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Warp drive

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For other uses, see Warp drive (disambiguation).

In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the warp drive is a form of faster-than-light (FTL) propulsion. It is generally portrayed as being capable of propelling spacecraft or other objects to many multiples of the speed of light, while avoiding the problems associated with time dilation. It is also featured in the Stars! computer game, and in the motion picture Starship Troopers, both unrelated to Star Trek. It is not generally capable of instantaneous travel between points at infinite speed, as has been suggested in other science fiction using theoretical technologies such as Hyperdrive and Jump Drives. It is called FTL in the Titan novels. One difference between warp drive and hyperspace is that unlike hyperspace, the ship does not enter a different universe or a different dimension, it merely creates a small "bubble" of normal space time. Ships in warp can interact with objects in normal space.

The concept of using spatial warping as a means of propulsion has been the subject of theoretical treatment by some physicists (such as Miguel Alcubierre, see Alcubierre drive), although no concrete technological approach has ever been proposed, nor is there any known way of inducing the effect described by Alcubierre.

Warp in Star Trek

Development of the backstory

Template:Spoiler

Warp drive has been a feature of Star Trek since it started. The first pilot episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, "The Cage", calls it "time warp" drive, and notes that the "time barrier" had been broken, allowing a group of stranded interstellar travellers to get back to Earth much quicker than they had been previously able to.

The episode "Metamorphosis", from the original series, establishes a backstory for the invention of warp drive, stating that it was invented by Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri. Cochrane is repeatedly referred to afterwards, but the exact details of the first warp trials were not shown until the second Star Trek: The Next Generation movie, Star Trek: First Contact. The movie depicts Cochrane as inventing warp drive on Earth in 2063 (two years after the date speculated by the first edition of the Star Trek Chronology). He used the immense power given off in a matter-antimatter reaction to give energy, which he could use to move a ship into a subspace warp bubble that could then move the ship at faster than the speed of light. This directly led to the first contact with the Vulcans.

The later prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise firmly establishes that many other civilizations had warp drive before humans, notably the Vulcans, who had more advanced warp drive technology than humans even in the 22nd century. Enterprise, set in 2151 onwards, shows the voyages of the first Earth ship to be capable at going at warp factor 5 (taken as one hundred twenty-five times the speed of light).

The Next Generation era

Plots involving the Enterprise going far too fast were a frequent feature in the original series, and for The Next Generation, it was decided that these would no longer be featured. A new warp scale was drawn up, with warp 10 set as an unattainable maximum. This is described in some technical manuals as Gene's Recalibration as a homage to creator/producer Gene Roddenberry.

The warp factors above warp 10 in the TOS, such as the one above, were slower than warp 10 on the new scale. According to The Star Trek Encyclopedia, warp 6 (new scale) is equal to 392c (392 times the speed of light, c) and about warp 7.3 on the old scale, whereas warp 9.2 new, to about 1649c and warp 11.8 on the old scale. The scale reaches an asymptote at warp 10 which represents infinite speed in accordance with the speed limit imposed by the producers. The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Threshold" agreed with this, in that the characters said attaining the velocity of warp 10 was impossible (called Eugene's Limit, another homage to Roddenberry) — but then they achieved it anyway, with the side effect that they hyper-evolved (reversibly) into anthropomorphic newts. In this episode, Tom Paris describes that, while travelling at warp 10, he is concurrently in every part of the universe. At this speed, the Shuttlecraft Cochrane's sensors are able to process enormous amounts of telemetry such that the data storage of the shuttle is completely filled.

The limit of 10 did not entirely stop warp inflation. By the mid-24th century, the Enterprise-D could travel at warp 9.8 at extreme risk, while normal maximum operating speed was warp 9.6 and maximum rated cruise was warp 9.2. The Intrepid-class starship Voyager could manage warp 9.975.

The alternate future depicted in the Next Generation episode "All Good Things..." shows Federation vessels capable of going warp 13 when Admiral Riker, commanding the Future Enterprise-D, uses this extra turn of speed to rescue the crew of the USS Pasteur. However, this episode was produced before the Enterprise-D was destroyed in Star Trek: Generations, so the two universes may diverge further than previously expected, and warp 13 may not be possible in the "real" Star Trek universe. It is unclear whether the warp 13 achieved in the possible future shown in "All Good Things..." represents a new recalibration of the warp curve or some form of transwarp, though as this future was a creation of Q it might not occur in the "real" Star Trek timeline.

Transwarp

The term transwarp has been used a number of times, referring to an advanced form of warp drive most commonly used by the Borg, but also the subject of a Starfleet development project in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

Episodes of TNG and Voyager seem to indicate that transwarp is best described as a wormhole-style conduit through subspace: this suggests a subsuming into subspace, rather than warping normal space via subspace.

Federation experiments

The USS Excelsior (NX-2000) under command of Captain Stiles was a Federation testbed for transwarp technology. Though not explained on-screen in Star Trek III, it is assumed that transwarp was a faster version of the conventional warp drive. Excelsior's first operational test failed due to sabotage by Scotty, thus preventing Excelsior from pursuing the Enterprise.

By the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the Excelsior (under command of Captain Sulu) had been fitted with a standard warp drive; either the tests were unsuccessful or the transwarp described there was a new form of warp drive that other ships eventually adopted (and not the transwarp described above).

The spin-off reference work, Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise published in 1987, suggests the project ultimately succeeded, and the Enterprise-A was indeed fitted with transwarp.

A popular concept in fan speculation (and never officially refuted) is that the Transwarp project was not the transwarp described above but instead a re-design/upgrade of standard warp design. It is believed that the Excelsior project succeeded and was adopted as the new standard for warp systems. This is supported by the re-evaluation of the warp scale at the beginning of The Next Generation.

Another idea is that, although the overall Transwarp project failed, some of the features of the new design were incorporated into the standard warp drive. This is borne out by the arrangement of the warp core. It is longituinal, running along the secondary hull in the Enterprise in TOS, but is mounted vertically in the Enterprise A.

Susan Sackett's memoirs attribute the lack of transwarp in Star Trek: The Next Generation to Gene Roddenberry's dislike of the concept.[1]

Borg Conduits

The Borg (in the The Next Generation two-part episode "Descent" and in the Voyager finale Endgame) have discovered the existence of the possibility of transwarp conduits—regions in subspace that facilitate transwarp travel at up to 20 times faster than conventional warp drives. These episodes established that the Borg set up networks of these conduits between important areas in the galaxy. Borg transwarp conduits are activated by an encoded tachyon pulse. When a Borg vessel enters a transwarp conduit, it is subject to extreme gravimetric shear. To compensate, the Borg project a structural integrity field ahead of the vessel. Artificial conduits are linked together with transwarp hubs. Six hubs were known to exist, but in "'Endgame" one was destroyed, along with the Unicomplex due to the neurolytic pathogen with which Admiral Janeway infected herself.

Quantum Slipstream

See Slipstream (science fiction)

Quantum Slipstream Technology is presumed to be the standard interstellar propulsion method used by Species 116 (of which Arturis was a member) prior to their assimilation by the Borg. In the Voyager episode "Hope and Fear", Seven of Nine remarks that the technology involved is not dissimilar to Borg transwarp technology.

Warp velocities

Warp travel velocity in Star Trek is generally described in "warp factor" units - according to the Star Trek Technical Manuals, warp factors relate to the strength of the warp field in "Cochranes" (from now to be referred to as c) (named after the purported inventor of the warp drive), representing local minima of power usage. For example, a warp field of 10 Cochranes in Next Generation-era engines corresponds to warp factor 2. Only under average conditions does a certain Cochrane-value correspond to a multiple of c, which helps to explain the inconsistencies present in on-screen travel time during Star Trek episodes.

Achieving warp factor 1 is equivalent to breaking the light barrier, and higher factors' actual speed is determined according to an ambiguous "warp formula". Several episodes of the original series placed the Enterprise in peril by having it travel at high warp factors, (in "That Which Survives", this factor was as high as 14.1). However, the actual speed of any given warp factor is rarely explicitly stated on screen, indicating that it is not of much use to the characters. Travel times for specific interstellar distances are not quite consistent, indicating that different average speeds can correspond to the same warp factor.

A ship traveling at warp or impulse speeds will not experience any form of time dilation, indicated by the numerous cases where impulse speeds were stated as being far above the limitation of 1/4c mentioned in the technical books, nor will they require huge quantities of fuel to achieve such speeds. Impulse drive is only partly conventional propulsion, the other part being based on the same technologies used in warp drive.

File:Ent Warp.jpg
The Enterprise-E at warp.

According to the Star Trek episode writer's guide for The Original Series, warp factors were supposedly converted to multiples of light speed with the cubic function .

Warp Factor x c Velocity (all figures approximate)
Warp 1 1 c 3.0x105 km/s
Warp 1.5 3.375 c 1.0x106 km/s
Warp 2 8 c 2.4x106 km/s
Warp 3 27 c 8.0x106 km/s
Warp 4 64 c 1.9x107 km/s
Warp 5 125 c 3.7x107 km/s
Warp 6 216 c 6.5x107 km/s
Warp 7 343 c 1.0x108 km/s
Warp 8 512 c 1.5x108 km/s
Warp 9 729 c 2.2x108 km/s
Warp 9.25 ~791 c 2.4x108 km/s
Warp 9.5 ~857 c 2.6x108 km/s
Warp 9.75 ~926 c 2.8x108 km/s
Warp 10 1,000 c 3.0x108 km/s
Warp 11 1,331 c 4.0x108 km/s
Warp 14.6 ~3,112 c 9.3x108 km/s
Warp 15 3,375 c 1.0x109 km/s

However, this cannot possibly be the whole story, as it would make the Enterprise far too slow for the voyages depicted in the television series. These speeds do not even correlate with solid facts and figures in some of the episodes, for example in "That Which Survives" (1969) the Enterprise travels at warp 8.4 for 11.33 hours and traverses 990.7 light years (as indicated in Spock's dialogue), which makes the speed more than 600,000 times the speed of light; which is two orders of magnitude larger than even warp 15. There is also the fact that the Enterprise could quite easily travel to and from the edge of the galaxy at will ("Is There in Truth No Beauty" and "By Any Other Name" (1968)), a journey which should take years at the typical warp 8, if warp 8 is merely a cube of the warp factor.

This discrepancy between the behavior of warp speeds in the show and the simple formula of the warp factor cubed was picked up by fans in the 1970s and 80's who published books like Star Trek Maps — all published material is considered non-canon, even if it is by Paramount-approved Pocket Books - where the idea of an additional factor, referred to as the Chi factor or the Cochrane factor, was used in the warp calculations. The idea was that since warp drive pulls in space, you get higher speeds in areas where there is high density of mass, and lower speeds in areas of low density. If we take a warp factor and cube it, we take that product and multiply it by the number 1292.7238 (the Chi or Cochrane factor), to get the actual speed that the ship travels at—this is the number that was factored out of the factoids from "That Which Survives" (1969). The Cochrane factor represents an "average" density of space in the UFP. Other areas of space will have different values for it. This is one way to explain the relationship between stated warp factors and actual calculable speeds as given in the dialogue in the episodes. Although it is not actually canon, it at least explains how the ships behaved as they did, without having to find higher exponents to factor the warp base numbers by, as Star Trek artist Michael Okuda did later for TNG (which nobody on the show ended up paying attention to anyway).

File:Warptable.gif
The new warp scale and power usage

For the later series, Okuda devised a formula based on the older one but with important differences. For warp 1–9, if w is the warp factor, is the speed in km per second, and c is the speed of light, then . In the half-open interval from warp 9 to warp 10, the exponent of w increases toward infinity. Thus, in the Okuda scale, warp speeds approach warp 10 asymptotically. There is no exact formula for this interval because the quoted speeds are based on a hand-drawn curve.

Here is a table with new-style warp factors and their approximate values in kilometers per second and multiples of c:

Warp Factor x c Velocity Equation
Warp 1 1 c 3.0x105 km/s
Warp 2 10.079 c 3.0x106 km/s
Warp 3 38.941 c 1.2x107 km/s
Warp 4 101.59 c 3.0x107 km/s
Warp 5 213.75 c 6.4x107 km/s
Warp 6 392.50 c 1.2x108 km/s
Warp 7 656.13 c 2.0x108 km/s
Warp 8 1,024 c 3.1x108 km/s
Warp 9 1,516.4 c 4.5x108 km/s
Warp 9.2 1,649 c 4.9x108 km/s
Warp 9.6 1,909 c 5.7x108 km/s
Warp 9.9 3,053 c 9.2x108 km/s
Warp 9.9753 6,000 c 1.8x109 km/s
Warp 9.99 7,912 c 2.3x109 km/s
Warp 9.9999 199,516 c 6.0x1010 km/s
Warp 10 infinity infinity

It should be noted that warp speeds tend to warp 10 asymptotically, and at speeds greater than warp 9 the form of the warp function changes due to an increase in the exponent of the warp factor, . Due to the resultant increase in the derivative, a small change in the warp factor corresponds to a large increase in speed.

Here is a table of the times it would take to cover a number of distances. Since warp 1 is c, the distances for warp 1 (in years) is the light year distance. Earth's solar system is approximately 1.2x1010 km wide, measured as the diameter of the Oort Cloud.

Warp x c Across Sol System (12 billion km) To Alpha Centauri (4.2 light-years) Across Sector (20 light-years) Across Federation (10,000 light-years) Across Galaxy (100,000 light-years) To Andromeda Galaxy (2,000,000 light-years)
Warp 1 1 c 11 hours 4.2 years 20 years 10,000 years 100,000 years 2,000,000 years
Warp 2 10.079 c 1 hour 6 months 2 years 1000 years 10,000 years 200,000 years
Warp 3 38.941 c 17 minutes 6 weeks 6 months 250 years 2,564 years 51,000 years
Warp 4 101.59 c 6.5 minutes 18 days 2 months 100 years 990 years 19,800 years
Warp 5 213.75 c 3 minutes 8.4 days 34 days 46 years 467 years 9,345 years
Warp 6 392.50 c 1.7 minutes 4.6 days 18.6 days 25 years 255 years 5,102 years
Warp 7 656.13 c 1 minute 2.8 days 11.3 days 15 years 152 years 3,048 years
Warp 8 1,024 c 38 seconds 1.7 days 7.1 days 10 years 100 years 1,953 years
Warp 9 1,516.4 c 26 seconds 1.2 days 4.8 days 6.6 years 66 years 1,319 years
Warp 9.2 1,649 c 24 seconds 1.1 days 4.4 days 6.1 years 61 years 1,217 years
Warp 9.6 1,909 c 20.7 seconds 23 hours 3.8 days 5.3 years 53 years 1,051 years
Warp 9.9 3,053 c 13 seconds 14 hours 2.4 days 3.3 years 33.3 years 660 years
Warp 9.9753 6,000 c 6.6 seconds 7.1 hours 1.2 days 1.7 years 16.9 years 335 years
Warp 9.99 7,912 c 5 seconds 5.4 hours 22 hours 1.3 years 12.8 years 254 years
Warp 9.9999 199,516 c .2 seconds 12.8 minutes 52 minutes 18 days 6 months 10 years

The later series were better at keeping to these speeds than the original; however, they were still far from perfect. Later episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (such as "Descent" (1993)) contradicted these speeds and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine depicted Federation Starfleet strategic operations (fleet movements) which would have been impossible under the Okuda scale. Star Trek: Voyager, though its premise was generally based on the Okuda scale, had several notable instances, such as in the episode "Parallax" or "The '37s" (1995), where the stated warp velocities varied wildly from the Okuda standard.

In general, the farther away a Star Trek show is in production date from the publish date of the Star Trek Technical Manual, the more likely a ship would be to travel at the "speed of plot". For example, in the Star Trek: Enterprise pilot episode they give a time and speed to Neptune that accords with the original series' formula, but then they estimate a trip to the Klingon Homeworld at warp 5 as a four-day journey, placing it just one light-year away from Earth—far closer than the nearest stellar system, Alpha Centauri. This plot hole has later been wrapped up by various fanon sources that suggest that there is a spatial rift that allowed the Enterprise to arrive at the Klingon homeworld in such a short length of time, and that it was the Vulcans who provided Enterprise with the whereabouts of this shortcut. However, such a high speed for warp 5 is consistent with the extremely high speed given for warp 8.4 in "That Which Survives", which has the speed at over 600,000 times lightspeed (therefore warp 5 would be 161,500 times lightspeed). In those terms, four days travel at warp 5 places the Klingon homeworld at 1,772 light years (or 536 parsecs) away from Earth.

This is why any theory matching a warp factor to a specific speed is inconsistent with the show. Imagine driving on a highway under ideal weather conditions: it is quite possible to order a speed of 100 km/h and expect the order to be executed. Try leaving the highway and driving on diverse terrain, and maintaining a specific speed is no longer meaningful. All one cares about is keeping the engine intact, which in Star Trek terms is equivalent to maintaining a safe warp factor and estimating travel times based on the properties of the area of space. Newer engines may allow a greater Cochrane output per warp factor and have no minimum beyond warp nine. Finally, many kinds of engines could be built over the years with different limitations and different Cochrane-levels per warp factor.

There's a simple and entirely different way to approach this question which involves looking at the many generic shots of the Enterprise zipping through space with the stars whizzing by. The astronomically measured density of stars in the Sun's part of the Milky Way gives a typical separation between them of several light years. If we take the rate at which the ship goes past the stars as about one per second, this yields a very approximate velocity of about a hundred million times the speed of light.

Warp theory and technology

For a more in-depth discussion of warp propulsion systems, refer to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda. Chapter 5, "Warp Propulsion Systems", discusses the following topics:

  • Warp field theory and application, including warp measurement, velocities, and limits.
  • Matter-antimatter reaction assembly, including reactant injectors, magnetic constriction segments, reaction chamber, the role of dilithium, and power transfer conduits.
  • Warp field nacelles, including plasma injection system, warp field coils, and warp propulsive effect.
  • Antimatter storage and transfer, warp propulsion system fuel supply, Bussard ramjet fuel replenishment, and onboard antimatter generation
  • Engineering operations and safety, emergency shutdown procedures, and catastrophic emergency procedures

However, the shows often contradicted both the TNG and DS9 technical manuals.

The Slingshot Effect

A side effect of Warp travel which has been shown throughout Star Trek is the "Slingshot effect." First discovered by accident in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (1967), one of the earlier episodes of the original Star Trek series, it is a method of using a warp drive to travel through time. Whereas the actual procedure is intentionally obscure, it involved travelling at high warp speed toward a star (established in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) to be somewhere over Warp 9.8), on a precisely calculated "slingshot" path, and if successful it can allow for travel to the future or past. The same technique was used later in the episode "Assignment: Earth" (1968) intentionally for historic research (where it is given the technical name "light speed breakaway factor"), and again in Star Trek IV (where it was called "time warp"). The technique was mentioned as a viable method of time travel in the Next Generation episode "Time Squared" (1989).

Behind the scenes explanation

Star Trek science consultant and writer André Bormanis, has revealed that in the Star Trek universe in a starship warp engine, high-energy plasma, created by a matter-antimatter reaction, is pumped through a series of warp coils cast from an artificial material called verterium cortenide. Verterium cortenide provides a bridge between electromagnetic and gravitational forces. By design, it has the property that when a high-energy plasma circulates through appropriately fashioned verterium cortenide castings, a "warp field" is generated. Electromagnetic interactions between waves of superhot plasma and the verterium cortenide coils change the geometry of space surrounding the engine nacelles. In the process, a multilayered wave of warped space is born, and the starship cruises off to its next destination at velocities equivalent to hundreds of times the speed of light. Relative to "normal" space, within the warp field, the starship does not exceed the local speed of light, and therefore does not violate the principal tenet of special relativity. [1]

In the Books

Some years after Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS), Pocket Books came out with a series of books based upon the Enterprise's encounters during both its first and second five year mission. In "The Wounded Sky" written by Diane Duane, the crew picks up a Hamalki engineer, which invents a new form of the Transwarp Drive. Even though such books are not considered canon, the theories proposed in the book lend to the idea of Warp and Transwarp, and further explain the properties of subspace. According to the book, Warp Drive does indeed create a bubble around the ship, however, it is explained that the ship is surrounded by a bubble of subspace- another universe where the speed of light is much faster than in ours. This lends to the theory that one cannot attain the speed of light, but it can be circumvented via alternate universes. The book further explains that the alternate universe is attuned with our own, such that planetary bodies are in exactly the same place, which makes navigation much simpler. The Transwarp Device invented by the Hamalki uses a different approach to the same idea. The Transwarp Drive in this case creates a field around the ship which allows it to enter De Sitter space- a space in which there is infinite energy, zero mass (with exceptions) and no absolute laws of physics or time. This essentially allows the Enterprise to enter De Sitter space and travel millions of times faster than light. In the book, the Enterprise manages to reach the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, another star system far outside the Milky Way Galaxy.

Warp core

A warp core is a fictional form of reactor used in the Star Trek universe. It supplies power via a matter-antimatter reaction, which gives sufficient energy to power a warp drive and allows a ship to travel faster than light.

Mechanics

Warp cores utilize a matter-antimatter reaction that is regulated by dilithium crystals. When matter and antimatter are exposed, they annihilate each other upon contact. This annihilation releases colossal amounts of energy. Dilithium crystals are used to regulate the reaction because they are nonreactive to anti-matter when bombarded with high levels of radiation. The matter used in the reaction is usually deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, and the antimatter is usually antideuterium, the corresponding antimatter to deuterium. The matter and anti-matter reaction inside the dilithium matrix is usually referred to as the matter-antimatter reaction assembly (MARA). The MARA is surrounded by a magnetic field to prevent the highly reactive anti-matter from escaping the assembly. The energy is then transferred into a highly energetic form of plasma called warp plasma.

This warp plasma then travels to the warp nacelles via magnetic conduits. The warp coils are exposed to the warp plasma by plasma injectors, which carefully release the plasma into the coils. When exposed to such energetic plasma, the coils create an energy field called a warp bubble. The warp bubble expands space behind the vessel and contracts space in front of the vessel, and the warp bubble forms the barrier between these distortions. The bubble is accelerated while the space inside the bubble does not technically move, so the vessel does not experience time dilation, and time passes inside the bubble at the same rate as time in the other parts of the galaxy.

Warp cores can use other sources of energy besides a MARA, such as an artificial singularity (Romulan Warbirds). On starships, warp cores are often the main source of energy for primary systems in addition to propulsion.

Use

The warp core is one possible way to generate enough power for lightspeed travel. In case the ship needs to be destroyed, the warp core can become a powerful bomb.

Notable Star Trek events involving warp cores

In Star Trek chronological order;

Template:Spoiler

  • Star Trek: First Contact - Earth's first warp core and warp drive is tested aboard the Phoenix. A Vulcan ship, detecting the new warp signature, initiates first contact.
    • Also in this film the warp core on the Enterprise-E is used to destroy the Borg Queen when Data ruptures the warp core's coolant conduits next to her.
  • "Encounter at Farpoint" - The first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation shows a new type of warp core capable of producing sufficient energy to cruise at warp 9. This is implied as the standard on all new Federation ships.
  • "Caretaker" - a new warp core allows Voyager to travel at a sustainable cruise velocity of warp 9.975. It is also equipped with variable geometry warp nacelles in an effort to reduce subspace damage through warp travel.
  • "Day of Honor" - An attempt to create a transwarp conduit for Voyager goes awry, forcing ejection and later retrieval of the needed core.
  • Star Trek: Insurrection - The Enterprise-E, being pursued by a deadly enemy using subspace weapons, ejects and detonates its warp core to close a quickly expanding spatial rift.

Template:Endspoiler

Trivia

  • When Stephen Hawking guest starred on the Star Trek:The Next Generation episode "Descent", he was taken on a guided tour of the set. Pausing in front of the warp core he remarked, "I'm working on that".

Warp and the environment

In the Season 7 Next Generation episode "Force of Nature" (1993), it was revealed that warp drive travel can be detrimental to subspace, and in some areas it can cause subspace fissures along heavily travelled routes. Travel faster than warp 5 was banned in the aforementioned episode, but there is argument among fans as to whether the ban exists only in the affected areas of space, or in all areas. If it is a universal limit, it is widely ignored and rarely even mentioned in later episodes and series. In the TNG episode "Eye of the Beholder" (1994), advance permission was required from Starfleet Command for the Enterprise to travel above warp 5 (in this case on a mission of mercy). A technological solution was found, involving the warp engines on the USS Voyager, in which the warp nacelles were slanted to prevent damage to subspace, which is why the warp nacelles move up before Voyager proceeds into warp. This has been confirmed by the www.startrek.com library, explaining that Voyager was designed to go faster than warp 5 without causing subspace damage such as fissuring of space. The Sovereign Class Enterprise-E also featured advanced warp engines that allow travel at very high warp velocities without damaging the fabric of space.

Is a nonfictional warp drive possible?

As many Star Trek fans know, many of the futuristic technologies featured in the series have actually been created (such as the hypospray) or are currently being researched (e.g., the VISOR). In 1996, NASA established the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program, which sponsored some speculative work on warp drives. This program was discontinued in 2002.

While thought experiments on the wilder shores of theoretical physics continue, no scheme that may allow "warp speed" travel has yet been devised that has been accepted by mainstream science. Some physicists have proposed a model of FTL travel, formulated in the context of Lorentzian manifolds, which are used in general relativity to construct spacetime models. However, contrary to a common misunderstanding, these models are in no sense solutions to the Einstein field equation, and they give absolutely no hint of how to actually make a warp bubble. These models do however show that while it is indeed impossible to go faster than the speed of light, in principle it might be possible to circumvent the problem by suitably "warping" spacetime itself. The best known such, known as the Alcubierre drive, has the amusing feature that its terminology is in accord with Trek jargon: "warp factors" measure the warping of space (or rather spacetime), not actual speed.

See also

References

  1. ^ Susan Sackett (2002). Inside Trek: My Secret Life With Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry. HAWK Publishing Group. ISBN 1-930709-42-0.

Here is a small selection of speculative articles from the physics literature:

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