How do spaceships fly faster than light?
Reason for Space Ships’ Fast Speed
The universe is huge. It is bigger than most of us can ever imagine it to be. The celestial bodies are separated by long distances. We cannot give distances in kilometers there. Hence, to measure such long distances, light-years are used.
So what is a light-year? It is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year.
1 light-year year=9 trillion kilometers.
Hence, from all of these, it is clear that light travels faster than any other medium.
The speed of light might look very fast to you, but it is not enough. For example, to go to Andromeda, which is the nearest galaxy, it would take you 2.5 million light-years. Thus, it is clear that with the speed of light, we cannot travel much longer distances in the universe. Our destinations have become much shorter.
So, to cover much more parts of the unknown universe, we need a speed that is greater than light.
The answer is the ‘wrap drive. ’
The mention of a wrap drive is in many movies.
Wrap drive simply manipulates space-time. However, this is mostly a theoretical hypothesis so far.
The theory behind this is that as your ship travels to its destination, it will cause the pace ahead of it to contract. Along with the contraction and simultaneous expansion of the space behind, must be followed. Thus, the spaceship would then be traveling inside a space-time bubble, which is known as the “warp bubble” of flat space.
Through this, the spaceship is making a dent in space. Along with that, it is pulling part of space-time towards it and pushing space-time behind it.
However, all of these are theoretical hypotheses that are yet to be executed. NASA is working hard to make this possible. Because with this, we would one day have space travel all around the galaxy.
– Written by Godhuli Mondal
