Within the Star Trek universe, traveling across the galaxy is a breeze thanks to the famed warp drive. This fictional technology allows humans and other civilizations to zoom between star systems in days rather than centuries.
Such rapid travel times are impossible in the real world, because our best theory for the way the universe works, Einstein’s special relativity, says that nothing moves faster than the speed of light.
While current rocket propulsion systems are bound by this law, plenty of hopeful engineers and physicists are working on concepts that might bring us a step closer to Star Trek’s vision of racing across the cosmos.
“Currently, even the most advanced ideas behind interstellar travel entail trip times of decades and centuries to even the closest stars, due to the restrictions of special relativity, and our abilities—or lack of—to travel at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light,” says Richard Obousy, director and founder of Icarus Interstellar, a nonprofit dedicated to making progress toward interstellar flight.
“Being able to build starships with the capability to travel faster than the speed of light would open the galaxy for exploration and possible colonization by humans.”