Professor Geraint Lewis from the University of Sydney has claimed that we will be travelling at Warp Speed within the next 100 years thus enabling us to cover light years of distance between galaxies in a short span of time.
To give a brief overview Warp drive is an imaginary propulsion system that enable speeds greater than the speed of light. The term was initially coined in Star Trek series and forms the basis of the series as a whole. The system works on the concept of anti-matter and matter. Theoretically both materials exist and should exist but all we see now is almost all matter, Theoretical Physicists argue that since both are opposites they should exist in equal quantities and when they interact they annihilate one another leaving behind a lot of energy.But something tipped the balance in the initial phase of the universe which resulted in matter becoming dominant that we see now.
On the other hand Professor Geraint argues that Warp speed concept was part of Einstein’s theory of relativity(see video below to understand Einstein theory). He told ABC news that ‘Einstein’s theory is already a hundred years old, but we have only started to scratch the surface,’ ‘I think in the next 100 or 1,000 years we will reveal a lot more about the universe and maybe this hyper-fast travel will be realisable.’
Now as mentioned earlier, warp travel requires anti-matter or negative density energy, a material theoretically proven but yet to be discovered. Professor from University of Sydney states regarding this that
‘It is not a material that we actually have in our hands, but there are signs that there are aspects of the universe that actually have this kind of property.’,’You just have to look at the work of Newton 400 years ago, and even people who work in quantum physics 100 years ago, and those things are real today and they started off as dreams essentially.’
‘Science fiction writers have given us many images of interstellar travel, but travelling at the speed of light is simply imaginary at present.
‘There are many ‘absurd’ theories that have become reality over the years of scientific research. But for the near future, warp drive remains a dream.’
While warp drive remains a dream, there is a thing close to it known as EMdrive. It is not at the speed of light but can travel at speed until now only seen in science fiction. The technology presented at American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics by Martin Tajmar, professor and chair for Space Systems at the Dresden University of Technology would enable us to go to the moon in just over four hours.
To conclude, we say that though warp drive remains a dream but the progress shown by scientific research over the last half a century is amazing. And if we continue at that rate then we just might achieve warp drive within the next 100 years.
