Science Fiction Genre & Warp Drive
Science Fiction Movies & Books Violate Einstein's Relativity Theory
How science fiction movies and books violate Einstein's relativity theory with travel faster than the speed of light.
Science Fiction
The science fiction genre, including movies, books, and TV shows is full of examples of travel faster than the speed of light. For example, in the Star Trek TV shows and movies, the Enterprise regularly goes into warp drive to travel faster than light. Many science fiction novels and stories adopt this device, or something similar, to allow travel faster than the speed of light. For communication, but not travel, faster than light the writers in the science fiction genre often adopt a device called an ansible. Why do these writers make such a special effort to adopt these fictional devices for travel and communication that is faster than light? Why not just have the starships continue to accelerate beyond the speed of light? The answer lies in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.
Special Relativity
One of the consequences of Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is that the speed of light is the ultimate speed limit in the universe. Light, or anything else with no mass, can travel at the speed of light because it is massless.. However anything that has mass can not reach the speed of light. An object with mass, such as a starship, can travel arbitrarily close to the speed of light, but can not actually reach the speed of light. No matter or information can exceed the speed of light. To the best of our current knowledge, this is an inviolable fundamental principle of physics.
In addition to the speed limit, there are time dilation effects that take place when traveling at speeds near the speed of light. These effects become noticeable at about 10% the speed of light. When someone or something is traveling close to the speed of light, time will slow down as seen by an outside observer at rest. Time will seem normal to the starship and passengers traveling near the speed of light, but to the rest of the universe at rest, time will move more slowly for the starship and its occupants.
What would interstellar travel really be like?
If starships can not travel faster than light, interstellar trips would take decades if not centuries as seen by the people who stayed back home on Earth. However if the starship is traveling close enough to the speed of light its time would advance more slowly. Hence interstellar travelers who returned to Earth would have aged much less than Earth. One might return from an interstellar voyage, still relatively young, to find that decades to centuries had passed on Earth. Because the speed of light limit applies to information as well as physical objects, no faster than light communication between planets or starships would be possible during these voyages. Warp drives and ansibles are words used in the science fiction genre to get around this speed of light limitation imposed by special relativity. They are however just words. It is possible that in the future someone will find a loophole in relativity theory to get around this limitation, but at this point we do not have even a speculative idea about how such a loophole might work. Some science fiction writers use words like warp drive or ansible to make it sound plausible that we will eventually find a way around the speed of light limitation. Others write stories based on realistic science, in which interstellar travel takes centuries.
