There are two points I want to highlight here: First, it is a really common misunderstanding, but Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity do NOT forbid faster-than-light motion. Indeed, physicists think that the universe expanded faster than the speed of light in its very early phase. Space-time can bend, expand, or warp at any speed. However, this restriction applies to objects in space-time, not to space-time itself. This is not entirely crazy, for the following reason.Įinstein’s theory of general relativity says you cannot accelerate objects from below to above the speed of light because that would take an infinite amount of energy. The idea is that by warping space-time, you can beat the speed of light barrier. And just a few weeks ago, a new paper appeared about warp drives that puts the idea on a much more solid basis.īut first of all, what is a warp drive? In the science fiction literature, a warp drive is a technology that allows you to travel faster than the speed of light or “superluminally” by “warping” or deforming space-time. Today I want to talk about warp drives because I think on the spectrum from fiction to science, warp drives are on the more scientific end. So, to some extent, I became a physicist to find out which science fiction technologies have a chance to one day become real technologies. But of course the depressing part of science fiction is that you know it’s not real. Teleportation, levitation, wormholes, time-travel, warp drives, and all that, I thought was super-fascinating. As many others, I became interested in physics by reading too much science fiction.
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