Despite the major advancements in recent technology, methods of transportation especially for space travel are a long way from perfection. The fastest spacecraft today, the Parker Solar Probe, can reach top speeds of 450,000 mph and only need roughly 20 seconds to reach New York City from Los Angeles. But it would still take the craft over 6,000 years to reach Earth's nearest solar system neighbor, Proxima Centauri.
Which is why scientists propose that warp drives could be used to reach faster-than-light-speed travel in the near future if humanity has any chance of traveling between stars. On the other hand, as of late, faster than light travel is only possible in science fiction.
Warp Drive Technology
Many science fiction fans, especially "Star Trek" fans, are well aware of warp drive technology. But it is nowhere near what we are technologically able to do today. However, recently a team of engineers proposed what could be a first proposal for a physical warp drive, breaking the laws of physics.
In theory, warp drives are supposed to morph, bend, and change the shape of the space-time continuum in order to exaggerate differences in distance and time, under the right conditions, this should allow space travelers to travel past the speed of light and move across distances in an instant.
More than a century ago a Mexican theoretical physicist proposed a spacecraft that would be powered by an Alcubierre drive in order to achieve faster than light travel. However, the design required an abundant amount of negative energy in one place that wasn't possible according to physics.
In the study published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, entitled "Introducing physical warp drives" engineers looked into the plausibility of several other classes of warp drives. But the model has its own set of limitations.
For a warp drive to be able to generate enough negative energy, it needs a huge amount of matter. According to the Alcubierre estimations, a warp drive travelling 100-meters would require the mass of the entire visible universe to work.
General Relativity and Space Travel
What we understand from spacetime came from the Theory of General Relativity by Albert Einstein. According to the famed theory, space and time are factors fused together making it impossible for anything to travel faster than the speed of light. Additionally, it states that large objects like black holes and stars have a curvature known as gravity that bends spacetime around them.
Taking advantage of the spacetime distortion could be a way to achieve speeds faster than the speed of light. But for now this remains a working theory.
For now, traveling faster than the speed of light is still a mathematical model. And physicists won't be able to fully trust such models until experiments proving its efficiency and plausibility can be achieved.
Despite the limitations and problems arising from various warp drive models, the technology is starting to come into view. Many engineers and physicists are hoping to unravel quantum mechanics of spacetime for man to surpass its own achievements.
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