How wild and crazy is the warp drive?
The way the writers describe it, the warp drive is impossible. As everyone knows, Einstein says you can’t go faster than the speed of light. But there is a way that the warp drive could work. Although Einstein caused the problem, he also came to the rescue by inventing general relativity. In principle, general relativity allows you to go faster than the speed of light compared to distant objects, but locally be standing still. As we sit here we’re not moving relative to our local surroundings. But relative to a galaxy at the other end of the visible Universe, we are moving away at the speed of light. And that galaxy is also standing still relative to its surroundings What’s happening? Well, the space between the two galaxies is actually expanding. So if you wanted to have a warp drive in principle, you could let space do the work for you. Let’s say you wanted to go to the nearest star. You’d have to fire up your chemical rockets, and go up about 200 miles from the Earth’s surface. Now
