instead, “time warp factors.” In the same pilot episode, a crew member named Tyler, enthusiastically tells aging Earth colonists that the “time barrier” has been broken, acknowledging that the concept of velocity and space-time movement were essentially the same thing. But, after “The Cage,” nobody in Star Trek ever said “time warp factor” again, and the time warp drive of the Enterprise simply became “warp speed.”

The USS Enterprise in “The Cage.”

And yet, the trick of warp is right there in the name — the technological effect is creating a warp in space-time to allow the ship to move in a way that avoids relativity.

“It’s always been in the back of my mind. As a fan, I’ve had that question, but I've also been asked so many times, what about Relativity?” Macdonald reflects. “But we’d never explained it. Until that moment.”

Star Trek: Prodigy streams on Netflix. Star Trek: Discovery streams on Paramount+.

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A Warp Drive Breakthrough Inches a Tiny Bit Closer to Star Trek

A team of physicists has discovered that it’s possible to build a real, actual, physical warp drive and not break any known rules of physics . One caveat: The vessel doing the warping can’t exceed the speed of light, so you’re not going to get anywhere interesting anytime soon. But this research still represents an important advance in our understanding of gravity .

Moving Without Motion

Einstein’s general theory of relativity is a tool kit for solving problems involving gravity that connects mass and energy with deformations in spacetime. In turn, those spacetime deformations instruct the mass and energy how to move. In almost all cases, physicists use the equations of relativity to figure out how a particular combination of objects will move. They have some physical scenario, like a planet orbiting a star or two black holes colliding, and they ask how those objects deform spacetime and what the subsequent evolution of the system should be.

But it’s also possible to run Einstein’s math in reverse by imagining some desired motion and asking what kind of spacetime deformation can make it possible. This is how the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre discovered the physical basis for a warp drive—long a staple of the Star Trek franchise.

The goal of a warp drive is to get from A to B in the time between commercial breaks, which typically involves faster-than-light motion. But special relativity expressly forbids speeds faster than light. While this never bothered the writers of Star Trek , it did irritate Alcubierre. He discovered that it was possible to build a warp drive through a clever manipulation of spacetime, arranging it so that space in front of a vessel gets scrunched up and the space behind the vessel stretched out. This generates motion without, strictly speaking, movement.

It sounds like a contradiction, but that’s just one of the many wonderful aspects of general relativity. Alcubierre’s warp drive avoids violations of the speed-of-light limit because it never moves through space; instead space itself is manipulated to, in essence, bring the spacecraft’s destination closer to it.

While tantalizing, Alcubierre’s design has a fatal flaw. To provide the necessary distortions of spacetime, the spacecraft must contain some form of exotic matter, typically regarded as matter with negative mass. Negative mass has some conceptual problems that seem to defy our understanding of physics, like the possibility that if you kick a ball that weighs negative 5 kilograms, it will go flying backwards, violating conservation of momentum. Plus, nobody has ever seen any object with negative mass existing in the real universe, ever.

These problems with negative mass have led physicists to propose various versions of “energy conditions” as supplements to general relativity. These aren’t baked into relativity itself, but add-ons needed because general relativity allows things like negative mass that don’t appear to exist in our universe—these energy conditions keep them out of relativity’s equations. They’re scientists’ response to the unsettling fact that vanilla GR allows for things like superluminal motion, but the rest of the universe doesn’t seem to agree.

Warp Factor Zero

The energy conditions aren’t experimentally or observationally proven, but they are statements that concord with all observations of the universe, so most physicists take them rather seriously. And until recently, physicists have viewed those energy conditions as making it absolutely 100 percent clear that you can’t build a warp drive, even if you really wanted to.

But there is a way around it, discovered by an international team of physicists led by Jared Fuchs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. (The team is also affiliated with the Applied Propulsion Laboratory of Applied Physics, a virtual think tank dedicated to the research of, among many other things, warp drives.) In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity , the researchers dug deep into relativity to explore if any version of a warp drive could work.

The equations of general relativity are notoriously difficult to solve, especially in complex cases such as a warp drive. So the team turned to software algorithms; instead of trying to solve the equations by hand, they explored their solutions numerically and verified that they conformed to the energy conditions.

The team did not actually attempt to construct a propulsion device. Instead, they explored various solutions to general relativity that would allow travel from point to point without a vessel undergoing any acceleration or experiencing any overwhelming gravitational tidal forces within the vessel, much to the comfort of any imagined passengers. They then checked whether these solutions adhered to the energy conditions that prevent the use of exotic matter.

The researchers did indeed discover a warp drive solution: a method of manipulating space so that travelers can move without accelerating. There is no such thing as a free lunch, however, and the physicality of this warp drive does come with a major caveat: The vessel and passengers can never travel faster than light. Also disappointing: the fact that the researchers behind the new work don’t seem to bother with figuring out what configurations of matter would allow the warping to happen.

The Future of Gravity

On one hand, that’s a gigantic letdown. We already have plenty of methods for traveling slower than light (rockets, walking, etc.), so adding one more to the list isn’t all that exciting. Plus, even if we wanted to build this warp drive, the gulf between this hyper-theoretical work and an actual, physical propulsion mechanism is the same as the difference between writing down Newton’s laws and building a Falcon 9.

But that doesn’t mean this new development isn’t interesting. We don’t fully understand gravity, and we know that Einstein’s theory is incomplete. One of the signposts that we have to a future understanding of gravity is the fact that general relativity allows for interesting, exotic solutions—like warp drives—that appear to violate other domains of physical understanding.

Us physicists like it when all of our theories line up and agree on the nature of the Universe. So if the energy conditions set real limits on physics—limits where things like negative mass don’t just not exist , but can’t exist —then we’d like a physical theory that says that from the beginning, instead of relying on add-ons like the energy conditions.

Exploring how a warp drive might (not) work, and under what conditions and restrictions, is a step in that direction. For years physicists thought that the energy conditions outlawed all kinds of warp drives, yet the new research shows a possible way around that. What comes next will be a win no matter what; whether we get a fancy superluminal warp drive or not. That’s because whatever comes out of future lines of inquiry along these directions, we’re going to learn more about the force of gravity, and just possibly revolutionize our understanding of it.

And who knows what we’ll get once we understand gravity better.

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica .

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Subspace corridor

Enterprise enters a subspace corridor

A subspace corridor is a shortcut through space , which can allow a starship to traverse great distances otherwise unachievable with traditional warp drive .

In the 22nd century there was a subspace corridor in the Delphic Expanse , extending 11.6 light years , from a nebula controlled by the Kovaalans , to not far from the Xindi Council planet . In February 2154 , Enterprise NX-01 entered this corridor in an attempt to quickly travel to the Council planet. However, due to battle damage sustained in combat with the Kovaalans, Enterprise 's impulse manifold produced a particle wake which caused the corridor to shift in time . Enterprise emerged in the year 2037 , and the crew quickly realized that, due to the corridor's one-way nature, there was no way for them to return to their own time. Enterprise became a generational ship , and the crew's descendants were eventually able to change history by intercepting their counterparts in 2154, and assisting them in making modifications which corrected the damage to the impulse manifold. This allowed Enterprise to safely pass through the corridor without traveling back in time. ( ENT : " E² ")

In the Delta Quadrant , the Vaadwaur used a vast network of subspace corridors called " Underspace " to aggressively expand their territory, until they were defeated (in the 15th century ). In 2376 , the starship USS Voyager was accidentally pulled into Underspace. The ship was subsequently forced out by the Turei , a species that had appropriated the corridors; they targeted Voyager 's shields with a resonance pulse , altering it's shield harmonics and returning it to normal space. In five minutes, Voyager traveled two hundred light years. ( VOY : " Dragon's Teeth ")

In 2377 , Reginald Barclay speculated that a group of Ferengi may have found either a wormhole or a subspace corridor to bring Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant , before realizing that they were planning to utilize a geodesic fold . ( VOY : " Inside Man ")

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What Would Happen if a Warp Drive Spaceship Flew Into a Black Hole?

August 31, 2024 by admin 0 Comments

Warp drives have a long history of not existing, despite their ubiquitous presence in science fiction.

Writer John Campbell first introduced the idea in a science fiction novel called Islands of Space. These days, thanks to Star Trek in particular, the term is very familiar.

It’s almost a generic reference for superliminal travel through hyperspace. Whether or not warp drive will ever exist is a physics problem that researchers are still trying to solve, but for now, it’s theoretical.

Recently, two researchers looked at what would happen if a ship with warp drive tried to get into a black hole . The result is an interesting thought experiment. It might not lead to starship-sized warp drives but might allow scientists to create smaller versions someday.

Remo Garattini and Kirill Zatrimaylov theorized that such a drive could survive inside a so-called Schwarzschild black hole. That’s provided the ship crosses the event horizon at a speed lower than that of light.

Theoretically, the black hole’s gravitational field would decrease the amount of negative energy required to keep the drive going. If it did, the ship could pass through and somehow use it to get somewhere else without getting crushed.

Furthermore, the mathematics behind this idea points the way toward the possible creation of mini-warp drives in lab settings.

What’s a Warp Drive?

Could scientists build a micro- or mini-warp drive in the lab? Good questions. To understand the team’s work, let’s look at the major players in this research: warp drives and black holes .

The idea is inspired by the fact that nothing can go faster than light speed. Given the distances in space, traveling to the nearest star would take years (if we could go at light speed). Going across a galaxy or to more distant galaxies would take years and many lifetimes. So, if you want to be a space-faring species, you must travel faster than light (FTL).

How would you do that? This is where warp drives come in. Theoretically, they allow you to put your spaceship inside a bubble that could slip through space at FTL speeds.

That’s how the starships in Star Trek (and other SF stories) get across huge distances so quickly. The Star Trek ships use an energy source in a “warp core” to power warp field generators. They create the warp bubble in subspace. The ship uses that to go wherever the crew needs to be.

Do Physicists Like Warp Drives?

Such a warp drive is a tantalizing idea with many caveats. For example, generating a warp field requires an insane amount of energy. Some physicists suggest that it would take more energy than we’re capable of generating. Creating that energy would require huge amounts of exotic matter—something like “unobtanium”. So, that’s a problem right there.

Others say that creating such a drive goes against our current understanding of spacetime physics. However, that hasn’t stopped anybody from speculating on ways to make it happen.

For example, Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre had an idea for such a drive in 1994. He suggested that it could create a bubble that would shift space around an object. He has continued his research about a ship that could get somewhere faster than light.

However, he and others still point out various problems with both creating and sustaining a warp drive. That includes the idea that such a drive effectively isolates itself from the rest of the Universe. Among other things, it means the ship can’t control the drive that’s making it go. So, there are a still few bugs to work out.

About Black Holes

We are most familiar with black holes in terms of stellar mass and supermassive ones. These also sport accretion disks that convey material into the black hole.

For example, the central supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A* in our own Milky Way Galaxy periodically gobbles down material. Then, it emits a belch of radiation. Other, more active galaxies send out jets of material emitted as the central supermassive black hole feeds continuously.

A black hole is a concentration of mass with gravity so strong that nothing, even light, can escape. In their study about black holes and warp drives, the authors used Schwarzschild black holes.

These so-called simple “static” black holes curve spacetime, have no electric charge and are non-rotating. Essentially, they are good approximations for mathematical explorations of the characteristics of slowly rotating objects in space.

When A Ship with Warp Drive Crosses into a Black Hole

The Schwarzchild black hole is the “perfect” black hole to use in this theoretical exploration of a warp drive crossing the event horizon. To figure out the scenario, Garattini and Zatrimalov decided to mathematically combine the equations describing the black hole and the ones describing the warp drive.

Among other things, they found that it’s possible to “embed” the warp drive in the outer region of the black hole. The warp bubble itself is much smaller than the black hole and needs to be moving toward it. The black hole’s gravity affects the energy conditions needed to create and sustain the warp drive.

That means you can theoretically decrease the amount of negative energy required to sustain the warp bubble. In addition, the researchers suggest that if the warp bubble is moving at less than the speed of light, it effectively erases the black hole horizon.

The research team also described the idea that such an occurrence could evoke the conversion of virtual particles into real ones in an electric field. If so, it could lead to the creation of mini warp drives in the lab.

Changing the Black Hole a Bit

Interestingly, the team also suggests that, if the warp bubble is moving slowly and is much smaller than the black hole horizon, it could increase the entropy of the black hole. However, as they state in their closing arguments, “there are potential problematic issues in other physical situations: namely, when the warp drive is completely absorbed by the black hole, it may decrease its mass, and, therefore, its entropy.

Likewise, when there is a larger warp bubble passing through a black hole, it would produce a “screening” effect and de facto eliminate the horizon, making it impossible to define the black hole entropy in the Hawking sense. If warp drives are possible in nature, these issues indicate that we still do not understand them from the thermodynamic point of view.”

Warp Drive Technology Remains to be Seen

So, while this research may prove valuable theoretically, and could lead to lab production of mini black holes, many questions remain.

Perhaps in the future, when we understand the quantum mechanics behind both of these objects, we might find warp technology a slam-dunk. If so, then, as ships travel through black holes, we could face a weird time.

For example, signals from inside a black hole could get carried out by a warp bubble merging from the singularity. That would allow us to send images or recordings of what it’s like inside the event horizon—something nobody knows about today.

There’s also a chance that those fearsome black holes could make a warp drive less difficult to achieve since they won’t need so much exotic “negative energy” source material.

This article was originally published by Universe Today . Read the original article .

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