The Warped Nature of Man

WARNING - SUBJECTIVE POST


There has been recent speculation in the (non-scientific) press about space travel in general and about warp drive in particular.

Warp drive was invented by Gene Roddenberry to enable the Enterprise to travel large distances easily.

Special relativity prevents objects with non-zero mass even travelling at the speed of light,let alone exceeding it.

The idea of warp drive is that the craft does not really travel, but the spacetime around it is warped in such a way as to flip the craft forward.

One analogy is perhaps a long red carpet, the type Hollywood uses. take one end, and rapidly move it up and down vertically. A "wave" moves down the carpet if you are lucky. These waves are called "transverse waves" because the direction of the oscillation is perpendicular to the direction of the wave.

Another analogy is that these "space-waves" may be longitudinal, the direction of oscillation being along the wave direction. Examples are slinky waves or sound waves.

These are two different type of warp drive.

It goes without saying that the technology to manipulate spacetime in this manner is only fiction and in reality, maybe a million years away, a fact that the warped news reports were happy to omit.

As such, I treat these ideas not as science fiction, but science fantasy, but I will admit that at some time in the very far future, it may be possible.

Having said that, this post is firmly labelled as "subjective"