Physicists Scramble To Make Faster-Than-Light Travel Possible

Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize winner and one of the most important scientists in history, defined the physical limits of our universe when he presented his theory of general relativity over 100 years ago, Marc Fleischmann reported recently for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

Photo Insert: A spaceship cannot accelerate to "faster than light" by itself.

Physicist and science fiction expert Sascha Vogel sums up a key tenet of Einstein's work: "It is not possible to be faster than light." In other words, a spaceship cannot accelerate to "faster than light" by itself. But maybe a trick of space-time will help?

At the end of the first episode of the cult series "Star Trek," broadcast in 1966, Captain Kirk gives the order to go to "warp one." The wiki for the adventures of the starship Enterprise, entitled "Memory Alpha," defines warp as "faster than light speed."

The Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre claims to have found a loophole to implement warp speed - at least in theory. When you operate his entirely theoretical "Alcubierre drive" it is not the spaceship that is accelerated, but the space around it is artificially curved.

This means that the vehicle hardly moves at all, but travels through space in a so-called warp bubble. Figuratively explained: The spaceship rides on a wave that curves space-time and thus shortens the path.

Physicist Vogel still sees "many ifs and buts" with this idea. One prerequisite for the Alcubierre drive, for example, would be "negative energy" - although it is not yet clear whether this exists at all. Physics experts assume that a negative energy flow could arise at the edge of a black hole.

A researcher at the University of Goettingen in central Germany is trying a different approach. Astrophysicist Erik Lentz says "there is no demonstrable way" to produce negative energy, so he is focusing instead on having an extraordinary amount of conventional energy.

On this basis, space travel to Proxima Centauri - at about 4.2 light-years away the nearest star outside our solar system - could then be possible faster than at present.

By way of comparison, traveling at the speed of the Voyager 1 space probe which has now left our solar system, the journey would take about 75,000 years. Maybe scientists should not be deterred by such obstacles. After all, "things are only impossible until they are not," Kirk's successor Captain Jean-Luc Picard observed in the series "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

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