Title: Is it possible to build Star Trek's Enterprise?
Towards the end of the XIX century, Jules Verne published his novel Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea.
It tells the story of three men who go to sea in search of a giant whale, but things
don't go as they were expecting, and they are taken prisoners onboard the world's first
submarine, the Nautilus.
This huge submarine, 70 meters long and armour-plated, was capable of sinking any ship and it was
equipped with a 12000 volume library and an art collection with work from Da Vinci, Titian
and Raphael.
At that time, submarines existed, but no existing submarine could have compared the power of
Verne's Nautilus.
But sooner or later, submarines started to resemble more and more the Nautilus.
In 1958, USS Nautilus, as it was dubbed, was the first nuclear-powered submarine ever functioning.
Verne was certainly an inspiration to humankind.
He also wrote From the Earth to the Moon, in 1865, where he basically predicted many
aspects of the Apollo 11 mission, including take-off from Florida, USA, and the use of
an aluminium spacecraft!
Concerning certain aspects, it was so accurate that astronaut Neil Armstrong said:
“100 years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage to the Moon.
His spaceship, Columbiad, took off from Florida and landed in the Pacific Ocean after completing
a trip to the Moon.
It seems appropriate to us to share with you some of the reflections of the crew as the
modern-day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the planet Earth and the same Pacific
Ocean tomorrow.”
In general, books and movies have always been related to science and technology, and the
connection between them is a really strong one.
For example, in movies and books we can find the use of technologies that don't exist yet,
but that is likely to be developed in the future.
This is the case with Star Trek and the Enterprise spacecraft.
Whether you are a huge Star Trek fan, or you don't know anything about it, this video is
definitely for you!
If you are here watching this video, it means you are passionately curious about human spaceflight
and the mysteries of the universe.
We constantly strive to make videos that excite a curious person like you, so subscribe now
and be sure to press the bell notification, so you never miss out on the updates about
the cosmos.
Star Trek was created by American writer and producer Gene Roddenberry and chronicles
the exploits of the crew of the starship USS Enterprise, whose five-year mission is to
explore space and, as stated in the title sequence, “to seek out new life and new
civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Someone said that Star Trek has inspired the development of mobile telephones, the internet,
video conferencing and multipurpose medical devices.
How is that even possible?
Well, not everybody knows that behind a sci-fi movie there is a team that constantly works
in order to deliver as much as the accurate and precise scientific information to the
big public.
In other words, creators don't just invent new technologies or scenarios from nothing.
They keep themselves constantly updated and, for what's in their power, they try to come
out with some, let's say, plausible ideas.
But how do modern science fiction writers go about describing the future and the potential
consequences of scientific advances in the modern information age?
Much that was once science fiction has either been invented or is on the cusp of becoming
real, whether we are ready for it or not.
European science fiction writer Mack Meijers said he observes people and researches tools
to put in his novels, and he does so by looking for patterns in current technology and doing
research to map out potential future scenarios.
This is quite the same thing as Jules Verne did.
Except for the fact that Verne didn't have the internet.
He literally made an engineering analysis for his book From Earth to the Moon.
And this could be the reason why, in the end, our Apollo Mission trip to the moon resembled
Verne's mission concept.
The thing to understand here is that our modern technology is just tools.
How we use tools—the process of discovery that leads to the making and enhancing of
tools—is an integral part of science fiction writing.
And today, imagining possibilities has become a lot easier because in our tool-making we
have enabled ourselves to see further than that which we know.
In the Star Trek movie, we can see the Enterprise's crew consulting the ship's computer for information
on alien cultures or science.
Guess what?
Today, an estimated 520m million people have daily access to an immense databank of information
that can be consulted regularly, and it is called the world wide web!
Isn't that amazing?
Anyway, what we really want to talk about in this video is the possibility of building
a sort of Enterprise.
It is a time-travelling, ultra-fast and near-invisible "Constitution-class" starship.
According to the movie, it is the most advanced spacecraft at the time of its launch, which
happens in 2245.
If the enterprise was real, it is estimated that it would weigh around more than four
million tonnes and we could have a crew of 430 happily living in it, as if it was a house,
or better say, a hotel!
Just for a term of comparison, think that the closest object ever built and sent into
space is the international space station, ISS, which weighs something like 419 tonnes.
However, our ISS hosts a typical number of 7 astronauts and it free falls in the Earth's
gravitational field at a speed of 7.66 km/s, which is by far slower than the Star Trek's
spacecraft.
We still have 223 years until humankind reaches Roddenberry’s vision for space exploration
and several scientific breakthroughs suggest that we might be heading towards a spaceship
that’s reminiscent of the U.S.S.
Enterprise.
One of the most iconic abilities of the Enterprise is its ability to zip from one end of the
galaxy to the next in mere moments, using its fictitious warp drive.
Currently, humankind is nowhere near advanced enough to replicate the Enterprise’s warp
drive.
However, the theory behind building one has been around since the early 1990s!
But how could we achieve superluminal speeds?
Well, among all theories, the most known one and possibly the most likely to be implemented,
is the one from theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre.
He proposed that we must bend the space-time.
Easy to say, huh?
Let's try to understand better this concept.
Since Einstein came out with his General Relativity theory, we know that space-time can be imagined
as an elastic sheet of rubber on which all matter sits.
The more an object is massive, the more this sheet bends.
That's also why we have singularities around black holes.
Singularities are very tall dips in the rubber, created by the huge black holes' masses.
And the same theory also says us that is not possible to transfer information faster than
the speed of light, but what if we managed to push the space-time itself, the rubber
itself, towards higher velocities, eventually reaching light speed?
Alcubierre proposed that if space-time could be folded in front of a spaceship and then
expanded behind it, the ship could travel actually much faster than the speed of light
and achieve "warp speed".
This bending of space-time would theoretically continue to move in a wave and act as a conveyor
belt carrying the spaceship along with it.
To achieve such space-time manipulation, Alcubierre suggested an enormous amount of negative mass,
a phenomenon rarely created in laboratories and seen as vacuum energy in space.
The amount of negative mass needed to facilitate Alcubierre’s warp drive would have to be
equivalent to the mass of a massive star distributed in a ring around a spacecraft.
This hypothetical ring of negative mass would create a "warp bubble" which would distort
space-time and transport any spacecraft within it.
It seems a pure fantasy, especially because what the hell is supposed to mean having a
“negative mass”?
Mass is only positive!
Indeed.
But listen to this.
Some researchers at the Göttingen University, Germany, offer a new area of physics for researchers
to explore potentials for warp power.
In fact, they claim that we don't actually need negative mass to provide a warp drive.
What they suggest is that even positive mass and energy could fulfil the request for a
warp bubble.
Instead of a solid ring of negative mass detailed in Alcubierre’s theory, they propose that
layering rings and risks of extremely dense fluid, similar to the composition of a neutron
star’s interior, would yield the same result.
Of course, several questions remain unanswered.
For example, how to control its direction and distance?
And most of all, how do we exit a warp bubble?
So the only thing we can do is wait and see if someone will come out with some interesting
theories and ideas.
For example, in Star Trek, the idea was to fuel their warp drive and create enough energy
to bend space-time, by means of the annihilation reaction between matter, in the form of deuterium,
which is basically hydrogen, and antimatter, which is regulated by a fictional crystal
called dilithium.
According to the creators, the energy released from this reaction, creates the necessary
warp bubble to manipulate space-time and move.
But what's antimatter?
As the name suggests, it is a mirrored and opposing version of the matter.
We could explain that in this way: suppose you have an antimatter twin.
You two are equal.
Every detail of your face, you weigh the same, everything!
The only exception is that you are a really negative person, instead, your antimatter
twin is always happy.
For example, an electron has a negative charge so its antimatter partner has the same mass
but an opposite positive charge called a positron.
In order to create antimatter, particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider, which fire
particles at one another to release antimatter.
But producing antimatter is really expensive and hard.
Despite these quantum woes, research into antimatter spacecraft is still in development.
One of the latest advancements in antimatter propulsion is NASA’s proposal for a space
probe that will travel all the way to our stellar neighbourhood Proxima Centauri, using
an annihilation accelerator.
But until scientists can successfully mass-produce and store antimatter, powering a spacecraft
that resembles the Enterprise remains firmly in the realm of imagination.
We want to conclude this video by sharing this thought.
When it comes to a movie, the goal for science consultants should be to assist entertainment
professionals in negotiating scientific authenticity within their own contexts of narrative, genre
and audience.
If you want to make a good sci-fi movie, science is an important aspect you may want to consider,
but entertainment professionals are “entertainment experts” who understand best how to deal
with the constraints imposed by the media of film and television.
Rather than inhibit creativity, working with a science consultant should compliment filmmakers’
skills at creating entertaining products.
"Thanks for watching everyone!
What's your favourite sci-fi movie?
Let us know in the comments below, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you next time on
the channel!"
Credits: embopress.org, space.com