Is the concept of faster than light travel feasible in real life? You’ve most likely seen and heard about the concepts, particularly if you’re a fan of science fiction, most notably through the ever-popular Star Trek universe.
The term faster than light, also known as superluminal, refers to the dissemination of information or matter through speeds faster than that of light. According to the special theory of relativity, particles, containing rest mass in particular, with subliminal velocity need an infinite source of energy to facilitate its acceleration at the speed of light.
Some examples of faster than light travel proposals include the Alcubierre drive and traversable wormholes. Faster than light travel is an important concept to consider, since it’ll potentially allow us to travel between planets and even exoplanets, or other planets existing outside of our solar system.
The travel system also opens up the possibility of traveling between other galaxies in short amounts of time. Even traveling to other exoplanets requires technology that’s beyond our current capability, making the concept of faster than light travel relatively unreachable according to our current engineering ability.
To even use intergalactic travel at faster than light speeds, we would need enough energy to propel ad sustain a ship-like carrier off our planet and through the fabric of space. The current physics state that an object traveling within space-time can’t exceed the speed of light, making it so any object traveling through space would take millions of years to reach their destination.
The fabric of science fiction, however, has brought to light a concept that may resolve give us a way to travel at faster than light speeds. The warp drive is a hypothetical faster than light propulsion system, used in many science fiction works to this day.
The main concept revolves around equipping a spacecraft with a warp drive, a device that generates enough energy to propel a carrier through space at speeds greater than that of light. A warp drive creates a pocket or artificial bubble of normal space-time that surrounds the carrier, allowing it to continue to interact with objects within the normal space-time restrictions.
Do you really think it’s feasible to travel to plants outside our very own solar system? Will we even see such a thing during our lifetime? The whole purpose of science is exploring the possibility of what exists out there, meaning that even if we don’t know now, we will eventually.
