It’s the next generation — of science.
A new study appears to have legitimized the popular science fiction belief that “warp drives” — known by nerds as super-powered space engines from “Star Trek” — may actually exist and be a way to discover aliens.
The research team, plucked from prestigious institutions like Oxford and the Max Planck Institute, hones in on the legitimacy of “faster-than-light travel” and its ties to “application to the search for extraterrestrial life.”
In other words, traces of warp travel could be indicators of non-human travel throughout the universe.
And there is potential for plausibility of their existence, the team stated.
“Despite originating in science fiction, warp drives have a concrete description in general relativity,” they wrote in the paper’s abstract.
“Our work highlights the importance of exploring strange new spacetimes, to (boldly) simulate what no one has seen before.”
This enterprise of thinkers is building on a concept from theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre.
In the 1990s, the Mexico City-based expert conceptualized the potential for a spaceship to zoom past light speed thanks to warp abilities, along with the existence of wormholes in space.
“It is possible to modify a spacetime in a way that allows a spaceship to travel with an arbitrarily large speed,” Alcubierre wrote at the time.
