Would you want to flyby a star in space?
Many people would, but there is a large unfathomable distance between us and even the closest star
if only we could find a means to travel fast.
Right?
Well, your desire to travel to other stars may one day come true since Elon Musk, the
space boss, has unveiled a warp drive spacecraft.
What is a warp drive?
When will you be able to board one and how fast can it move?
Join us as we bring you the new warp drive concept everyone is talking about.
Because of their distance from us, the small stars seen in the night sky look big and exceedingly
bright; otherwise, we would not be able to see them.
The closest stars to Earth are three stars in the Alpha Centauri triple star system,
which are around 4.37 light years distant.
The closest of these stars, Proxima Centauri, is approximately 4.24 light years away.
Moreover, there is also a red dwarf that is nearly six light years from Earth, known as
Barnard's Star.
One light year is roughly equivalent to 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers.
What if you wish to travel to the furthest distant star visible from Earth?
Then you must journey to a star known as Earendel, which is approximately 12.9 billion light
years away from us, a frightening number of miles.
Unfortunately, you can't visit Earendel even if somehow it was possible since it is long
dead; the star existed for barely a million years, which is equivalent to the blink of
an eye in the cosmos.
Despite the fact that it died a long time ago, the light has been travelling to us since
then due to the massive distance and we are only able to observe its light.
That is the trouble with space exploration: everything is so far away.
Take, for example, a region inside our solar system that Elon Musk is interested in.
The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk, wants to colonize Mars, but that means
he must find a way to travel the 33.9 million miles that separate us from the red planet,
and that is even if he takes full advantage of the shortest distance that separates the
two worlds.
If not properly timed, any spacecraft going to Mars may have to endure up to 250 million
miles at the farthest distance between the two worlds, which is known as Aphelion.
In the best-case scenario, Musk's explorers will have to travel to Mars for around five
months.
Musk also fantasizes of crude voyages to other planets like as Jupiter or Neptune.
However, until visionaries like Musk develop out a much faster means to travel in space,
we will be restricted in how far we may explore.
Apart from time, fuel is a big issue; it is nearly impractical for a starship, for example,
to carry enough fuel to reach any star, let alone the nearest one; even travelling to
Mars necessitates the use of many more starships to refuel the outgoing starship.
But what if we could travel at or near the speed of light?
Surely, everything becomes easier.
Light travels quickly through space, so interstellar distances are measured in light years.
Light years are how far light can travel in a year, which as previously stated is about
9.46 trillion kilometers, which means we can get to Proxima Centauri in about 4.24 years.
If that appears to be too long, consider other places we may travel.
The moon, for example, will be only a second away, and the sun will be only an 8-minute
trip for us.
Musk would be thrilled to launch his Mars colonists at a speed of 300 000 kilometers
per second or 186 000 miles per second.
In the worst-case situation, they would arrive at their new planet home in just 22.4 minutes;
in the best-case scenario, the journey will take only three minutes.
Anyone who regrets leaving Earth may easily return.
Is it possible to travel at the speed of light without being in the fictional world of movies?
Fortunately, utilizing warp drive technology, the answer is yes; but, before we tell you
about the latest development in warp drive technology, what does it feel like to travel
at the speed of light?
To prepare you for your first speed of light journey, we will quickly touch on what the
speed of light travel looks like.
The first thing is that your concept of time will alter.
One of the biggest adjustments would be your perception of time while it may take you three
years to reach the planet of your choice, time will have progressed a bit faster on
Earth.
To get to the edge of our solar system would take nine months while a year and a half would
pass on Earth.
This time differential is known as time dilation, and it is a property of space travel that
is included in Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
According to the MIT Technology Review, "if you left your twin on Earth, they would age
more quickly than you."
However, the age difference would be determined by the spaceship's speed, including when it
accelerates and slows down.
Time Dilation is also affected by gravity and the proximity of the clock to a gravitational
pull such as that of a planet.
You will also have to struggle for your safety while travelling through space because space
isn't exactly empty.
You will need some form of shield to protect you and your spaceship from free roaming particles
that can also move at roughly the speed of light.
According to NASA, “There are three ways that this acceleration can happen: through
electromagnetic fields, magnetic explosions and wave particle interactions.”
These are mostly caused by the collision of energetic and magnetic fields.
What will you see if you travel near the speed of light?
Prepare for a significant shift in your field of vision; the world will appear to you through
a tunnel-shaped window in front of the spacecraft in which you are traveling, and the stars
in front will appear blue.
The stars behind would appear red.
This is due to the fact that light waves from stars in front of you will cluster together
and appear blue, whilst light waves from stars behind you will spread out and appear red,
resulting in an intense doppler effect.
After a certain speed, you would only see blackness since the wavelength of the light
entering your eyes would be outside of the visible spectrum.
If you've decided whether or not you wish to travel at the speed of light, we'll explain
how warp drive can make such travel possible.
The present understanding of spacetime by physicists is based on Albert Einstein's theory
of general relativity.
According to general relativity, space and time are merged and nothing can travel faster
than the speed of light.
In addition, general relativity defines how mass and energy distort space-time.
Heavy objects, like as stars and black holes, bend space-time around them.
This curvature is what you experience as gravity, and that is why many space-faring heroes are
concerned about becoming stranded in or falling into a gravity well.
In 1994, Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre demonstrated that shrinking space-time
in front of the spaceship while expanding it behind was mathematically achievable under
the constraints of general relativity.
Consider the distance between two points to be 33 feet or 10 meters.
If you start at point A and move at 1 meter per second, it will take you 10 seconds to
reach to point B. However, if you could somehow compress the distance between you and point
B such that the spacing is now only 1 meter, you would be able to reach point B in roughly
one second if you moved through space time at your maximum speed of one meter per second.
Because you are not travelling faster than light in the space surrounding you, this approach
does not violate the laws of relativity.
Alcubierre demonstrated that the warp drive from Star Trek was theoretically viable.
Unfortunately, Alcubierre's approach of compressing space-time has one flaw: it necessitates the
use of negative energy or negative mass.
Alcubierre's warp engine would function by enclosing the spaceship in a bubble of flat
space-time and bending space-time around that bubble to shorten distances.
A warp drive would require a tremendous amount of mass to create an imbalance between particles
and anti-particles in order to generate negative energy.
Alcubierre's warp drive would harness this negative energy to build the space-time bubble,
but a warp drive would require a lot of matter to generate enough negative energy.
Alcubierre calculated that a warp drive with a 100-meter bubble would require the entire
observable universe's mass.
Recent publications by Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire, as well as Eric Lentz, present
methods that bring warp drives closer to reality.
Bobrick and Martire realize that, “By modifying space-time within the bubble in a certain
way, they could remove the need to use negative energy.”
However, this approach does not result in a warp drive that can independently travel
faster than light.
Lentz also presented a method that does not require negative energy; he utilized a different
geometric approach to solve the equations of general relativity, and as a result, he
discovered that a warp drive did not require negative energy.
The bubble would be able to move faster than the speed of light thanks to Lentz's approach.
Let us know what you think of the warp drive in the comments section below.