Long home to science fiction, traveling faster than the speed of light is quite commonplace as heroes and villains alike zip around their galaxy in an effort to engage each other. It has become so popular, in fact, that you would be hard pressed to find anyone on Earth that didn't know about the concept. Now it seems that scientists could have accidentally brought the notion of faster than light travel out of the realm of science fiction and into real science.
The idea of traveling to other planets at speeds much faster than light has seemed impossible for a long time. If only it were possible, planet to planet exploration would be almost instantaneous and open the galaxy up for man to explore.
However, much of the scientific community has long believed that traveling at speeds faster than light is physically impossible, no matter the material, and accelerating something to those types of speeds simply can't happen.
But, there are those in the scientific community that do believe that faster than light travel is possible, and one team may have just accidentally stumbled onto faster than light travel.
A team of researchers at NASA unintentionally accelerated particles to faster than light speeds using the EmDrive resonance chamber. If their findings turn out to be accurate, the team may have just discovered faster than light travel.
The EmDrive is a proposed method of interstellar propulsion and could even end up being the engine that propels starships through the galaxy in the future. There are many advantages to using this engine. It's electrically powered, it doesn't have any moving part and doesn't require any material fuel to move. If it does work as planned, there is a good shot that this could be the first steps in the design of a brand new engine.
NASA is currently studying the new technology for future use, but no one expected these types of results. When the team of researchers fired lasers into the resonance chamber, the particles were accelerated to astronomical speeds, with some even exceeding the speed of light.
"...this signature (the interference pattern) on the EmDrive looks just like what a warp bubble looks like. And the math behind the warp bubble apparently matches the interference pattern found in the EmDrive."
So what does this mean for space travel as we know it? Well, it is possible that NASA accidentally created a warp bubble that could, in theory allow for fast travel between the planeets of our solar system and beyond. While it sounds like something out of Star Trek, it is indeed now a part of real science. If the EmDrive were able to create a stable warp bubble, traveling the stars will become easier than ever and could propel the human face to where no one has gone before.
