Warp Speed, Scotty? Star Trek's FTL Drive May Actually Work

[The Enigma]

Warp Speed, Scotty? Star Trek's FTL Drive May Actually Work


In the "Star Trek" TV shows and films, the U.S.S. Enterprise's warp engine
allows the ship to move faster than light, an ability that is, as Spock would
say, "highly illogical."



However, there's a loophole in Einstein's general theory of relativity that
could allow a ship to traverse vast distances in less time than it would take
light. The trick? It's not the starship that's moving — it's the space around it.

In fact, scientists at NASA are right now working on the first practical field
test toward proving the possibility of warp drives and faster-than-light
travel. Maybe the warp drive on "Star Trek" is possible after all. [See also:
Warp Drive: Can It Be Done? (Video)]

According to Einstein's theory, an object with mass cannot go as fast or
faster than the speed of light. The original "Star Trek" series ignored this
"universal speed limit" in favor of a ship that could zip around the galaxy in a
matter of days instead of decades. They tried to explain the ship's faster-
than-light capabilities by powering the warp engine with a "matter-
antimatter" engine. Antimatter was a popular field of study in the 1960s,
when creator Gene Roddenberry was first writing the series. When matter
and antimatter collide, their mass is converted to kinetic energy in keeping
with Einstein's mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc2.

Read the full article at: TechNews Daily