Science fiction has a way of becoming science fact, but surely there are some things routinely taken for granted in the fictional genre that are not even theoretically possible, right?
One of those things is superluminal (i.e. faster than light) travel as represented by the famous Warp Drive in Star Trek and similar other solutions that make interstellar travel possible.
To put it in perspective, our closest star system neighbour, Alpha Centauri is approximately four light years away. At the speed of light it would take four years to get there. But we aren’t anywhere close to light speed travel. Voyageur 1, which last year became the first man-made object to leave our solar system, is travelling at approximately 62,000 kilometres per hour. V-ger (another Star Trek reference for the geeks in the crowd) took almost 36 years just to clear our tiny corner of space. It would take the satellite another 67,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.
Anybody who attended elementary school knows that the speed of light is as fast as anything can travel in the universe. But is it?
Many scientists believe from observations of the universe that the deformation (i.e., warping) of space-time is probably theoretically possible.
Recently, NASA indicated it may be on the verge of proving it.
This story goes back to 2000 when British aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer proposed a device he called an EmDrive. Unlike science fiction writers and some crackpots who have proposed reactionless engines, Shawyer has actual scientific bona fides.
The big problem with space travel is the amount of fuel needed to launch and propel our vessels around.
Any feasible deep space probe would not only need to get up to light speed (or better) but would need to do it with some other thrust solution than conventional fuel.
Shawyer’s idea was to use a microwave generator in a tapering resonant cavity that. The shape of the tube, apparently, cause an imbalance that manifests in thrust.
Unfortunately, the device defies the Universal Law of the Conservation of Momentum.
Nevertheless scientists in China experimented with the EmDrive and claimed to have replicated Shawyer’s research.
Chinese papers from 2008, 2010 and 2012 were not enough to convince skeptics. Fortunately, though, NASA has a division that investigates fringe proposals and in 2014, the American space agency also confirmed it does seem to work, despite the inherent momentum problem.
They still could not figure how it defies physics, though and someone set out to figure it out by measuring variances in light’s path-time using lasers in the chamber. What they found was that some of the beams started to travel faster than the speed of light.
If true, the obvious interpretation is that the EmDrive is producing some kind of warp field.
Of course, translating this minor potential discovery into a spaceship, or even a small probe poses major difficulties that seem to defy all logic.
It is definitely an exciting development, though.
