Michio Kaku is a renowned physicist and also a television star. I have always found him very interesting and entertaining. Lately he has mentioned the fact scientists are making new theoretical advances which could mean we will be able to develop a warp drive someday. A warp engine generating a speed of Warp 1 or one time the speed of light would make it possible to travel to Mars in about 3 minutes. While this is incredible by today’s speed standards, it certainly isn’t fast enough for interstellar travel, but it is a start, because if we can figure out how to travel faster than light speed we may be able to travel many times that speed. Kaku states he believes new theoretical science is advancing quickly and there are some indications light speed might be possible in the future. He doesn’t think if it happens it will be soon, but who knows when a major breakthrough could happen? There is a problem even with this and it is the same old problem Einstein predicted. To reach light speed would require more mass than the universe could provide.

One thing which I never understood is if we could move space and maybe time, to travel through space at light speeds, could this be bad for time and space? It doesn’t seem like we would be doing space any good. Disrupting space could have unforeseen effects which might even tear the space time fabric creating bizarre effects on all the objects inside space and maybe even destroy them. I don’t think this problem has been addressed sufficiently when warp drives are being studied. What good would it be for to us to invent a sort of engine which would damage space whenever it was used? If there are other beings living on other worlds don’t we think they would see us as a menace and maybe believe they had to destroy us, before we destroyed their habitat? If we could get space to expand at speeds greater than light speed and it was safe, it still might increase distances in the area of space we were traveling through, thus disrupting that area.

Theoretically how could someone travel to a distant world faster than light would take to get here from it? Some of these answers may seem very strange, but this is just an exercise:
1. Move your target closer
2. Bend space
3. Move space
4. Find a shortcut (wormhole)
5. Find a way to accelerate light and send us there in a beam like a transporter with a receiving device on the end.
6. Entanglement. When atoms are entangled you can change the rotation of one and it will change on the other instantly, no matter how far away. Perhaps this can be adopted in some way for travel.
7. Some believe our minds will have the capability of doing this to our bodies someday.
8. Developing a warp drive.

If one looks at the list nothing looks very promising does it? It is like we are Victorian era people looking at a modern computer and not being able to understand how the thing works. So far we have only the hypothetical tachyon particle which can move faster than light. I was wondering if there were objects moving faster than the speed of light how would we detect them? Science states we would see something called Cherenkov radiation because of their interaction with the vacuum of space. Since this has never been seen, it means no object has done this or it could mean this just doesn’t work as promised.

At this stage in our civilization we don’t know what might be waiting for us in the universe. Sending men to the moon hardly makes us experts. It could turn out there are places where things travel faster than light and our theories are in error. Look what happened to Newtonian physics when Quantum physics was discovered. Quantum physics showed us on a tiny scale many things operate differently. This makes me wonder if we will find something in the quantum world which will help us in our quest for speed. Perhaps a new scientific discipline will emerge and have some answers for us. Maybe we will discover some new mineral on an alien world which will be able to power our warp engines.

Just because something seems impossible doesn’t mean we can’t accomplish it. Remember when we decided to land on the moon? Okay, you’re not old enough so let me tell you. Many people thought it was an impossible task. Before that some people thought we would never be able to launch a man into space and even earlier it was believed by many, man would never fly. There is a great quote about flying which could be applied to faster than light speed travel. It was by J.M. Barrie and he said, “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” We have to believe faster than light speed will be possible or we will be chained to this solar system forever.

An announcement has been made about a team of scientists at NASA and a discovery they have said to have made. There is a device called an EmDrive, a sort of space engine which is completely sealed, electrically powered and works without any moving parts and has puzzled scientists for years who can’t believe it can work, but it does. In its sealed chamber NASA scientists think they have accelerated particles faster than light speed. If after verification this turns out to be true, we may have the basis for a warp engine. As it is, the EmDrive will shorten voyage times to other planets by quite a bit. What was said to have happened was NASA scientists decided to fire lasers in the EM resonance chamber and when they did these beams accelerated and some went faster than light speed.

I just want to finish by saying many an invention was discovered by accident and if NASA has discovered faster than light speeds by accident, it will be one of the greatest breakthroughs in history and perhaps allow us to meet other races who live in this vast universe of ours.