in star trek what is warp speed

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Star trek: how fast warp speed is (& how it compares to hyperspace).

Warp speed is the key to making Star Trek work - but just how does this fictional form of travel work, and how does it compare to Star Wars?

Here's how fast Star Trek 's warp speed actually is, and how it compares to other forms of travel in science-fiction, such as Star Wars ' Hyperspace. When Gene Roddenberry began to work on Star Trek , he was faced with a thorny problem: he wanted the show to have some semblance of scientific accuracy, but at the same time, he also needed the Starship Enterprise to be able to move at incredible speeds.

The solution was the warp drive (or, as it was actually called in Star Trek 's pilot episode, the hyperdrive). This brings matter and antimatter into collision in order to generate a phenomenal amount of power, and the reaction is regulated by a rare mineral called dilithium . The matter/antimatter reaction allows the starship to travel faster than light - several multiples faster.

Related: Star Trek: How Stardates Are Calculated (& What They Really Mean)

But just how fast is warp speed? The original Star Trek series was unclear, but over time the franchise has established clear rules. Let's explore them.

Warp Speed In The Original Series

The original Star Trek series was wildly inconsistent in its portrayal of warp speed, with the concept basically used as a plot device to get from A to B at whatever speed an episode's writer wanted. Warp speeds of 10 or higher were treated as unsafe, at least until the Enterprise was refitted in Star Trek: The Motion Picture , when it gained the ability to safely travel up to warp 12. The fastest warp speed shown on-screen was an alien vessel that could actually reach warp 35. All these inconsistencies clearly bugged Gene Roddenberry, and as a result warp speed was recalibrated for Star Trek: The Next Generation in order to create something a little more well-structured.

Warp Speed In The Next Generation Era

According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia , in simple terms, the new warp speed factor 1 is the exact speed of light, 299,792,458 m/s. Each factor above is a multiple of that warp speed, although what those values are vary depending on the show in question.

Warp Factor 1 - 1x lightspeed
Warp Factor 2 - 10x lightspeed
Warp Factor 3 - 39x lightspeed
Warp Factor 4 - 102x lightspeed
Warp Factor 5 - 214x lightspeed
Warp Factor 6 - 392x lightspeed
Warp Factor 7 - 656x lightspeed
Warp Factor 8 - 1,024x lightspeed
Warp Factor 9 - 1,516x lightspeed
Warp Factor 9.99 - 7,912x lightspeed
Warp Factor 10 - Infinity

In theory, a ship traveling at warp 10 is moving so fast that it essentially exists in all places and all times simultaneously. It's only known to have been achieved once in the entire history of Star Trek , in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Threshold". There, Tom Paris successfully traveled at warp 10, but the experience proved to have a transformative, evolutionary effect upon any organic matter. The crew of Voyager wisely ditched the idea, concerned about the consequences. It's worth noting that warp speeds seem to have been re-calibrated again in the future timeline glimpsed in "All Good Things," where two vessels are said to travel at warp 13. Presumably as technology became more efficient, Starfleet saw the value in creating a new scale with a wider range. In a technical note, science adviser Andre Bormanis suggested that in this future timeline, warp 15 would be the Threshold limit.

In truth, warp travel is usually little more than a plot device to help the Federation's starships jump across the galaxy at speed. Almost every sci-fi series has its own equivalent, simply because the alternative is to slow your story down for quite a while as the crew jumps from one star-system to another.

How Warp Speed Compares To Hyperspace

In Star Wars , for example, ships that break the speed of light are able to access another dimension called hyperspace . This is essentially another plane of reality, one where the laws of physics operate differently. By accessing hyperspace, a spaceship can move at a phenomenal speed; there are different classes of hyperdrive, which allow different speeds.

It's important to note that a journey through hyperspace can be disrupted; if a vessel encounters the gravity shadow of a stellar mass, such as a planet, star, or black hole, they are ripped out of hyperspace. That's why the trip from Tatooine to Alderaan in Star Wars took 16 hours, which is actually pretty slow for a 10,000 light year journey in a ship with an illegal class 0.5 hyperdrive, and is roughly equivalent to Star Trek 's warp 7. The dream scenario would be to acquire a hyperdrive of class 0.0, which would be analogous to Star Trek 's warp 10.

More: Picard Isn’t The First Star Trek Captain To Say “Engage”

Star Trek: How Fast Is Warp Speed Exactly?

"Star Trek" fans are well accustomed to hearing Starfleet captains give the order to travel at maximum warp, but what, exactly, does that mean? The intergalactic storytelling in the "Star Trek" franchise is enabled by the futuristic invention of faster-than-light travel, with starships able to cross impossibly vast distances of space in the time it takes for a commercial break. But for fans who've wondered how fast warp speed actually is, things start out relatively (pun intended) simple. The way warp works is the complex part.

Basic warp speed, also referred to as warp 1, is exactly the speed of light. That's approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. Anything below that speed is described on board a Starfleet vessel as a fractional. But the scale isn't linear, which makes things tricker to calculate at any speed other than a flat warp 1. The best scale to use is the one from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," by which point there was an actual mathematical formula in use to calculate warp speeds. By that scale, a warp factor of 0.5 is only about one-tenth the speed of light, while warp 5 is 213.7 times faster than light.

As seen in many "Star Trek" episodes, the laws of space-time start to break down entirely once warp 10 is reached . Warp 10 gets defined as infinite speed, which means anything traveling at it would occupy all points in space at the same time. Even in science fiction, there must be a limit somewhere.

The science of Star Trek's warp speed

Faster-than-light travel isn't possible with current technology, and may not be possible at all. The speed of light, 300,000 kilometers per second, is thought to function as a sort of "cosmic speed limit." Nothing with mass can travel at that speed or faster, with light being the exception since it has no weight. As Einstein proved, this simple rule holds the fabric of space and time together. So how does the warp drive in "Star Trek" circumvent this apparent law of nature?

As astrophysicist Erin MacDonald explained on the Star Trek YouTube channel , "Just because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light on the surface of space-time, nothing says that space-time itself can't go faster than the speed of light." But how does a warp engine use that loophole in the laws of physics to accomplish FTL travel? By generating a field of energy that warps the space-time around a starship. Said MacDonald, "The idea with warp drive is that you build a bubble of space-time around your ship and then that propels you faster than the speed of light." These bubbles are called warp fields.

This is also how different warp factors can be achieved. A single warp field causes a starship to travel at warp 1, but adding an additional bubble around the first causes even more acceleration — warp 2, 3, and so on. "Eventually, you get to the point where you wrap all of space and time around your ship, and that, you can think of as warp factor 10," MacDonald said.

The history of Star Trek's warp drive

The invention of warp technology is well-documented in "Star Trek" lore. In the franchise's fictional history, Earth went through a dark period between the late 1900s and mid-21st century. First, the Eugenics Wars ravaged the planet, though its dates have been retconned. Next, starting in the early to mid-2020s, World War III broke out following a period of economic collapse. We see the beginnings of this during "Star Trek: Picard" Season 2. But in the post-atomic wastelands of the period that followed, a scientist named Zefram Cochrane managed to engineer the first warp-capable ship.

The movie "Star Trek: First Contact" tells the story of what happened next. Visited by Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the crew of the Enterprise after they travel through a temporal vortex created by the Borg, Cochrane finishes his work on the warp drive. On April 5, 2063, he takes it on a maiden voyage. This triggers the attention of nearby Vulcans, who, realizing a new species has become interplanetary, visit Earth to introduce themselves to humanity.

In the "Star Trek" universe, April 5 is celebrated across the Federation as First Contact Day, and many fans join in on the fun in real life by honoring the holiday. More than a time to celebrate "Star Trek," it's a day to celebrate what the franchise represents: the hope for a future where humanity warps past our petty quarrels to unite with a shared sense of curiosity and exploration.

Warp Speed Calculator

Table of contents

Omni Calculator's warp speed calculator is a tool that allows you to determine the speed of your favorite Star Trek ship . You can also compute the distance covered and the time of travel .

In the text below, we will explain the fundamental aspects of the warp propulsion system, warp factors, and how we can compute the speed of our starship. The starship speed can be calculated using three different equations: TOS (The Original Series) and two versions of TNG (The New Generation) .

Read on if you want to learn about the warp factor, the Cochrane scale , and how Star Trek ships can overcome the speed of light. Let us move to our calculator and live long and prosper🖖!

⚠️ Disclaimer: We try our best to make our Omni Calculators as precise and reliable as possible. However, this tool can never replace the professional advice of a starship's Chief Engineer.

Warp propulsion and warp factor

As it is known by any Star Trek fan or by anyone who eventually watched the USS Enterprise exploring the frontiers of space, the warp propulsion system (WPS) is the tool that allowed Captain James T. Kirk and his crew to access deep space. The WPS is a fictional technology that makes a starship move in space with superluminal speeds (speeds faster than the speed of light). The system uses a warp drive device, distorting spacetime and enabling a starship to cross several light-years in seconds!

We know it seems non-practical or strange that the spacetime can be distorted. However, this is the mechanism behind the propagation of the gravitational waves . These waves are generated by cataclysmic events in the Universe, such as the collision between supermassive black holes or neutron stars. Before their final collision, these objects are orbiting each other, and this spiral movement distorts the spacetime among them. This distortion is propagated in spacetime in the form of waves. The phenomenon was predicted by Einstein's general relativity in 1916 and observed for the first time in 2015 by LIGO detectors — Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory .

Back to Star Trek, the advent of the WPS is credited to a scientist called Zefram Cochrane , whose surname is used as the scale to measure the speed of a starship in multiples of the speed of light . This means that the light in a vacuum moves at one cochrane . Meanwhile, a star cruiser may reach 2450 cochranes . These superluminal speeds depend on the value of the so-called warp factor. The warp factor is a parameter that scales the starship's velocity due to the warp drive.

The warp factor formula has two main definitions: The Original Series (TOS) and The New Generation (TNG) equations. These equations are going to be discussed deeply in the following sections.

🙋 If you wish to know more about the physical limits of the speed and energy of an object, access Omni Calculator's relativistic kinetic energy calculator .

The original series equation — Cochrane Scale

The original series equation is presented in Star Trek: Star Fleet Technical Manual written by Franz Joseph, and its form is:

v v v — Warp speed;
w w w — Warp factor; and
c c c — Speed of light in vacuum ( c = 299 , 792 , 458 m / s c = 299{,}792{,}458\rm \ m/s c = 299 , 792 , 458 m/s ).

The TOS equation is also known as the Cochrane scale among the community of Star Trek fans. From the previous formula, we can observe that for w = 2 w = 2 w = 2 , our ship is moving with v = 8c or 8 cochranes .

The Next Generation equations for superluminal speed

The Next Generation equations are a set of theoretical formulae based on the values for the warp factor presented by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual . There, the authors introduced the following table:

The data shown in the table above were used to define both TNG-1 and TNG-2 equations for w ≤ 9 w \leq 9 w ≤ 9 , whose formula is:

You can compare the speeds for the TOS with the TNG-1 and TNG-2 equations and see how the new generation starships are faster than the original series ones.

Would you like to know why we use two names for the new generation warp speed equations? Keep reading, and you will find the answer.

The technical manual for the new generation starships also talks about the physical limit for the warp factor, known as Eugene limit . The Eugene limit establishes that the maximum warp factor is w = 10 w = 10 w = 10 and that even if a civilization could reach the energy boundary of such a warp factor, an object traveling at warp factor 10 would occupy all the points of the Universe simultaneously .

You can find below a table containing the warp factor predictions for w > 9 w > 9 w > 9 :

The conjectured values are part of a warp factor chart and were approximately derived by two different equations built by fans .

This is why we use two different equations for the Next Generation starships. The TNG-1 formula for w > 9 w > 9 w > 9 is:

And the TNG-2 equation for w > 9 w > 9 w > 9 has the following form:

The numerical parameters shown in the last equations were carefully chosen to fit the warp factor chart prediction in the superluminal regime. Besides, both TNG-1 and TNG-2 go to infinity at warp factor 10, recovering the Eugene limit for superluminal velocities.

We still do not have a final answer for a warp speed equation that recovers the Eugene limit, so you can choose your favorite proposal and explore the behavior of traveling close to infinity .

Now, it is time to play with our calculator and find the speed of your favorite starship. Enjoy exploring the power of your warp drive!

How to use the warp speed calculator

Using our warp speed calculator is simple and intuitive . Just type the warp factor of your starship and then click on the name of the equation you wish to use. You will see the warp factor converted to the superluminal velocity as a multiple of the speed of light (or in cochranes).

You can also include the distance you would like to travel, and you will obtain the time necessary to complete your journey instantly. Remember that our Omni calculators work in the inverse direction, so you may enter the time interval of your space trip and derive the traveled distance in the blink of an eye.

Do you know what value to choose for the warp factor? You do not need to worry; we provide a table with the maximum warp factor for some Star Trek ships.

Searching for a new planet — an example

The Universe is so vast and full of interesting places that it is difficult to decide a destination for our starship. A potential target recently discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope is a planet known as LHS 475b .

This Earth-size planet orbits the star LHS 475, localized in the constellation of Octans. You can find more information about other fascinating new worlds in our exoplanet discovery calculator .

So, let us consider the USS ENTERPRISE D as our starship to explore this new world. Then, by taking warp factor 9.3 and 41 light years as the distance between Earth and LHS 475b in our warp speed calculator, the TOS, TNG-1, and TNG-2 equations give us:

v = 804 c v = 804\,c v = 804 c , t = 447 hours t = 447 \, \text{hours} t = 447 hours ;

v = 1713 c v = 1713\,c v = 1713 c , t = 210 hours t = 210 \, \text{hours} t = 210 hours ; and

v = 1693 c v = 1693\,c v = 1693 c , t = 212 hours t = 212 \, \text{hours} t = 212 hours , respectively.

🔎 Now, you can compare these results with those derived in our exoplanet travel planner calculator and check the power of the warp propulsion system!

How fast is Star Trek warp speed?

In Star Trek, the warp speed is a velocity scaled by the warp factor . The warp factor formula is inconsistent throughout the series . In the original series, for instance, warp factors were described using the formula v = w³⋅c , where c is the speed of light in a vacuum. Therefore, a Star Trek ship may travel faster than light , allowing the civilizations to explore the Universe.

How do I calculate the warp speed of a starship?

You can calculate the warp speed in Star Trek using two formulae: The Original Series (TOS) and The Next Generation (TNG) equations. In both cases, the speeds are given as multiples of the speed of light c . To do that, let us suppose that your starship has a warp factor w = 5 , then follow the steps below:

Input the warp factor in the TOS equation v = w 3 ⋅c .

Input the warp factor in the TNG equation v = w 10/3 ⋅c .

That is it! You will find that the warp speeds are v = 125⋅c and v = 214⋅c , for the TOS and TNG equations, respectively.

How long it takes for a starship to leave the solar system?

The most distant object made by humanity is Voyager 1 , which will take more than 30,000 years to reach the outer edge of the Oort Cloud , whose distance is estimated at 100,000 AU from the sun. The USS Enterprise D, flying in cruise mode ( w = 6 ), could reach this distance in 35 hours . To find this result:

Input the warp factor in the formula v = w 10/3 ⋅c .

Compute the warp velocity v = 392⋅c .

Isolate the time in the velocity formula t = d/v .

Input the distance d = 100,00 AU and c = 299,792,458 m/s in the last formula.

Convert the units properly.

That is it! You found that t = 35 hours .

Is a warp drive possible?

With the present science and technology, the answer is no . However, some theoretical models allow the creation of a warp bubble in flat spacetime, which can move faster than the speed of light. The most famous theoretical proposal in this direction was introduced by Miguel Alcubierre in 1994 , also known as the Alcubierre metric or Alcubierre drive .

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Input the warp factor and open sections of the calculator to compute the speed of your starship using different equations.

Warp factor

TOS: The Original Series

TOS is the first equation to compute the speed of a starship scaled by the warp factor.

TNG-1: The Next Generation version 1

TNG-1 combines the new speed scaled by the warp factor with the first proposal to map the Eugene Limit.

TNG-2: The Next Generation version 2

TNG-2 combines the new speed scaled by the warp factor with the second proposal to map the Eugene Limit.

How Warp Speed Works

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An artist's rendition of what warp speed might look like to a space traveler.

Onboard the starship Enterprise, you're hanging out with the crew members, enjoying a game of poker . You're traveling at impulse speed during a leisurely deep-space exploration, and everyone has some downtime. But wait -- all of a sudden, the ship receives an urgent message from a Federation admiral, informing the crew of an outbreak of war in the Neutral Zone. The Enterprise is ordered to report to the situation as soon as possible. The area in question is about 20 light years (117 trillion kilometers) away, but this is no problem in the "Star Trek" universe. The captain adjusts the ship's warp drive appropriately, and you settle in for warp speed . Traveling faster than the speed of light , you should arrive to your destination in just a few minutes.

For as long as humans have looked up to the skies, space has fascinated us, and astronomers and philosophers alike have asked the most fundamental questions while staring at the stars . What are we doing here, anyway? How did the universe begin, and are there other, parallel universes that mirror ours? Is there life out there in other galaxies , and what would it be like to travel there?

While we haven't quite answered these questions yet, we at least have science fiction like "Star Trek" to test the human imagination. Everything from H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" to "Star Trek" to Joss Whedon's "Firefly" series has touched on the possibilities of time travel , teleportation and, of course, warp speed. But how does something like warp speed fit into reality and our universe? Is warp speed just a wacky science fiction device, or is it theoretically possible? How does it work in the "Star Trek" universe? For everything on warp speed, infinity and beyond, read the following pages.

Newton's Third Law of Motion

Einstein, relativity and the space-time continuum, the warp drive, problems with warp speed.

When the writers of "Star Trek" sat down to plan the series, they found themselves confronted with a few problems. They were essentially creating a space opera , a subgenre of science fiction that takes place in space and covers the span of several galaxies and millions of light years. The "Star Wars" films are another example of the space opera subgenre. As the "opera" part of the name suggests, a show like "Star Trek" isn't meant to be slow or ordinary -- when people think of the series, they probably think of melodramatic plots involving aliens , space travel and action-packed laser fights.

So the creator of the series, Gene Roddenberry, and the other writers had to find a way to move the show's characters around the universe in a timely, dramatic fashion. At the same time, they wanted to do their best to stick to the laws of physics. The biggest problem was that even if a starship could travel at the speed of light, the time to go from one galaxy to another could still take hundreds, maybe thousands of years. A journey from the Earth to the center of our galaxy, for example, would take about 25,000 years if you were to travel just under the speed of light. This, of course, wouldn't make very exciting television.

The invention of warp speed solved the opera part of the problem, since it allowed the Enterprise to go much faster than the speed of light. But what was the explanation? How could they explain an object traveling faster than the speed of light, something Einstein proved impossible in his Special Theory of Relativity ?

When this shuttle makes its way into orbit, it will travel at about 17,000 miles per hour.

The first obstacle the writers had to confront is much simpler than you'd think. One of the most important things you need to know before understanding warp speed is actually one of the oldest tricks in the physics book, Newton's Third Law of Motion . You've probably heard it before -- this law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It simply means that for every interaction between two objects, a pair of forces is working on both of them. For instance, if you roll one billiard ball straight into another one that's at rest, they will both exert an equal force on each other. The moving ball will hit the ball at rest and push it away, but it will also be pushed back by the latter.

You feel this law come into play every time you accelerate in a car or fly in an airplane . As the vehicle speeds up and moves forward, you feel pressure on your seat. The seat is pushing on you, but you're also exerting a force against the seat.

So what does this have to do with "Star Trek" and the Enterprise? Even if it were possible to accelerate to something like half the speed of light, such intense acceleration would kill a person by smashing him against his seat. Even though he'd be pushing back with an equal and opposite force, his mass compared to the starship is just too small -- the same kind of thing happens when a mosquito hits your windshield and splatters. So how can the Enterprise possibly go faster than the speed of light without killing the members on board?

In the next section, we'll see how the "Star Trek" creators began to get around the problem of sending matter through space at superluminal speeds.

In order to sidestep the issue of Newton's Third Law of Motion and the impossibility of matter traveling faster than the speed of light , we can look to Einstein and the relationship between space and time . Taken together, space, consisting of three dimensions (up-down, left-right, and forward-backward) and time are all part of what's called the space-time continuum .

It's important to understand Einstein's work on the space-time continuum and how it relates to the Enterprise traveling through space. In his Special Theory of Relativity , Einstein states two postulates:

The speed of light (about 300,000,000 meters per second) is the same for all observers, whether or not they're moving.
Anyone moving at a constant speed should observe the same physical laws.

Putting these two ideas together, Einstein realized that space and time are relative -- an object in motion actually experiences time at a slower rate than one at rest. Although this may seem absurd to us, we travel incredibly slow when compared to the speed of light, so we don't notice the hands on our watches ticking slower when we're running or traveling on an airplane. Scientists have actually proved this phenomenon by sending atomic clocks up with high-speed rocket ships. They returned to Earth slightly behind the clocks on the ground.

What does this mean for the Captain Kirk and his team? The closer an object gets to the speed of light, that object actually experiences time at a significantly slower rate. If the Enterprise were traveling safely at close to the speed of light to the center of our galaxy from Earth, it would take 25,000 years of Earth time. For the crew, however, the trip would probably only take 10 years.

Although that timeframe might be possible for the individuals onboard, we're presented with yet another problem -- a Federation attempting to run an intergalactic civilization would run into some problems if it took 50,000 years for a starship to hit the center of our galaxy and come back.

So the Enterprise has to avoid the speed of light in order to keep the passengers onboard in synch with Federation time. At the same time, it also must reach speeds faster than that of light in order to move around the universe in an efficient manner. Unfortunately, as Einstein states in his Special Theory of Relativity, nothing is faster than the speed of light. Space travel therefore would be impossible if we're looking at the special relativity.

That's why we need to look at Einstein's later theory, the General Theory of Relativity , which describes how gravity affects the shape of space and flow of time. Imagine a stretched-out sheet. If you place a bowling ball in the middle of the sheet, the sheet will warp as the weight of the ball pushes down on it. If you place a baseball on the same sheet, it will roll towards the bowling ball. This is a simple design, and space doesn't act like a two-dimension bed sheet, but it can be applied to something like our solar system -- more massive objects like our sun can warp space and affect the orbits of the surrounding planets. The planets don't fall into the sun, of course, because of the high speeds at which they travel.

On the next page, we'll see how this comes into play on the Enterprise.

The ability to manipulate space is the most important concept in regard to warp speed. If the Enterprise could warp the space-time continuum by expanding the area behind it and contracting the area in front, the crew could avoid going the speed of light . As long as it creates its own gravitational field, the starship could travel locally at very slow velocities, therefore avoiding the pitfalls of Newton's Third Law of Motion and keeping clocks in sync with its launch site and destination. The ship isn't really traveling at a "speed," per se -- it's more like it's pulling its destination toward it while pushing its starting point back.

Because the ideas behind Einstein's General Theory of Relativity are complex and still open to interpretation, this leaves the possibilities wide open for science fiction writers. We may not know how to bend space and time with our current technology, but a fictional civilization set in the future may be completely capable of inventing such a device with the right imagination.

In the "Star Trek" universe, warp speed is accomplished through the use of a warp drive . The warp drive is powered by matter- antimatter reactions, which are regulated by a substance called dilithium . This reaction creates highly-energetic plasma known as electro-plasma , a type of matter with its own magnetic field, which reacts with the starship's warp coils . The warp coils are typically enclosed in what the "Star Trek" writers call a warp nacelle . The whole package creates a "warp field" or "bubble" around the Enterprise, allowing the ship and its crew to remain safe while space manipulates around them.

Sometime between the first television series ("Star Trek: The Original Series") and the second ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"), the writers decided to assign a limit to warp speed -- using a scale of Warp-1 to Warp-10, the Enterprise wasn't allowed to travel just anywhere at anytime, seeing as that would make plotting too easy. In the show, Warp-10 became an impossible maximum speed, an infinity in which the starship would be at all points in the universe at the same time. Warp-9.6, according to the "Next Generation" technical manual, is the highest attainable speed allowed -- it's set at 1,909 times the speed of light. Although there are some inconsistencies, the following list the different speeds in the "Star Trek" universe:

In the next section, we'll take a look at some of the problems the concept of warp speed encounters.

An artist's rendition of a spaceship traveling at warp speed.

So Einstein helped the "Star Trek" writers manipulate space in a science fictional universe, but is it actually possible to build a spaceship that could propel people across vast galaxies in a relatively short period of time?

Physicist Miguel Alcubierre has suggested the use of so-called "exotic matter," a theoretical type of matter with negative energy. If it could be found or created, the exotic matter would do the job of repelling space and time and creating the gravitational field.

Unfortunately, that's as far as it goes for possible fuel sources -- there are more problems than solutions when it comes to the concept of powering warp speed. Even if the Enterprise were to travel at sublight speeds, known as impulse drive to "Star Trek" fans, the amount of fuel and energy needed to travel quickly through space would be too much for a single starship. The impulse drive of the Enterprise is powered by nuclear fusion, the same kind of reaction that lights up the sun and creates huge explosions from certain nuclear bombs . According to Dr. Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and author of "The Physics of Star Trek," if Captain Kirk wanted to travel at half the speed of light (150,000 kilometers per second), the starship would need to burn 81 times its mass in hydrogen, the fuel used for nuclear fusion. The technical manual for "Star Trek: The Next Generation" lists the Enterprise as more than 4 million metric tons in weight, so the ship would need more than 300 million metric tons of hydrogen just to move forward. Of course, to slow down to a stop, the starship would need yet another 300 million metric tons of fuel, and a potential trip across galaxies would need 6,642 times the mass of the "Enterprise."

Some people have proposed a system in which a device gathers hydrogen as the starship travels, foregoing the necessity to store huge amounts of fuel, but Krauss suggests this device would have to be about 25 miles wide to capture anything worth using. Even though hydrogen is the most abundant element in the galaxy, there's only about one atom of hydrogen for every cubic square inch.

Making the warp drive work would be another thing. The warp drive in "Star Trek" gets its power by reacting matter with antimatter -- the result is complete annihilation and the release of pure energy. Since antimatter isn't very common throughout our universe, the Federation would have to produce it, something we can do today at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois. Again, the problem turns out to be a issue of the amount of fuel necessary to power a warp drive. Kruass notes that Fermilab is capable of producing 50 billion antiprotons in one hour -- enough to produce 1/1000 of a watt. You would need 100,000 Fermilabs to power a single light bulb . Producing enough antiprotons to bend the space-time continuum looks near impossible as far as our current technology goes.

Although there's little chance during this century of humans developing a spaceship that could bend space and travel to distant galaxies faster than the speed of light, this hasn't stopped scientists and fans of the series alike to think about the potential. As recent as November 2007, the British Interplanetary Society brought together several physicists for a conference called "Faster Than Light: Breaking the Interstellar Distance Barrier" [source: Guardian ].

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How Sci-Fi Doesn't Work

How Star Trek's Warp Speed Works

Explaining the seemingly wonky science behind The Starship Enterprise.

The following is an excerpt of The Science of Superheroes and Space Warriors published by HowStuffWorks.

When the writers of Star Trek sat down to plan the series, they found themselves confronted with a few problems. They were essentially creating a space opera, a subgenre of science fiction that takes place in space and covers the span of several galaxies and millions of light-years. As the “opera” part of the name suggests, a show like Star Trek isn’t meant to be slow or ordinary. When people think of the series, they probably think of melodramatic plots involving aliens, space travel, and action-packed laser fights.

So the creator of the series, Gene Roddenberry, and the other writers had to find a way to move the show’s characters around the universe in a timely, dramatic fashion. At the same time, they wanted to do their best to stick to the laws of physics. The biggest problem was that even if a starship could travel at the speed of light, the time to go from one galaxy to another could still take hundreds, maybe thousands of years. A journey from Earth to the center of our galaxy, for example, would take about twenty-five thousand years if you were to travel just under the speed of light. This, of course, wouldn’t make very exciting television.

The USS Enterprise

The first obstacle the writers had to confront is much simpler than you’d think. It comes down to Newton’s third law of motion: how for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

What does this have to do with Star Trek and the Enterprise? Even if it were possible to accelerate to something like half the speed of light, such intense acceleration would kill a person by smashing him against his seat. Even though he’d be pushing back with an equal and opposite force, his mass compared to the starship is just too small. The same kind of thing happens when a mosquito hits your windshield and splatters. So how can the Enterprise possibly go faster than the speed of light without killing the members on board?

To sidestep the issue of Newton’s third law of motion and the impossibility of matter traveling faster than the speed of light, we can look to Einstein and the relationship between space and time. Taken together, space (consisting of three dimensions: up-down, left-right, and forward-backward) and time are part of what’s called the space-time continuum.

In his special theory of relativity, Einstein states two postulates:

The speed of light (about 300 million meters per second) is the same for all observers, whether or not they’re moving.
Anyone moving at a constant speed should observe the same physical laws.

Putting these two ideas together, Einstein realized that space and time are relative—an object in motion actually experiences time at a slower rate than one at rest. Although this may seem absurd to us, we travel incredibly slowly when compared to the speed of light, so we don’t notice the hands on our watches ticking slower when we’re running or traveling on an airplane.

USS Enterprise at warp speed in Into The Darkness.

What does this mean for the Captain Kirk and his team? As an object gets closer and closer to the speed of light, that object actually experiences time at a significantly slower rate. If the Enterprise were traveling safely at close to the speed of light to the center of our galaxy from Earth, it would take twenty-five thousand years of Earth time. For the crew, however, the trip would probably only take ten years.

Although that time frame might be possible for the individuals on board, we’re presented with yet another problem—a Federation attempting to run an intergalactic civilization would run into some problems if it took fifty thousand years for a starship to hit the center of our galaxy and come back.

So the Enterprise has to avoid the speed of light to keep the passengers onboard in sync with Federation time. At the same time, the Enterprise must reach speeds faster than that of light to move around the universe in an efficient manner. Unfortunately, as Einstein states in his special theory of relativity, nothing is faster than the speed of light. Space travel therefore would be impossible if we’re looking at the special relativity.

That’s why we need to look at Einstein’s later theory, the general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity affects the shape of space and flow of time. Imagine a stretched-out sheet. If you place a bowling ball in the middle of the sheet, the sheet will warp as the weight of the ball pushes down on it. If you place a baseball on the same sheet, it will roll toward the bowling ball. This is a simple design, and space doesn’t act like a two-dimensional bed sheet, but it can be applied to something like our solar system. More massive objects like our sun can warp space and affect the orbits of the surrounding planets. The planets don’t fall into the sun, of course, because of the high speeds at which they travel.

The ability to manipulate space is the most important concept in regard to warp speed. If the Enterprise could warp the space-time continuum by expanding the area behind it and contracting the area in front, the crew could avoid going the speed of light. As long as it creates its own gravitational field, the starship could travel locally at very slow velocities, therefore avoiding the pitfalls of Newton’s third law of motion and keeping clocks in sync with its launch site and destination. The ship isn’t really traveling at a “speed,” per se—it’s more like it’s pulling its destination toward it while pushing its starting point back.

Don’t Miss: The Scientist Who Keeps Science Fiction Real

Science Fiction

6 Warp Speed Measurement

The Physics and Technology of Warp Propulsion

6.1 Concept of Warp Factors 6.2 TOS Scale (23rd Century) 6.3 TNG Scale (24th Century) 6.4 Possible Future Scale

6.1 Concept of Warp Factors

Introduction
Chapter 1 - Real Physics and Interstellar Travel
Chapter 3 - Subspace
Chapter 6 - Warp Speed Measurement
Chapter 7 - Appendix

A warp factor is a unitless figure that represents the speed of a starship or of a signal traveling faster than light. There is a non-linear dependence between the warp factor and the effective FTL speed. In every known variant of the warp scale the speed rises exponentially with the warp factor, meaning that from Warp 1 to Warp 2 the speed more than doubles. The exponent is subject to vary between the scales.

There is no common canon symbol or abbreviation for warp factors, although "WF" or "wf" are sometimes used in textbooks. In spoken language they are referred to as "Warp X" (written with a capital "W") or, now rather antiquated, "warp factor X" during the time of TOS.

In all known warp scales "Warp 1" corresponds to the speed of light. The warp scale is continuous, meaning that real numbers such as "Warp 8.179" are possible, although it seems that starships most often travel at integer warp factors 7, 8, 9, etc.

Warp factors below Warp 1 are occasionally mentioned in Star Trek, mostly in the scope of the 24th century scale. Consequentially these refer to sublight speeds. The question whether something like Warp 0.5 exists has some relevance. Warp 0.5 could either mean that the warp drive also operates at sublight speeds, without a need to activate the impulse engines, or that the warp scale is simply extrapolated below Warp 1, even if only the impulse drive is on. With the note in the TNG Technical Manual [Ste91] that the impulse drive makes use of subspace driver coils the latter makes sense also technically, because if the warp factor generally describes the formation of a subspace field, it may as well apply to the field generated by the driver coils at sublight speed.

Bearing in mind that the speed of light c is already as high as 3*10^8m/s, it is obvious that with conventional units such as meters per second or kilometers per hour as they are used for the speeds of today's planes or spaceships we would end up with unreasonably large and unhandy figures when describing FTL motion. Generally, it may have been possible to switch to something like light years per day or similar manageable time and distance units. The reason why Starfleet introduced the apparently abstract and strangely non-linear warp factor must lie in the physical principle and/or the technical implementation of the propulsion system. In other words, the function of speed vs. warp factor most likely reflects how strong a warp field must be to achieve a certain speed.

Side note Gene Roddenberry may have originally conceived warp factors for the sake of the dramatic impression of Kirk's commands. "Mr. Sulu, ahead Warp factor two." is more precise than "half speed ahead", and it sounds much more to the point than "increase to three light years per day". Moreover, with warp factors obscuring the real speed of the ship, calculation errors between speeds, times and distances mentioned on screen were less likely to occur. It was as late as in TNG that a correlation between all of the three figures was routinely made on screen (most often by Data), revealing the "true" significance of warp factors.

The sawtooth curve of the power expenditure vs. warp factor as shown in Fig. 6.1 and discussed in 3.3 Subspace Fields and Warp Fields is canon since it appeared on screen in ENT: "First Flight". The tips of the sawtooth are the so-called peak transitional thresholds, the points at which the power expenditure rises steeply because there is supposedly a physical threshold (in one possible interpretation, the transition to the next subspace layer) to be crossed. These peak transitional thresholds are located at the integer warp factors 1, 2, 3, and so on. Their existence is evidence that something significant happens at integer warp factors, justifying that the scale is based on these prominent points. In other words, the scale is designed in a way that the warp factors count up certain events that occur as the warp field is being expanded and intensified, which corresponds with an increase in speed.

Fig. 6.1 also shows a reason why ships customarily travel at integer warp factors or slightly above but never slightly below. We have to bear in mind that warp propulsion is non-Newtonian and a constant power supply is required to maintain a constant speed. If we imagine for a moment that the peaks are smoothed out, the power consumption (yellow sawtooth curve) overall increases stronger with the warp factor than the speed v/c (white for the TNG scale) does. In other words, the faster a ship goes, the higher is the energy consumption for the trip.

However, as we take into account the peak transitional thresholds, the power consumption per cochrane rapidly drops to a much lower value on the right side of each peak. More precisely, the drop happens slightly above the integer warp factor, but for the sake of simplicity we may assume that "increase speed to Warp 6" means to cross the sixth threshold, after which the ship may be actually at Warp 6.01. Here the power consumption is a lot lower than at Warp 5.99. It is obvious that staying slightly below Warp 6 would be very disadvantageous.

We can also see that a bit above Warp 6 the power consumption per cochrane is the same as at Warp 5.6. Since the cochrane value is equivalent to v/c, the effective increase of power consumption between Warp 5.6 and Warp 6.01 is the same as the speed increase. So the total energy consumption for a trip at Warp 6.01 is the same as at Warp 5.6 but the ship is some 25% faster. Hence, Warp 5.6 is some sort of break-even point, above which it is advantageous to speed up even further to Warp 6.01.

6.2 TOS Scale (23rd Century)

During the era of The Original Series (TOS) a warp scale was in use where the warp factor was described with:

So the warp factor equals the cubic root of the ship's achieved speed ratio v/c, with v being the effective ship speed and c being the speed of light. Warp 1 corresponds to the speed of light.

Side note The TOS scale is often referred to as "Cochrane scale" in fandom, but this is conjecture and, like the underlying formula, was never mentioned in the series.

Strictly speaking, the warp scale used in the TOS era is conjectural. There is no reference that would allow us to relate a warp factor stated on screen to a distance and a time. The now widely accepted scale, however, must have been established behind the scenes in a kind of writer's guide. David Whitfield, who had access to essential documents of Roddenberry's staff mentions the scale in his book The Making of Star Trek [Whi68] as soon as 1968. In his reproduction of the warp scale, Warp 1 denotes the speed of light, Warp 3 is 24c, Warp 6 is 216c and Warp 8 is 512c. Actually Warp 3 should be 27c, but with the other values following exactly the third-power law of Eq. 6.1 we have a confirmation that the scale was really being used at least as a guideline.

The continuous curve of the TOS scale (teal in Fig. 6.1) insinuates that warp factors below 1 and fractional values were well possible in this measurement system. Warp factors below 1, however, were not mentioned once in TOS, and fractions occurred only occasionally. As late as in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (TMP) warp factors lower than Warp 1 appeared for the first time, when Sulu carefully activated the untested warp drive and slowly accelerated to warp speed. More precisely, the ship was already at Warp 0.5 but was only running on impulse drive when the warp drive was engaged. So it appears that impulse speeds can be measured with warp factors as well, the scale is uninterrupted. Since we shouldn't assume that the measurement system has changed between TOS and TMP, we can assume that warp factors below 1 already existed in TOS. In TOS, it often seemed like Kirk ordered to go to warp, a switch was flipped and the ship's speed immediately jumped up to Warp 1, but perhaps we should ascribe this immediate effect to dramatic license.

Warp factors higher than 10 are possible in the TOS warp scale. We know of a few incidents where the Enterprise was said to have achieved such high speeds that are well beyond the nominal top speed of Warp 8. The first one is in TOS: "The Changeling", where Nomad improved the Enterprise's engines to achieve speeds of up to Warp 11. Another one is in TOS: "That Which Survives", where a modification to the engines by Losira accelerates the Enterprise to as much as Warp 14.1. This is also one of very few examples of fractional warp factors. On another occasion, in TOS: "By Any Other Name", the Enterprise was tampered with by the Kelvans crossed the Galactic Barrier at Warp 11. The Kelvans were going to reach the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.3 million light years away, in three centuries. This gives us an indirect speed reference of as much as Warp 19.7. Yet, a definite figure was not mentioned for the warp factor during the long trip.

As already mentioned above in Section 6.1 , the warp factors likely reflect the physical principle and/or the technical implementation of the warp drive. The peak transitional thresholds and the corresponding prevalence of integer warp factors is a reason why the structure of the warp field and/or of subspace is most likely a layered one, as outlined in 3.3 Subspace Fields and Warp Fields . So in the TOS warp scale "Warp 1" may simply mean that the subspace field extends just into the first layer of subspace, having crossed the first peak transitional threshold. This may go on for Warp 2, 3, and so on. In the TOS scale there is no theoretical limit for warp factors and for the according submersion of the warp field into subspace. Only the power available on a ship imposes a limit to crossing the peak transitional thresholds of always deeper layers.

In TOS: "That Which Survives" one of the following two things may have happened when the ship attained Warp 14.1. The first possibility is that actually 14 subspace layers were subsequently crossed by tuning the warp field accordingly, although this has never been attempted before. The other possibility is that the Enterprise's engines were never built to penetrate more than eight layers (Warp 8 was said to be the maximum safe speed), and that simply so much power was pushed into the first to the eighth layer, overstressing these layers, that the equivalent warp factor was 14.1. In other words, in the latter case the Enterprise's instruments would not have registered further thresholds and may have been off scale anyway, so the equivalent warp factor would have been calculated from the actual speed.

Use in Star Trek Enterprise

For the sake of plausibility, we should assume that the 22nd century (Star Trek Enterprise) uses the same warp scale as in the 23rd century (TOS), rather than the one of the 24th century (TNG). Enterprise NX-01 has a top speed of Warp 5, which in the TOS scale is reasonably slower than the max. speed of the Enterprise NCC-1701 (Warp 6) or its max. emergency speed (Warp 8). If Enterprise used the TNG scale, NX-01 would be almost as fast as the NCC-1701.

There are some cases in which the original Enterprise must have traveled at extremely high speeds, even without alien modifications to the engines. The first example is Pike's line in "The Cage" that his ship comes from "a stellar group at the other end of this galaxy" . Also, in TOS the Enterprise crosses the Galactic Barrier no less than three times, which is supposedly at the very least a thousand light-years from Federation space. Finally, in "Star Trek: The Final Frontier" the Enterprise-A explicitly travels to the center of the galaxy, which is some 25,000 light-years away, a journey that would take a lifetime at Warp 8. Enterprise NX-01 too is occasionally much faster than Eq. 6.1 would allow. The most blatant case is in ENT: "Broken Bow" when the travel time to Qo'noS is said to be "Four days there, four days back." , which would place the Klingon homeworld only 1 light-year away from Earth, considering that Enterprise's top speed at the time is merely Warp 4.5.

There are occurrences in other Trek series too where the starships are effectively many times faster than they should be, or travel to destinations that should be far out of reach. See also the examples in Section 6.3 . These are most often fundamental plausibility problems of the stories, rather than of the warp speed measurement. Yet, it has been suggested that the actual speed of a starship at a given warp factor depends on environmental conditions.

The TNG Technical Manual [Ste91] states: "The actual values [of the cochrane value and hence of the speed attainable at a warp factor] are dependent upon interstellar conditions, e.g., gas density, electric and magnetic fields within the different regions of the Milky Way galaxy, and fluctuations in the subspace domain. Starships routinely travel at multiples of c, but they suffer from energy penalties resulting from quantum drag forces and motive power oscillation inefficiencies." In order to explain away warp speed inconsistencies along these lines, we need a correction factor k to give us the actual relation between warp factor and speed, modifying Eq. 6.1 for the TOS scale to WF=k*(v/c)^(1/3). While some regions of space may allow only below average speeds, most importantly there have to be other regions in which a much higher speed is attainable at a certain warp factor (known as "warp highways" in fandom). In these regions k has to be considerably lower than 1 and in extreme cases (travel across the whole galaxy) close to 0. There are a couple of problems with this assumption, however:

If there is a coefficient k (x,y,z) of spatial conditions that locally influences the warp speed at a given warp factor, this k ought to play a role in the stories. It is totally implausible that it was never mentioned in any form. Well, we know of the low-warp Hekaras Sector in TNG: "Force of Nature", but here the problem is to maintain a stable warp field in the first place; there is no hint that in this region warp factors may correspond to lower speeds. The whole series Star Trek Voyager makes no sense under the assumption that there are warp highways everywhere. The crew was seeking wormholes and other rare phenomena all the time, not on-ramps and exits of warp highways. Well, thanks to Seven's work in the astrometric lab five years could be shaved off as mentioned n VOY: "Year of Hell, Part I", but on the display it looks like Seven, with the more accurate Borg technology, just plotted a straighter course than the previous one (or one with fewer obstacles to be avoided). A ship's captain (sea or space) orders a course and a speed. If a captain has to take into account the gradient of an additional coefficient along the flight path that strongly influences the speed, he either has to be a genius in mental calculus, or he doesn't really care how soon the ship actually arrives. Well, there is always the possibility of asking the computer to calculate the course and the travel time in advance, but in Star Trek offhand ETA calculations and swift orders to go to a certain course and warp factor are commonplace. These would be pointless if the travel time to the same destination could vary between minutes and months, and the best course would not be a straight line. Well, we may expect that realistically the interstellar conditions don't vary too strongly, with a factor of perhaps 2 between the highest and the lowest possible speed at a given warp factor, which would alleviate the preceding point. Moreover, on very long journeys the varying conditions in the flight path will average out. But then the theory of fluctuating conditions couldn't explain phenomena such as the Enterprise's journey to the center of the galaxy at all. Eq. 6.1 and Eq. 6.2 give us quite simple relations between warp factor and speed, without a correction factor (or with k=1) or any other coefficients in it. If anything, these formulae look like they describe a "basic" or "optimum" condition of space (without interstellar dust, without interfering fields, etc.), rather than an average. And if they really describe an average as hinted at in the TNGTM , there is the question of the averaging method, the size of the sample, the sampling region and how frequently such an average would need to be updated.

Summarizing, there may be regions in which warp travel is facilitated, meaning that less power is required to achieve and/or maintain a certain warp factor. There may be other regions where the contrary is true (such as the Hekaras Corridor). But while the peak transitional thresholds may be lowered, they rather wouldn't shift with the natural inhomogeneity of space, because this would make the concept of warp factors pretty useless. And even if they do shift, it may not suffice to explain anomalous warp speeds.

6.3 TNG Scale (24th Century)

Definition up to warp 9.

Some time between the TOS Movie era (late 23rd century) and the TNG era (mid-24th century) the warp scale changed. The new scale is valid in all series set in the 24th century (TNG, DS9, Voyager). In this new TNG scale Warp 1 still denotes the speed of light. But above Warp 1 the speed corresponding to a certain warp factor is generally higher than in the TOS scale. The discrepancy slowly grows between Warp 1, where the curves intersect, to Warp 9, where the speed is 729c according to the TOS scale but 1516c for the TNG one (see Fig. 6.1). The exact equation for speeds up to Warp 9 in the TNG scale is:

So the exponent increased from 3 to 10/3=3.333..., accounting for the higher speed at a given warp factor.

Definition between Warp 9 and 10

The difference between TOS and TNG scale, however, becomes dramatic above Warp 9. The warp speed table was changed in accordance with Roddenberry's wish that Warp 10 should be the absolute maximum speed.

Side note The TNG Technical Manual [Ste91] states about the real-life rationale for the recalibration: "Figuring out how 'fast' various warp speeds are was pretty complicated, but not just from a 'scientific' viewpoint. First, we had to satisfy the general fan expectation that the new ship was significantly faster than the original. Second, we had to work with Gene's recalibration, which put Warp 10 at the absolute top of the scale. These first two constraints are fairly simple, but we quickly discovered that it was easy to make warp speeds TOO fast. Beyond a certain speed, we found that the ship would be able to cross the entire galaxy within a matter of just a few months. (Having the ship too fast would make the galaxy too small a place for the Star Trek format.) Finally, we had to provide some loophole for various powerful aliens like Q, who have a knack for tossing the ship millions of light-years in the time of a commercial break. Our solution was to redraw the warp curve so that the exponent of the warp factor increases gradually, then sharply as you approach Warp 10. At Warp 10, the exponent (and the speed) would be infinite, so you could never reach this value. (Mike used an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the speeds and times.) This lets Q and his friends have fun in the 9.9999+ range, but also lets our ship travel slowly enough to keep the galaxy a big place, and meets the other criteria. (By the way, we estimate that in 'Where No One Has Gone Before' the Traveler was probably propelling the Enterprise at about Warp 9.9999999996. Good thing they were in the carpool lane.)"

In the TOS scale the speed continued to increase with the third power as in Eq. 6.1, with Warp 10 being as "slow" as 1000c. In the TNG scale, beyond Warp 9, the exponent rises in a way that at exactly Warp 10 the speed (as well as the power expenditure) becomes infinite. In other words, the TNG scale ends at Warp 10. The recalibration compresses the whole range from about Warp 9 to infinite Warp factor in the TOS scale into the Warp 9..10 interval of the TNG scale.

A table in the Star Trek Encyclopedia III [Oku99] lists selected TNG warp factors and the corresponding speeds above Warp 9. But these figures don't seem to originate in Mike Okuda's Excel sheet mentioned in the TNGTM . In an e-mail from January 1995 Mike Okuda states, "Between 9 and 10, I gradually increased the exponent so that it approached infinity as the warp factor approached 10. Lacking knowledge of calculus, I just drew what looked to me to be a credible curve on graph paper, then pulled the points from there." So there does not seem to be an "official" underlying formula for the range between Warp 9 and Warp 10.

Side note There are some fan-made approximations, notably the formula by Graham Kennedy at DITL and the ones on Joshua Bell's site for TNG warp factors beyond 9.

The following table compares the two warp scales:

Tab. 6.1 Comparison of TOS and TNG warp scales

As the TNGTM explains, the real-world reason for changing the warp scale was to put a limit to the warp factors that otherwise may have continued rising indefinitely (in a similar unfortunate fashion as the amounts of quads that can be stored in the computer did on Voyager).

Making up a fictional explanation for the recalibration is not so easy, however. Speed measurements can be expected to be very accurate, their improvement certainly wouldn't lead to a factor of 2 at Warp 9 between the TNG and the TOS scale. Likewise, the peak transitional thresholds that define the integer warp factors wouldn't shift just because the measurement of the ship's power consumption is improved. We have to seek the explanation in a better understanding of subspace physics, one that allowed to refine the working principle of a ship's warp engines in a way that the peak transitional thresholds and hence the warp factors could be moved to higher speeds. In other words, the warp engines were improved in a way that less power was necessary to attain the same speed. This modification must have been so successful and universally applicable that it was decided to change the warp scale. For older ships without this modification the new scale would give us just an equivalent warp factor, meaning that an old ship with the true power expenditure of Warp 6 (TOS scale) is rated with an equivalent warp factor 5 (TNG scale). The same equivalent rating may apply to alien ships whose propulsion system may work differently than that of the Federation, and perhaps not even based on conventional warp fields.

This theory still doesn't explain the dramatic speed increase between Warp 9 and 10 in the TNG scale though. But we could imagine that, as part of the refinement of the propulsion system, at least on Federation vessels, it was recognized that submerging the warp field more than nine layers into subspace was not practically possible or at least inefficient. We have to bear in mind that, as seen in Section 6.2 , the maximum possible speed of the TOS era was Warp 8, and that the warp factor 14.1 attained by the Enterprise in TOS: "That Which Survives" may have been just an equivalent figure. So it may have been discovered some time between TOS and TNG that there are other, more efficient methods to attain high speeds than crossing the tenth subspace barrier. And since the peak transitional thresholds 10, 11, etc. don't exist any longer, the scale was changed to reflect this, effectively compressing the whole range from warp factor 9 to infinite warp factor into the new range between Warp 9 and 10. We may even speculate that the refinement of the warp scale has something to do with the Excelsior transwarp experiment, and that "transwarp" here merely means that the principles that would be commonplace in the TNG era were tested for the first time, rather than "transwarp" being something akin to "Borg transwarp" or even Tom Paris's alleged Warp 10 engine.

In TNG, DS9 and Voyager there are various statements by crew members such as Data that allow to correlate warp factors, distances andtravel times. Sometimes they correspond to Eq. 6.2, sometimes they are significantly off. Overall, however, there are no gross violations of the concept of limited speed, because the ships don't travel to regions of space that should be out of reach, unless the ship's warp drive was explicitly accordingly modified. In Star Trek Voyager it is even a key concept of the series that the ship would need 75 years at maximum warp to travel the 70,000 light-years back to Federation space. This corresponds to about Warp 9.8, going by the figures in Tab. 6.1.

There are three incidents that conflict with the TNG scale more fundamentally because they call the Warp 10 limit into question. The first is in TNG: "Where No One Has Gone Before". During Kosinski's experiment Geordi says at one point: "We're passing Warp 10." This should be absolutely impossible considering that Warp 10 means infinite speed, and there can be nothing equal to or even faster than infinite speed. But there is an explanation for Geordi's line. A few moments later Data states that the speed is off the scale. This could mean that Geordi was reading some sort of overflow on the speed display, which was simply leaving the valid range up to Warp 9.9something, so he didn't mean "infinite speed" or even "more than infinite speed" although he effectively said it. Still later, however, Kosinski claims that the "warp barrier" has become meaningless thanks to his work. This seems to corroborate the wrong notion that Warp 10+ might be possible. On the other hand, Kosinski may simply mean the peak transitional thresholds that have shifted or were lowered thanks to his work (or actually, thanks to his assistant, the Traveler).

The second mention of breaking the Warp 10 barrier is in TNG: "Time Squared", where Riker notes that accelerating beyond Warp 10 would enable time travel. More precisely, he states that this constitutes the only known method of going to the past, which is not true for all we know from the countless time travel episodes. Anyway, if we believe him and anything beyond Warp 10 is equivalent to time travel, we may interpret it in a way that achieving exactly Warp 10 may be still impossible. Beyond Warp 10 the speed of a ship becomes undefined within the bounds of our space-time, because speed as a physical quantity always requires a fixed time frame that doesn't exist during a time travel.

The third problem with the Warp 10 limit occurs in the infamous episode VOY: "Threshold". There are many problems and errors with this story, the most pressing of which is how Tom could possibly attain a speed of Warp 10 with his shuttle. As correctly stated in this very episode by Harry Kim: "Nothing in the universe can go warp ten. It's a theoretical impossibility. In principle, if you were ever to reach warp ten, you'd be traveling at infinite velocity." We could argue that, just as in Geordi's case, the speed of the shuttle was simply off scale and hence may have registered as Warp 10, although it was actually slower. The dilemma is that the very intention of Tom's flight was to "break the warp barrier" as already Kosinski expressed it, and explicitly to speed up to Warp 10 and not to Warp 9.999something. Also, the speed was later confirmed to have been infinite, unlike it was the case in the TNG episode. This Voyager episode only makes sense if we ignore many statements and essentially major parts of the story.

6.4 Possible Future Scale

The warp scale changed yet again in the late 24th century, albeit just for the TNG series finale "All Good Things", part of which is set in the year 2395. In this new AGT scale, starships such as the three-nacelled Enterprise-D and the Pasteur routinely achieve Warp 13.

There is no official formula to calculate the speed corresponding to the revised warp factors. In the October 1995 issue of the Omni magazine, science advisor Andre Bormanis states: "I raised that question in a TECH note. Basically, the idea there was that they recalibrated the warp scale. I don't think that ended up in the final draft teleplay, but the idea there was that if you've got ships that can routinely travel at speeds in excess of Warp 9, then maybe it makes sense to recalibrate your speed scale so that Warp 10 is no longer infinite velocity. Maybe Warp 15 will be the ultimate speed limit, and Warp 13 in that scale will be the equivalent of warp 9.95 or something like that."

See Fig. 6.7 for an illustration of Bormanis's proposal (yellow). Here AGT Warp 13 corresponds to 5200c, which is about the same as TNG Warp 9.95 just as Bormanis reckoned.

The only thing really known about the AGT scale is that it permits warp factors higher than 10 that, as fans are well aware of, were not allowed in the TNG scale. The obvious real-world reason to switch to this new scale for this one episode was to emphasize that a lot has changed from 2370 to 2395 - just like the additional nacelle on the Enterprise or the new uniforms.

The in-universe explanation may be just as Bormanis suggested. At some point it would be tiresome for the crews of always faster ships to speak out warp factors in the TNG scale with always more decimal places. "Go to Warp 9.9996." and "Go to Warp 9.99996." are unhandy, and they look and sound so much alike to a human crew member that it is likely to become a source of confusion. If, however, the scale was only changed to decompress the warp factor range of high warp speeds for the sake of convenience, the question arises why it was compressed in the first place and if the move of the limit to to Warp 15 or something wouldn't just postpone the problem yet again.

Perhaps, rather than being a totally arbitrary recalibration along the lines of "We think Warp 10 is too low a limit, let's move it up to Warp 15", the new AGT scale reflects a change in the propulsion principle yet again. As already explained for the TNG scale in Section 6.3 , the highest possible warp factor may denote the deepest possible subspace layer boundary that the ship's warp field penetrates. If, in the year 2395, warp engines are generally modified in a way that they reach down to the the 13th layer, the AGT scale makes sense again. And if 14 subspace layers instead of previously 9 is a commonly accepted limit, the limit of the scale may be located at Warp 15 just as Bormanis suggested, only that the rationale would be different one.

Alternatively, we could imagine that the perhaps impractical warp factor limit was dropped altogether. In Fig. 6.7, the orange curve shows the TNG warp scale without the asymptotic behavior at Warp 10 (TNG scale) or at Warp 15 (AGT scale as suggested by Bormanis).

It is even possible that the warp factors up to Warp 10 are still exactly the same as in the TNG scale, denoting conventional operation of the warp drive, but that a completely new and independent AGT scale begins above Warp 10, denoting a new propulsion system such as transwarp or quantum slipstream drive. In this case, the new warp factors may as well have been named "Transwarp I, II, III, etc." Anyway, the two scales wouldn't be compatible, but we could imagine a transition from one scale to the other. The ship naturally wouldn't go up to Warp 10 with conventional warp drive, but may accelerate up to the break-even point at something like TNG Warp 9.5 and then activate the new propulsion system. After a short transition phase in which both engines (or both working principles of the same engine) are active, the ship may end up at AGT Warp 10, which is perhaps the equivalent to TNG Warp 9.6.

Power & Propulsion - about the right intermix ratio, warp inside a star system, how to stop a starship etc.

A Close Look at 22nd Century Technology - with considerations about the speed of Enterprise NX-01

Voyager Inconsistencies - with a rant about Tom's "Warp 10" flight

https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/treknology/warp6.htm

Last modified: 02 Dec 2022

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An Intrepid-class Long Range Science Vessel at warp in sector space.

The powerhouse behind warp drive is a starship's warp core.

Warp speed is the term for traveling at faster-than-light velocity through a warp drive propulsion system. It is the principal mode of transport in Star Trek, being used by all space-faring factions.

While not the first species to develop the technology, humanity 's first use was in 2063 by Zefram Cochrane's Phoenix . This led to their first contact with Vulcans , celebrated by the Federation as First Contact Day .

In Star Trek Online , starships travel at warp speed in sector space and the warp speed scale is linear (i.e. warp 8 is twice as fast as warp 4). You can see your current warp speed while in sector space by moving the cursor over your ship throttle.

1 Increasing basic speed
2 Alternatives
3 Visual effect
4 Warp core breach
7 External links

Increasing basic speed [ | ]

The maximum warp speed is tied to your Warp Core level and your Sector Space Travel Speed skill. Standard warp cores without any Sector Space Travel Speed skill are limited by Warp 9.97.

To increase your Sector Space Travel Speed skill, you may equip impulse engines with the SecSpd and SecSpd2 modifiers , or have another player use the Grant Diplomatic Immunity ability ( Assign Raiding Party for KDF-aligned players) on you to temporarily provide you with a +50 skill boost. Furthermore, a critical success of the duty officer assignment Perform Antimatter Containment Leak Drills will provide you with a +25 skill boost for two hours.

You may also pick a Sector Space Travel Speed boost with the first science track unlock path choice selection node in your Space Skills.

Legacy Engines and current Warp/Singularity Cores that provide high warp speeds include:

[ M.A.C.O. Impulse Engines ] - transwarp 12 (default cruise).
[ Adapted K.H.G. Impulse Engines ] - transwarp 12 (default cruise).
Advanced or Elite Fleet Engines - transwarp 12 (default cruise).
[ Assimilated Subtranswarp Engines ] - transwarp 14 (default cruise).
[ Temporal Defense Initiative Overcharged Warp Core ] - transwarp 14 (default cruise).
[ Temporal Defense Initiative Overcharged Singularity Core ] - transwarp 14 (default cruise).
[ Gamma Synergistic Overcharged Warp Core ] - transwarp 22+ (default cruise).
[ Gamma Synergistic Overcharged Singularity Core ] - transwarp 22+ (default cruise).

NOTE: Transwarp factors from legacy engines and warp/singularity cores do not stack. The engine transwarp factor will overwrite the (possibly higher) transwarp factor of the co-slotted warp/singularity core.

Alternatives [ | ]

Quantum Slipstream Drive , which requires a level 50 character, provides a temporary speed boost to warp at least warp 20. The boost lasts between 30 and 90 seconds depending on ship or equipment in use. It has a 2 minute cool down.
Transwarp moves a player instantly to any of a set of specific locations around the galaxy, sometimes subject to cooldown.

Visual effect [ | ]

The visual effect of entering and leaving warp can vary by faction; notably with DSC Starfleet characters having a warp effect based from visuals on Star Trek: Discovery . Separately, certain ships have an animation on entering warp, for example the Intrepid class raising its nacelles. Unique animations can also extend to transwarp, with the Crossfield class having a unique animation and visual effect for transwarp.

Warp core breach [ | ]

A warp core breach occurs approximately five seconds after a starship's structural integrity drops to zero, inflicting AoE damage to any ships within a few kilometers. The size and power of the breach depends on those of the ship.

In starships that use antimatter warp cores , the fatal blow will be followed by numerous internal explosions, after which the vessel will explode in a bright flash.

Vessels that use singularity warp cores (most ships used by the Romulan Republic and the Star Empire ) will collapse into a temporary black hole. The singularity will draw nearby vessels toward it until it explodes a few seconds later.

The different breaches appear to inflict the same amount of damage regardless of visuals, but the singularity explosion is also accompanied by a considerable knock-back effect.

Notes [ | ]

While Warp Cores in Star Trek run on dilithium crystals, in Star Trek Online dilithium is used as a currency unrelated to warp speed.

External links [ | ]

Warp speed at Memory Alpha , the Star Trek Wiki.
Warp speed at Memory Beta , the non-canon Star Trek Wiki.
Warp speed at Wikipedia
2 Playable starship
3 List of canon starships

Maximum warp

View history

Maximum warp (shortened from maximum warp speed and also known as top warp speed , maximum speed , high warp speed , emergency speed ) was the maximum warp factor velocity a starship was designed for and a term whereby a bridge officer could ask the flight control officer to accelerate the ship to its highest possible velocity.

The maximum warp velocity and the time it could be maintained by a starship varied between classes. This was due to energy output limitations of the warp core and limitations of other systems, such as the warp coils , the structural integrity field , and the amount of energy the propulsion system could handle without overloading . ( ENT : " In a Mirror, Darkly "; DS9 : " The Sound of Her Voice "; TOS : " The Changeling ")

In the early days of warp drive development, the top speed capabilities took massive leaps in the mid- 22nd century after the warp 2 barrier was broken. ( ENT : " First Flight ") The invention of the warp three engine allowed early Earth starships to travel ten times faster, ( ENT : " Fortunate Son ") while ships installed with the warp five engine could travel a hundred times faster. ( ENT : " Broken Bow ") The increase in capabilities slowed down later on, as the Starfleet ships of the 2370s were only twice as fast as the ships used in the 2290s . ( VOY : " Flashback ")

Though originally rated for warp 5, by 2154 the installation of new warp injectors allowed the Enterprise NX-01 to push to warp 5.06. ( ENT : " Babel One ")

In 2256 of an alternate timeline , Captain Michael Burnham from the future had the USS Discovery taken to maximum warp and then had the warp bubble broken. This was a part of Commander Paul Stamets successful attempt to use relativity to break through a temporal shield and remove a time bug . Such a move had the potential to tear the ship apart, but Stamets was able to calibrate the inertial dampeners to compensate, resulting in a jolt, but no other damage to the ship and crew. ( DIS : " Face the Strange ")

In 2268 on stardate 4843.6, it was imperative for the USS Enterprise to proceed at maximum warp speed for a period which exceeded the recommended safety margin in order to intercept an asteroid headed on a collision course with the planet Amerind . Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott noted that they couldn't maintain warp 9 for much longer as the engines began to show signs of stress . ( TOS : " The Paradise Syndrome ")

Galaxy -class ships, such as the USS Enterprise -D , could theoretically achieve warp 9.8, but the maximum warp speeds above 9.6 could be maintained for a few hours only. ( TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ", " The Best of Both Worlds ") Intrepid -class ships such the USS Voyager , on the other hand, could maintain it from three days up to two months. ( VOY : " Workforce ", " Workforce, Part II ", " Friendship One ")

In 2370 , the Federation imposed a maximum speed limit of Warp 5 on all vessels (except for emergencies) due to concerns over high warp factors causing damage to subspace. ( TNG : " Force of Nature ", " The Pegasus ", " Eye of the Beholder ") This limit would appear to have been temporary.

The Klaestron starship that visited Deep Space 9 in 2369 was said to have a high warp capability, and was able to achieve warp 5 or better. ( DS9 : " Dax ")

The USS Carolina traveled 0.7 light years in two hours when at maximum warp. ( VOY : " Inside Man ")

Even though the Nova -class was designed to travel at a maximum speed of warp factor 8, when the USS Equinox powered its warp drive with energy derived from the corpses of nucleogenic lifeforms , an increase of 0.03% was added to the warp factor, allowing the velocity of traveling ten thousand light years in less than two weeks. ( VOY : " Equinox ")

During its time in the Delta Quadrant , the USS Voyager encountered technologies that enabled it to travel great distances at massively greater speeds than its rated maximum warp velocity, including the quantum slipstream drive , transwarp coil and Tash's catapult . The vessel had arrived in the Delta Quadrant from the Alpha Quadrant , approximately 75,000 light years, via the Caretaker's array . ( VOY : " Hope and Fear ", " Dark Frontier ", " The Voyager Conspiracy ", " Caretaker ")

1 Maximum warp limitations by class
2.1 Maximum warp requests
2.2 Background information
4 External link

Maximum warp limitations by class [ ]

Warp 1.4 † – Arctic One -type
Warp 1.8 † – Y-class
Warp 2 † – Neptune -class , J-class
Warp 3.2 – Defiant -class , USS Valiant had suffered combat damage
Warp 4 – Whorfin -class † , type 9 shuttlecraft
Warp 5 – Danube -class
Warp 5.2 † – NX-class
Warp 6 † – D5-class , Class III neutronic fuel carrier
Warp 6 – D'deridex -class , maximum speed that can be used where the use of the Cloaking device is not detected
Warp 6.5 † – Suurok -class ( Ti'Mur )
Warp 7 † – Suurok -class ( Sh'Raan ) , Coridan ship
Warp 8 † – Constitution -class
Warp 8 – Nova -class
Warp 8.7 – Baran's mercenary ship
Warp 9 – Defiant -class ††
Warp 9.3 – Nebula -class (2368)
Warp 9.5 – Nebula -class (2370, could be pushed to warp 9.6)
Warp 9.6 – D'deridex -class , can be exceeded in exchange for engine damage
Warp 9.8 – Galaxy -class , Xepolite Free Trader
Warp 9.9 – Prometheus -class
Warp 9.97 – Protostar -class (with conventional warp drive)
Warp 9.975 – Intrepid -class
Warp 9.99 – Constitution III -class
Warp 36 † – Karla Five's vessel

Appendices [ ]

Maximum warp requests [ ].

" Where No Man Has Gone Before " (first mentioned)
" The Corbomite Maneuver "
" Balance of Terror "
" The Squire of Gothos "
" Spock's Brain "
" That Which Survives "
" Unnatural Selection "
" Time Squared "
" Redemption "
" The Chase "
" Descent, Part II "
" Parallels "
" Homeward "
" Lower Decks "
" Bloodlines "
" All Good Things... "
" Whispers "
" Defiant "
" The Die is Cast "
" The Adversary "
" The Way of the Warrior "
" Return to Grace "
" For the Cause "
" For the Uniform "
" By Inferno's Light "
" Soldiers of the Empire "
" A Time to Stand "
" Sacrifice of Angels "
" The Sound of Her Voice "
" Parallax "
" Cold Fire "
" Threshold "
" Flashback "
" Macrocosm "
" Scorpion "
" Scorpion, Part II "
" The Omega Directive "
" Counterpoint "
" Dark Frontier "
" Think Tank "
" Equinox "
" Equinox, Part II "
" Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy "
" Flesh and Blood "
" Body and Soul "
" The Aenar "
" In a Mirror, Darkly "
Star Trek Generations
Star Trek: First Contact

Background information [ ]

As noted above, the tolerance of a ship's systems for the stresses of warp travel are a primary limiting factor, so while exceeding the ship's maximum rated speed can be technically possible, it carries the risk of severe damage to the warp drive or to the ship's structural integrity.

When a ship is ordered to accelerate to maximum warp, it does not always mean the absolute highest reachable warp factor. For example, in ENT : " Affliction ", Enterprise NX-01 already travels at maximum warp, but then accelerates to warp 5.2. In both TNG : " Time Squared " and TNG : " Bloodlines ", maximum warp denoted warp 9, although the Enterprise -D was established to be capable of faster speeds in other episodes. A similar situation occurred in DS9 : " The Sound of Her Voice ", when the USS Defiant , traveling at maximum warp, accelerates to warp 9.5.

According to Star Trek Encyclopedia (3rd ed., p. 556) updated with information up to 2375 and Star Trek: Insurrection , warp factor 9.2 was the normal maximum warp speed of Federation starships.

TNG : " Force of Nature " established Warp 5 as the maximum allowable Federation-vessel speed (except in emergencies), due to environmental concerns. Following this episode, the use of the term "maximum warp" became ubiquitous in lieu of a specific warp factor being stated. Even though later episodes and series strongly indicated that the limit was no longer in place (in particular throughout Star Trek: Voyager ), the use of the phrase "maximum warp" has continued, even in series set well before the events of "Force of Nature".

External link [ ]

Warp factor at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Warp speed space travel just got a tiny bit more realistic

A physicist uses the theory of General Relativity and geometry to explain the science fiction concept.

By Mario Borunda/The Conversation | Published Apr 26, 2021 1:37 PM EDT

Shuttle flying through a warp hole in a drawing

Mario Borunda is an associate professor of Physics at Oklahoma State University. This story originally featured in The Conversation .

The closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri. It is about 4.25 light-years away, or about 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km). The fastest ever spacecraft, the now- in-space Parker Solar Probe will reach a top speed of 450,000 mph. It would take just 20 seconds to go from Los Angeles to New York City at that speed, but it would take the solar probe about 6,633 years to reach Earth’s nearest neighboring solar system.

If humanity ever wants to travel easily between stars, people will need to go faster than light. But so far, faster-than-light travel is possible only in science fiction.

In Issac Asimov’s Foundation series , humanity can travel from planet to planet, star to star or across the universe using jump drives. As a kid, I read as many of those stories as I could get my hands on. I am now a theoretical physicist and study nanotechnology, but I am still fascinated by the ways humanity could one day travel in space.

Some characters—like the astronauts in the movies Interstellar and Thor —use wormholes to travel between solar systems in seconds. Another approach—familiar to Star Trek fans—is warp drive technology. Warp drives are theoretically possible if still far-fetched technology. Two recent papers made headlines in March when researchers claimed to have overcome one of the many challenges that stand between the theory of warp drives and reality.

But how do these theoretical warp drives really work? And will humans be making the jump to warp speed anytime soon?

Compression and expansion

Physicists’ current understanding of spacetime comes from Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity . General Relativity states that space and time are fused and that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. General relativity also describes how mass and energy warp spacetime hefty objects like stars and black holes curve spacetime around them. This curvature is what you feel as gravity and why many spacefaring heroes worry about “getting stuck in” or “falling into” a gravity well. Early science fiction writers John Campbell and Asimov saw this warping as a way to skirt the speed limit.

What if a starship could compress space in front of it while expanding spacetime behind it? Star Trek took this idea and named it the warp drive.

In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre, a Mexican theoretical physicist, showed that compressing spacetime in front of the spaceship while expanding it behind was mathematically possible within the laws of General Relativity . So, what does that mean? Imagine the distance between two points is 10 meters (33 feet). If you are standing at point A and can travel one meter per second, it would take 10 seconds to get to point B. However, let’s say you could somehow compress the space between you and point B so that the interval is now just one meter. Then, moving through spacetime at your maximum speed of one meter per second, you would be able to reach point B in about one second. In theory, this approach does not contradict the laws of relativity since you are not moving faster than light in the space around you. Alcubierre showed that the warp drive from “Star Trek” was in fact theoretically possible.

Alcubierre estimated that a warp drive with a 100-meter bubble would require the mass of the entire visible universe.

Proxima Centauri here we come, right? Unfortunately, Alcubierre’s method of compressing spacetime had one problem: It requires negative energy or negative mass.

A negative energy problem

Alcubierre’s warp drive would work by creating a bubble of flat spacetime around the spaceship and curving spacetime around that bubble to reduce distances. The warp drive would require either negative mass—a theorized type of matter—or a ring of negative energy density to work. Physicists have never observed negative mass, so that leaves negative energy as the only option.

To create negative energy, a warp drive would use a huge amount of mass to create an imbalance between particles and antiparticles. For example, if an electron and an antielectron appear near the warp drive, one of the particles would get trapped by the mass and this results in an imbalance. This imbalance results in negative energy density. Alcubierre’s warp drive would use this negative energy to create the spacetime bubble.

But for a warp drive to generate enough negative energy, you would need a lot of matter. Alcubierre estimated that a warp drive with a 100-meter bubble would require the mass of the entire visible universe .

In 1999, physicist Chris Van Den Broeck showed that expanding the volume inside the bubble but keeping the surface area constant would reduce the energy requirements significantly , to just about the mass of the sun. A significant improvement, but still far beyond all practical possibilities.

A sci-fi future?

Two recent papers—one by Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire and another by Erik Lentz —provide solutions that seem to bring warp drives closer to reality.

Bobrick and Martire realized that by modifying spacetime within the bubble in a certain way, they could remove the need to use negative energy. This solution, though, does not produce a warp drive that can go faster than light.

Independently, Lentz also proposed a solution that does not require negative energy. He used a different geometric approach to solve the equations of General Relativity, and by doing so, he found that a warp drive wouldn’t need to use negative energy. Lentz’s solution would allow the bubble to travel faster than the speed of light.

It is essential to point out that these exciting developments are mathematical models. As a physicist, I won’t fully trust models until we have experimental proof. Yet, the science of warp drives is coming into view. As a science fiction fan, I welcome all this innovative thinking. In the words of Captain Picard, things are only impossible until they are not.

Like science, tech, and DIY projects?

Warp Speed Graph & Calculator

Note: This page uses HTML5 Canvas, JavaScript, and some advanced CSS2 properties for the layout of equations.

The equation used in the calculator is the Berry-Shields equation, named after the contributors who discovered and refined it (Dominic Berry and Martin Shields). The equation is:

v ( W ) = W ((10/3)+ u ( W −9)∙ A ∙(−log e (10− W )) n

u(x) = { 0; x ≤ 0 e −1/ bx 2 ; x > 0

A = 0.03658749373

n = 1.7952294708

And b is an indeterminate constant (1000 is used in the converter) which governs the exact shape of the warp function curve at W=9.

Conversion of velocity to Warp Factor is done by successive approximation to some arbitrary number of iterations and accuracy. On slower machines this may take some time.

Significant figures in Calculator
Show calculator point on graph

Joshua Bell, inexorabletash@gmail.com

Warp Speeds Chart

Note: warp 10 is meaningless -- a starship traveling at warp 10 would occupy all points in the universe simultaneously.

Scientists Are Getting Closer to a Real, Working Warp Drive

A crucial development is propelling engineers toward faster-than-light travel.

time warp, traveling at the speed of light with the colorful starburst

If humanity wants to be a spacefaring species, it needs to figure out how to travel faster than the speed of light.
Now, a new online toolkit — backed up by a $500,000 grant — will help engineers kickstart how humanity can achieve its faster-than-light dreams in reality.
This toolkit was created by Applied Physics, an international group of scientists, which hopes to also provide a "reality check" on warp drive concepts that rely on exotic physics.

The galaxy—let alone the universe—is a stunningly huge place. Containing anywhere from 100 billion to 400 billion stars (and by extension trillions of planets), the Milky Way is a stunning 100,000 light years across. That means a trans-galactic photon that just exited the Milky Way today likely began its journey when Homo sapiens had yet to migrate out of Africa, and that’s traveling at roughly 670 million miles per hour. Considering the velocity limitations of our rockets, it takes roughly half a human lifetime just to exit our solar system.

Simply put, if humans want to be a spacefaring species, we’re going to need something better than chemical — or even nuclear — rockets, and for decades, it’s science fiction that has held the answer. The most famous example is Star Trek , which relies on the power of its warp drive to traverse the galaxy in a fraction of the time. Galactic journeys that once took centuries could now be wrapped up in a couple of hours.

Scientists have longed for some sort of technology that can propel humans faster than what physics says is possible, and now a new online tool is helping engineers make a warp drive the sole property of Starfleet. Last week, Applied Physics, which is an international group of scientists and engineers, announced that they’d created an online toolkit for “analyzing warp drive spacetimes” called the “Warp Factory.”

“Physicists can now generate and refine an array of warp drive designs with just a few clicks, allowing us to advance science at warp speed," Gianni Martire, CEO of Applied Physics, said in a press statement . “Warp Factory serves as a virtual wind tunnel, enabling us to test and evaluate different warp designs. Science fiction is now inching closer to science fact.”

As Public Benefit Company, Applied Physics is ponying up $500,000 in potential grants for aspiring warp drive theorists. However, those grants come with a few caveats, mainly that the idea is to produce a physical warp drive based in classical relativity, which means not relying on “negative energy or superluminal matter” to make your time-bending engine work.

AP’s Christopher Helmerich, in an interview with The Debrief , also compared the Warp Factory as a “reality check” for warp drives as concepts can be analyzed in a comprehensive way and hopefully weed out ideas that have no chance of operating in the real world.

While a fully working warp drives has many hurdles to overcome, it’s a technology worth taking seriously. Because if humans have any hope of one day exploring distant stars, it’ll need the help of space-bending tech that the newly-minted Warp Factory hopes to nurture.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.

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the nasa sr 71a successfully completed its first cold flow flight as part of the nasarocketdynelockheed martin linear aerospike sr 71 experiment lasre at nasa's dryden flight research center, edwards, california on march 4, 1998during a cold flow flight, gaseous helium and liquid nitrogen are cycled through the linear aerospike engine to check the engine's plumbing system for leaks and to check the engine operating characterisitics cold flow tests must be accomplished successfully before firing the rocket engine experiment in flightthe sr 71 took off at 1016 am pst the aircraft flew for one hour and fifty seven minutes, reaching a maximum speed of mach 158 before landing at edwards at 1213 pm pst"i think all in all we had a good mission today," dryden lasre project manager dave lux saidflight crew member bob meyer agreed, saying the crew "thought it was a really good flight" dryden research pilot ed schneider piloted the sr 71 during the missionlockheed martin lasre project manager carl meade added, "we are extremely pleased with today's results this will help pave the way for the first in flight engine data collection flight of the lasre"

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Interview with Garrett Wang: Star Trek Voyager Stories Random Rewind

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Set your phasers to stun and prepare for a voyage into the final frontier as we welcome a special guest to our podcast: Garrett Wang, best known for his iconic role as Ensign Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager. Join hosts Jon and Brittney as they sit down with Garrett for an unforgettable journey through the stars and beyond. In this episode, Garrett shares never-before-heard stories about his journey to the stars and how he landed the role of a lifetime on Star Trek: Voyager. From auditions and callbacks to the excitement of joining the Star Trek universe, Garrett offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of one of the most beloved sci-fi series of all time. But the cosmic connections don't end there! Join us as Jon and Garrett reminisce about their serendipitous meeting at a Comic-Con many moons ago. Hear firsthand about the chance encounter that sparked a friendship and led to this momentous reunion on our podcast. And behind the scenes, Producer Dez keeps the warp core running smoothly, ensuring that every moment of this epic conversation is captured for your listening pleasure. So grab your tricorders, strap in, and prepare for a warp-speed adventure through the cosmos with Garrett Wang. Whether you're a die-hard Trekkie, a sci-fi enthusiast, or just along for the ride, this episode promises to be an interstellar journey you won't soon forget.

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Published Apr 30, 2024

Who Are the Breen?

Never turn your back on the mysterious yet aggressive humanoid species.

Stylized and filtered repeating images of Breen soldiers

StarTrek.com

The Breen are a reclusive and mysterious species whose government has long been considered a major power in the Alpha Quadrant.

Although details about them are often blended with hearsay, we have assembled a helpful briefing to get you up-to-speed on all things Breen.

Political Past

"The Changing Face of Evil"

During the Klingon Second Empire, an entire Klingon fleet was dispatched to conquer the Breen homeworld, but no ships or soldiers ever returned from the mission. This fearsome reputation continued into the 2360s and 2370s, when the Breen were initially considered suspects in an apparent attack on the U.S.S. Vico (in " Hero Worship ") and the Federation's Amargosa Observatory. The Breen also engaged in hostilities against the Cardassians, having destroyed the transport Ravinok and forced the survivors to mine dilithium.

The Dominion confined a Breen in Internment Camp 371 as part of its bid to infiltrate the Alpha Quadrant, but the prisoner was killed in an escape attempt. Given the Breen's clashes with so many other species, it's no surprise that the Romulans allegedly developed the saying, "Never turn your back on a Breen." Oddly enough, the Ferengi had managed to establish a rapport with the Breen and opened trade negotiations with them by 2373.

Close-up of a Breen helmet in 'The Changing Face of Evil'

The Breen cover themselves in distinctive full-body suits, and their ever-present helmets mask their appearance from outsiders and process their speech through a metallic filter. Rumors of the Breen homeworld being a frozen wasteland lend credence to the theory that these suits are for environmental or refrigeration purposes, though Weyoun claimed that Breen has a comfortable climate.

Nevertheless, the Breen are often considered synonymous with all things cold by their interstellar neighbors. In the 24th Century, Data stated that the Breen are not detectable through empathic means, while Dr. Bashir noted that they do not have any blood.

"Mirrors"

According to Worf, no one had ever seen a Breen and lived to tell about it, which explains why the Federation did not immediately recognize the courier L'ak as a Breen in 3191. With the Breen finally unmasked, the species is shown to be capable of changing between two faces — a translucent and emerald-like flexible form, and a smooth, pale-green humanoid one. The latter shape takes focus and strength to hold, but unlike their more radiant appearance, the humanoid variant allows them to breathe the same atmosphere as most Federation species. The fluid that leaks out of a stab wound suffered by L'ak may indicate that Bashir's "no blood" observation is limited to the Breen's "other" face.

"By Inferno's Light"

As one might expect when dealing with a populace who conceal their faces from other species, the Breen are incredibly secretive. In the 2370s, Worf asserts that the Breen are without honor and do not tolerate incursions into their space matches, while U.S.S. Voyager 's Emergency Medical Hologram classifies them as a warlike species (as mentioned in " Elogium "). These comments reflect the Klingons' failed invasion of the Breen homeworld, but much more insight can be gained from the interaction between L'ak and his uncle, the Breen Primarch, as seen in " Mirrors ."

The Primarch is displeased with L'ak's relationship with Moll, viewing the human as a "lesser being" and showcasing the Breen's intolerance toward non-Breen species. Great emphasis is placed on royal lines and family lineage, with the Primarch referring to L'ak's humanoid face as an insult to his heritage. In the Primarch's opinion, the Breen have evolved past that form as it makes them unfocused, inflexible, and weak. Ordering L'ak to redeem himself by killing Moll and the irrevocable nature of an Erigah — a Breen blood bounty — seem to reinforce the Federation's belief that the Breen are dangerous and cannot be trusted with the Progenitors' technology.

The Dominion War

"Strange Bedfellows"

In 2375, Thot Gor allies the Breen Confederacy with the Dominion and quickly musters a fleet that succeeds in attacking Starfleet Headquarters on Earth. Equipped with organic-based ships, the Breen military helps the Dominion retake the Chin’toka system. The favoritism the Founder shows the Breen becomes a factor that pushes Damar into mounting a resistance against the Dominion. Breen energy-dampening weapons devastate enemy ships, though the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans soon devise a countermeasure which permits them to launch an offensive into Cardassian territory.

"What You Leave Behind"

With their armada surrounded at Cardassia Prime, the Founder promises the Breen control of Romulus and Earth in a last-ditch effort to motivate them into fighting to the bitter end. The Breen leader vows to join the frontlines, but the Federation Alliance is bolstered by vessels from the Cardassian fleet. The Dominion and Breen Confederacy’s defeat proves inevitable, and the Founder eventually agrees to a complete surrender.

A 32nd Century Future

The Breen Primarch faces his nephew L'ak and reprimands him for consorting with lesser beings in 'Mirrors'

In the late 32nd Century, the Breen government is now known as the Breen Imperium. An independent entity that is separate from Osyraa's Emerald Chain, the Imperium runs its own space stations and trading hubs where couriers can sell their goods. While faction wars between rivals vying for control of Breen space have raged for years, continued infighting over a new leader has made the Imperium a growing threat and alarmed some Federation worlds.

When a time bug overtakes the U.S.S. Discovery -A, as seen in " Face the Strange ," Captain Burnham witnesses a possible future in which the Breen secure the Progenitors' technology for themselves and launch a devastating attack on the Federation. By 3218, the Discovery is found to be adrift and Federation Headquarters has been obliterated. Once back in the year 3191, Burnham uses the glimpse into the future as evidence that the Breen Imperium must not be allowed to obtain the Progenitors' power.

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Jay Stobie (he/him) is a freelance writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to StarTrek.com, Star Trek Explorer, and Star Trek Magazine, as well as to Star Wars Insider and StarWars.com. Learn more about Jay by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Star Trek 101
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April 28, 2024 | Interview: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Writer Carlos Cisco On Unmasking The Breen And Revisiting The ISS Enterprise

Interview: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Writer Carlos Cisco On Unmasking The Breen And Revisiting The ISS Enterprise

| April 28, 2024 | By: Anthony Pascale 38 comments so far

The fifth episode (“ Mirrors “) of season 5 of Star Trek: Discovery was co-written by Carlos Cisco, working with Johanna Lee. Cisco joined Discovery in season 3 as a writers’ assistant, moved up to staff writer during season 4, and is now a writer and story editor in season 5.

In our SPOILERS interview, TrekMovie had a chance to talk to Cisco about getting a chance to expand on some big pieces of Trek lore in “Mirrors” and more.

Can you give a bit of background on your fandom and how you came to work on Discovery ?

I am a huge fan now, but I wasn’t always that way because I didn’t have TV growing up in the ’90s. I had seen some of the original movies, a handful of Next Gen episodes and the J.J. Abrams movies before coming onto Discovery . It was intimidating because didn’t know the franchise really well but I love sci-fi and genre. Once I started on season 3, I began to watch Next Gen episodes and when it became clear we were dealing with Andorians and Orions, our then-staff writer Brandon Schultz suggested I watch Enterprise because that is when they were the most featured and I really came to appreciate it. I had been a huge fan of Jeffrey Combs before any knowledge of Trek, and to find how deep he was in Trek was a delightful surprise. So I watched Enterprise all the way through, I watched all of Next Gen , DS9, TOS, I got up to season 4 of Voyager …

So you did an almost complete binge of the franchise during your first year as a writers’ assistant?

Yeah, I was watching like two to four episodes a day. It was a lot. I am an extremely online person and understand how fandoms work and understand that Trek is the fandom that created the sort of framework for all modern fandom. I also love researching things. I love fake histories of and diving into the lore of something. So yeah, I went through all of it and eventually finished up Voyager during the pandemic and kept on, I am current with all the Trek shows.

Was this just extra obsessiveness because it was your job, or because you were you getting into it?

I really enjoyed Next Generation . Deep Space Nine is among my favorite TV series of all time and the one I go back and rewatch the most because it’s just that good, I love it. I will go back to other ones like if we are referencing it in the room.

Carlos Cisco beamed to the set of Star Trek: Discovery

So having watched it all so recently, did you find yourself as one of the quasi-experts in the room?

Yeah. I would have upper level writers texting me asking like, “What’s something I can inject in here?” Yeah, I became one of the experts in the room. I feel like the most passionate people about a religion are the recent converts, and that became one of my positions in the room. So I was always trying to push how could we recontextualize Trek canon for the 32nd century? How can we better worldbuild each season? That was something that was important to me.

For an episode like “Mirrors,” it must occur to you that you are about to double the page on Memory Alpha for the Breen and also the Kelleruns and even the Mirror Universe. Do you find that exciting or terrifying?

Both. Trek fans, they know their shit. It’s a really terrifying and great responsibility to get to be that additive to canon. The Breen were one of my strongest pushes for the season. Early on a couple of us who were really into the lore were asked for ideas on the season big bads and [staff writer] Eric [Robbins] was pushing for the Vidiians and I was like we should do the Breen.” Because, A: They’re not going to have horrible makeup, and B: We can just put a bunch of big guys in suits and they don’t need to talk. Being mindful of the COVID protocols, the suits and masks would be really great. And then there were all the possibilities for the Breen because in every season Discovery is trying to do something we have never seen before. And getting to unmask the Breen was a really big privilege.

“Mirrors” showed how there was more to just unmasking them with the two faces. Can you talk about the look and inspiration behind that?

I don’t remember where in the process we landed on “gelatinous” but when we hit the art team with that they came back to us with deep sea fish like the Barreleye Fish with a see-through head. We got really excited about that. So we started talking about what is this species? Why do they wear the suits? So, the thing we landed on is they have this soft gelatinous form and also a hardened form. Our thinking was that the Breen came up on a very harsh planet with a harsh environment. So they developed a way to protect themselves which was hardening their outer shell into basically a skin, but that takes an immense amount of concentration and energy, making them slower, more sluggish, less intelligent, basically. Over time, they compensated for that by creating the refrigeration suits. Then culturally, it became anathema for them to display that solid face, especially to outsiders, because it was essentially a sign of weakness.

L’ak in his gelatinous state

This idea of a taboo reminded me of episodes like “The Outcast.” So L’ak is part of a segment of Breen society that chose to go against this norm?

Yeah, I think that the Breen that would do that would be outcasts in their society. We still wanted to leave a lot of mystery with the Breen. One of the most appealing parts of being a writer in Trek, is you can see something that was mentioned once in Trek and go, “I’m going to build a whole episode about this, or a whole character arc that explores this.” The Breen started as a single line in TNG and then got one of the most important arcs in DS9. Getting to build and expand off that of that was really cool.

One quick question: Is this the same Breen ship we saw next to the destroyed Federation HQ in the future in the time travel episode?

Yep, that big honking thing next to Federation HQ is the Breen ship. It’s not a space station, it’s a ship. That was one of the things I was super proud of pitching. I had been looking at Breen ship designs, including the Star Trek Online ones, which were these colossal, city ships that could house entire armies and fleets inside of them. And again, talking about what haven’t we seen and what could we have as our adversary. Like, Osyraa’s ship was big in comparison to Discovery, but we wanted to do something – this thing was just a behemoth. Like a Discovery-sized ship could fly into its shuttle bay.

Using the ISS Enterprise was a way to sort of visit the Mirror Universe again. What came first: a creative way of using the available Strange New Worlds set in Toronto, or the decision to revisit the Mirror Universe?

We were given access the sets so we could pitch ideas that could take place on those sets, whether it is the Enterprise or not. There were a few pitches, like one with an old science vessel from the 23 rd century stuck inside a planet of liquid mercury. And one pitch was it was a Mirror Universe ship sort of trapped like a ship in a bottle, which became the pocket of dimensional space. We even considered fluidic space, trying to bring in one more little reference [laughs]. So once it was settled to do the Mirror ship, the opportunity to define what happened to the ISS Enterprise after the events of “Mirror, Mirror” was really cool.

Was there any talk about also bringing in some Mirror characters?

We had considered Ethan [Peck] as Mirror Spock early on but there might have been availability issues, I don’t know.

Burnham and Book on the ISS Enterprise bridge

So you say you are the lore guy, so how about a nitpick speed round? Starting with: The Breen aren’t supposed to bleed, right?

They don’t have a circulatory system, it’s just the jelly spilling out. I know they don’t bleed! Come on. [laughs]

The solution to open the wormhole was to replace the photon torpedoes with antimatter, but aren’t photon torpedoes anti-matter torpedoes?

I think they were adding more, okay? [laughs]

Final sort of nitpick: Owo and Detmer were tasked with taking the ship back to HQ, but the warp drive was disabled. We don’t see it go to warp, so are they not going to show up at HQ for years?

In my headcanon, they are being met by a Federation tug, the 32 nd century version of the California-class like the Cerritos. They are heading off to meet them and it will tug them to spacedock. [laughs]

ISS Enterprise leaves for Starfleet HQ

We have talked a lot about lore, but season 3 was a way for the show to kind of jump past all of Star Trek canon. Now in season 5, it feels like the show is reembracing the lore, is that by design?

Yeah, I think the studio and Secret Hideout, [co-showrunners] Alex [Kurtzman] and Michelle [Paradise] all wanted this season to sort of connect Discovery back to the greater body of Trek a little more. That didn’t mean we had to really dig into canon, but there was a greater desire to see what we are familiar with from the past and what it looks like in 32 nd century and how it’s different or how it’s not different, and why. Obviously, this is a season that has focused on an episode from the 24 th century [TNG “The Chase”] and so naturally because of that, every episode focused on the clues is going to be focused on the whims of a 24th-century scientist. So that is naturally going to have more connections back to what people would consider classic Trek.

Discovery is ending and the writers room wrapped up a while ago. Are you hoping to return to the franchise? If there is a second season of Academy , are you hoping to get back to the 32 nd century?

I’d love to, if they’d have me. But if this is the last episode I get to write of Star Trek, I’m very proud that this is my final contribution. I’m hoping to pitch some games to the franchise and stuff like that as well down the line. I’m a game designer on the other side of my career. But yeah, I would love to come back and write for Trek, anytime. We’ll see if that happens.

Finally, last year you played a big part in organizing for the WGA strike, which included rallying Trek writers. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, one of the proudest things I’ve contributed to the franchise didn’t even take place while I was employed on Star Trek. Or [employed] at all. I was a lot coordinator and strike captain. Followers of the strike might remember we did theme days to boost morale and turnout. I, along with fellow captain and Strange New Worlds writer Bill Wolkoff was one of the architects of the Star Trek strike day in May. It was one of the first theme days, and we didn’t advertise. But the turnout from franchise was immense. We had actors, writers, and designers from every single Trek TV show attend. It was, as a fan and a writer, an immensely emotional day and an incredible few hours where folks who worked on the show could fan out on other folks whose shoulders we stand on. There were reunions that hadn’t happened in years and it was a really joyful celebration of the shows we all put our blood, sweat, and tears into.

Carlos Cisco (highlighted) at Star Trek-themed picket day in May 2023 (Photo: JW Hendricks)

The fifth and final season of Discovery debuted with two episodes on Thursday, April 4 exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and Austria. Discovery also premiered on April 4 on Paramount+ in Canada and will be broadcast on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada. The rest of the 10-episode final season is available to stream weekly on Thursdays. Season 5 debuted on SkyShowtime in select European countries on April 5.

Note: The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Preview ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Episode 506 With New Images. Trailer And Clip From “Whistlespeak”

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I’m not sure I like the reveal. To me, this is one of those things like the Klingon headridges where I think the mystery was more interesting than the answer they came up with. I so wish Enterprise had not explained the headridges and Worf’s “we don’t discuss it with outsiders” joke in DS9’s “Trials and Tribbleations” was the end-all be-all for it.

Also, the behind-the-scenes thinking and explanation for the Breen doesn’t fit with DS9.

Their idea that the Breen come from a harsh planet and harsh environment is directly conflicted in dialogue by Weyoun, who states the environment of the Breen homeworld is actually normal. In DS9, it gave the Breen a mysterious quality that I think made them stand out.

Good point. Pretty much everything about this episode was badly done.

Frankly, given what a disappointment Discovery seasons 3-5 have been, I truly hope Carlos Cisco and Johanna Lee are not invited back. They just aren’t good writers.

as all Disco writers are…

You dislike all the writers on all current trek shows. Not actually sure what you consider a “good” writer.

Just to be sure, it would be nice if we can put all Disco writers in one big box and ship them to Antartica.

DS9 built up a real mystique about the Breen. To find out that they are really green jello people was a bit anti-climatic.

In fairness, though, what would have been exciting enough as an answer to the mystery? Some things are better left unanswered. It brings to mind Steven Moffat teasing a reveal of The Doctor’s (as in Doctor Who) name, abut then admitting he never would. To parapgrase, he said, “What could it possibly turn out to be? Keith?”

In fairness, though, what would have been exciting enough as an answer to the mystery?

I think you answered the question well in suggesting that maybe the Breen should have remained a mystery.

but on the other hand, who trusts anything Weyoun says?

The Typhon Pact books dug into the Breen in an interesting way, and this doesn’t stray too far from that (in some respects) which is refreshing to see.

Two unnecessary reveals in one episode.

Anyone who says DS9 is their favorite show is already alright in my book!

However I did have a lot of problems with this episode. The whole MU connection and it also being the Enterprise just felt beyond a stretch and very unnecessary. And he confirmed what I think a lot of us assumed and that they were able to use the Enterprise sets and just came up with a story around it instead of the opposite and came up with a story first that warranted it. I really wish it was just another Constitution class ship from the prime universe instead of the ham fisted stuff they came up with that added really nothing to the story.

As for the Breen I do like they are using them again since this is a species many fans wanted to see again. I’m torn with the head reveal but OK with it. But would’ve been fine if they didn’t show them.

I also like the idea of using the Vidians too although IIRC weren’t they already cured by the end of Voyager? But this is why it’s fun to go so forward in the future because now you can use species from any part of the galaxy.

And I suspect we will see a lot more of them in the Academy show.

Agreed on all fronts.

agree on everything ;)

Yep Jason Alexander cured the Phage.

Yeah, I don’t think every mystery or open question needs to be answered by our franchises. I don’t understand the compulsion to answer every open question from past series or movies.

Things like the Breen and Bobba Fett were cooler with less said.

yes. for sure. let the secrets be secrets, don’t explain them, create new ones!

The shame of it all, though, is that this just wasn’t a good episode. It was badly written, L’ak and Moll were really boring, and the Breen’s other face was cheesy-looking. This may have been the worst episode of DISCO since the ship left the 23rd century. What a disappointment this season has turned out to be; after two really fun opening episodes, it’s gone downhill fast and has turned into the same padded schlock that was seasons three and four.

You literally complained about the first two episodes when they aired and now you are saying that were great? And you’re making sweeping judgements about a season being disappointing even though you haven’t seen it all? There’s a word for this: trolling.

That’s nonsense, and you know it. I don’t know why you have a bug up your butt about me, but if you don’t like my posts, stop replying to them. I’m clearly not a troll. I’ve been an active member of this group for years.

Also, I just looked up my comments about the early episodes on this board.

Episode 1: “Now THAT was good.”

Episode 2: I made no comment at all.

Episode 3: “Oh, boy. After two stellar episodes, this was one of the worst in the show’s history. If this is setting the tone for the rest of the season, I’m frankly worried.”

So, M1701, when exactly did I “literally complain about the first two episodes when they aired?” It’s pretty clear which one of us is the troll. So get off my back. You don’t out-rank me and you don’t have pointed ears.

I don’t know. I thought it was a very good episode. The pacing was great. I like the added backstory to Moll and L’ak. I found it added depth and meaning to their characters. And I did love that the MU ship was the Enterprise. As a long-time fan of Trek and loving “Mirror, Mirror” – I often wondered what happened to the ISS-E. This was quite satisfying to me to know where she ended up. Being a writer myself (I wrote several episodes or ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK and other series from time to time), I quite enjoyed the story telling here and in this season. I work more in the technical field now but I still write from time to time. Funny enough, I did write a fan fiction years and years ago that find the ISS-E in the future with Mirror Spock at the helm.

Oh neat I used to watch AYOTD when I was a kid good show.

This awful story is what you get when you assign a novice to write this episode. No offense to Carlos Cisco, but the ‘Mirrors’ episode is a huge mess.

The ‘no offense’ made a huge difference indeed… LOL

What they should’ve done with the extra pages they got in the end (to wrap up the series) is go back and ‘fix’ certain things they would’ve done, had they known it was their last episode. Like bringing in Ethan for at least a cameo or recorded log scene and Lorca in the previous one. Would’ve fixed the ‘talk in stead of show’ issues.

Guess we can add the Breen to the list of things the First Splinter did better (a list that already includes the MU).

I still hate the 32rd century, the entire thing completely destroys world building in the Star Trek Universe to me.

If it was the late 25th century or early 26th century, just a difference in Number really, the jump in tech capabilities would be entirely reasonable and no more than from the late 23rd to the late 24th century. All of the things that happened in the meantime, the burn, the reunification of vulcan etc would have all been much more plausible in a shorter period of time and honestly opening the possibility for many more interesting stories to tell. Even the federation continuing on as a shadow of its former self, the way it is presented in the show, would make much more sense if the burn had been just, say, 30 years ago – and not over 100!

Look at how our real world changed just within the last 80 years since WW2, how a society such as Korea could evolve into two completely different cultures, how entire populations were displaced in Europe, yet that reality became totally normal now. In star trek, on the other hand, somehow progress and change completely ground to a crawl, apparently, following the 2400s.

Again, that baffling decision completely destroys world building and plausibility of the events in Disco for me. Such a minor thing as the number of the date has have such profound ramnifications towards the plausibility of the story (which was probably only chose because it was beyond ANY mentioned events in Canon) and it is just so disappointing that this decision has been apparently been made on a whim.

And now they are doubling down with SF Academy. Just leave it in peace and call it an “alternate Timeline/split timeline” or whatever.

This. I just can’t even bring myself to watch Disco anymore (stopped after season 2). Have seen every episode of every other series excluding Prodigy (am getting to that one), but Disco just doesn’t feel like the same universe, and I’m simply not interested.

This episode was damn fantastic and I find Trekmovie’s comments section for this article a bit more wearying than most.

Ah, thank you. The comments here are becoming grumpy central. I liked the episode and this interview was honest and fun.

I love the Trekmovie podcast and the news coverage, but nowadays I do kind of see the Trekmovie comments as obnoxious haters looking for shallow excuses to flex what they think is their creative writing muscle vs. the comments at Trekcore that are a little more down-to-earth and rational. The comments over there are also much more discussion-based as opposed to the reaction-based dramaticism of the jerks over here. I want to be clear, I’m just talking about the comments. Anthony and Laurie’s podcast and this site’s news coverage is one of the shining lights of the fandom in general. It’s just that the comments section make my eyes roll so hard they occasionally fall out.

A. It’s just people giving their opinions. I don’t think people are trying to be ‘haters’ just honest. Yes people are passionate.

B. It’s literally been like this here since 2009. It’s actually better today than a decade ago after STID came out. That was brutal lol.

I liked that TNG mostly didn’t revisit TOS aliens (but when it did, it overused them – see: Klingons — or made them lame – see: Vulcans and Romulans).

I wish Discovery had tried to do its own thing.

Honestly I think it is Enterprise that made the Vulcans lame. Outside of Spock and Sarek we didn’t really even get many Vulcans in TNG

I agree to an extent. That being said I’d rather use an established adversary than invent something new out of whole cloth.

I for one am happy to see the Breen back as they were one of my favorite parts of DS9. I wouldn’t have shown their faces but I like what we got. Im also glad we’re using and expanding on something established as opposed to inventing something brand new. I hope we see the Tholians too as they were name dropped earlier in the season.

Cisco is clearly a fan but it feels like the writers this season really want to be doing an early 24th/25th century show. The story and ideas do not feel they inspired by and coming organically from the shows characters and setting. The show is increasingly contrived as a grab bag of 24th/25th century ideas are brute-forced into Discovey at the expense of its own already weak characters.

They’ve fallen into a catch-22 where the show is entirely dependent of references/callbacks to keep you invested because of its own weak setting and characters…but they’re weak because their development has been sacrified in favor of more refences. The show started started off with training wheels and instead of letting it eventually ride on its own they just keep adding more training wheels.

It’s a shame because in a vaccum I actually think a lot of the Breen development is pretty neat. I hope Cisco, Lee, and others are new and better opportunities with the franchise in the future. But I’m increasingly worried that with Kurtzman in charge it’ll just be more of the same. Coming Soon: 32nd Starfleet Academy! Featuring such instructors as The Doctor, Guinan, Wesley Crusher, and a Soong Android!

IMAGES

Star Trek: How Fast Warp Speed Is (& How It Compares To Hyperspace)
Warp Speed Comparison
Star Trek: How Fast Warp Speed Is (& How It Compares To Hyperspace)
Warp Speed: The Hype of Hyperspace
Velocidad Warp
How Star Trek's Warp Speed Works

VIDEO

Warp Nacelle
Prepare for Warp Speed Engage
Star Trek Warp Drives to Magic Mushroom Drives
Warp drives: Physicists give chances of faster-than-light space travel a boost
Time Warp: A First-Person Journey
Star Trek Warp Engine Effect

COMMENTS

Star Trek: How Fast Warp Speed Is (& How It Compares To Hyperspace)
According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, in simple terms, the new warp speed factor 1 is the exact speed of light, 299,792,458 m/s. Each factor above is a multiple of that warp speed, although what those values are vary depending on the show in question. Warp Factor 1 - 1x lightspeed. Warp Factor 2 - 10x lightspeed.
Star Trek: How Fast Is Warp Speed Exactly?
As seen in many "Star Trek" episodes, the laws of space-time start to break down entirely once warp 10 is reached. Warp 10 gets defined as infinite speed, which means anything traveling at it ...
Warp factor
Star Trek: The Next Generation []. A document dated May 14, 1986 and attributed to Gene Roddenberry places warp 10 at the top of the scale: "Beyond that time-space continuity is disoperative." The corresponding velocity is given as "the speed of light multiplied by the speed of light ten times", whereas warp 2 is now "the speed of light squared", implying a general rule of the speed of light ...
Warp drive
A warp drive or a drive enabling space warp is a fictional superluminal (faster than the speed of light) spacecraft propulsion system in many science fiction works, most notably Star Trek, and a subject of ongoing physics research. The general concept of "warp drive" was introduced by John W. Campbell in his 1957 novel Islands of Space and was popularized by the Star Trek series.
Warp Speed Calculator
In Star Trek, the warp speed is a velocity scaled by the warp factor. The warp factor formula is inconsistent throughout the series. In the original series, for instance, warp factors were described using the formula v = w³⋅c, where c is the speed of light in a vacuum.
Warp drive
Warp drive or warp engine was a technology that allowed space travel at faster-than-light speeds. It worked by generating warp fields to form a subspace bubble that enveloped the starship, distorting the local spacetime continuum and moving the starship at velocities that could greatly exceed the speed of light. These velocities were referred to as warp factors. Warp drive was the most common ...
How Warp Speed Works
In the "Star Trek" universe, warp speed is accomplished through the use of a warp drive. ... The warp coils are typically enclosed in what the "Star Trek" writers call a warp nacelle. The whole package creates a "warp field" or "bubble" around the Enterprise, allowing the ship and its crew to remain safe while space manipulates around them. ...
Warp Speed Calculator » Star Trek Minutiae
The Warp Speed Calculator is designed to answer these questions. Simply input two of three variables (speed, distance, and time), and the form will calculate the third for you. It will even convert equivalent units, like years to days, light-years to parsecs, or warp factors to multiples of c. And you, too, can sound like a Treknology expert ...
How Star Trek's Warp Speed Works
The ability to manipulate space is the most important concept in regard to warp speed. If the Enterprise could warp the space-time continuum by expanding the area behind it and contracting the ...
Watch This Visual Timeline of STAR TREK'S Warp Speed Effect
Jan 20 2022 • 1:48 PM. "Warp speed" is a term that entered the pop-culture consciousness as soon as Star Trek hit in 1966. Even if you have never seen the show or a single film, or even like ...
In Star Trek, how fast is warp 9.99?
The Star Trek Encyclopedia offers some conversion charts. Warp 9.99 is approximately 7,912 times the speed of light. As you can see from the handy diagram below, as you approach Warp 10 (infinite speed), your velocity increases exponentially. Warp 9.9 is half the speed of warp 9.99 and warp 9.9999 is over 30 times faster than warp 9.9, etc.
star trek
In Star Trek III, Kirk takes the Enterprise out on a little "joyride", with the U.S.S. Excelsior in hot pursuit (initially). The audience learns that the Excelsior is equipped with "trans-warp drive". ... In TOS for example Warp speed of 8.4 was described as allowing to traverse about 990 Ly's per 1 solar day - which isn't far fetched by the ...
Former NASA Scientist Demonstrates Why Star Trek's Warp Speeds Are
12 October 2019. In the sci-fi universe of "Star Trek", spaceships with warp drives can zoom past the normally impenetrable limit of light speed, or about 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) in a vacuum. This trouncing of theoretical physics makes reaching alien-rich planets across the galaxy seem like just a convenient TV ...
Ex Astris Scientia
As late as in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (TMP) warp factors lower than Warp 1 appeared for the first time, when Sulu carefully activated the untested warp drive and slowly accelerated to warp speed. ... Star Trek Encyclopedia: Max. cruise speed of Galaxy class: 9.6: 884.74: 1909: Max. safe speed of Galaxy class (96h) 9.9: 970.30: 3053 : 9 ...
Hypothetically, How Fast Is Warp Speed? It Depends
"Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead," Captain James T. Kirk firmly tells his lieutenant commander in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).. The USS Enterprise ...
Warp speed
Warp speed is the term for traveling at faster-than-light velocity through a warp drive propulsion system. It is the principal mode of transport in Star Trek, being used by all space-faring factions. While not the first species to develop the technology, humanity's first use was in 2063 by Zefram Cochrane's Phoenix. This led to their first contact with Vulcans, celebrated by the Federation as ...
Maximum warp
A similar situation occurred in DS9: "The Sound of Her Voice", when the USS Defiant, traveling at maximum warp, accelerates to warp 9.5. According to Star Trek Encyclopedia (3rd ed., p. 556) updated with information up to 2375 and Star Trek: Insurrection, warp factor 9.2 was the normal maximum warp speed of Federation starships.
The explanation behind warp speed Popular Science
Alcubierre showed that the warp drive from "Star Trek" was in fact theoretically possible. Alcubierre estimated that a warp drive with a 100-meter bubble would require the mass of the entire ...
Warp Speed Graph & Calculator
Warp Speed Graph & Calculator . ... And b is an indeterminate constant (1000 is used in the converter) which governs the exact shape of the warp function curve at W=9. Conversion of velocity to Warp Factor is done by successive approximation to some arbitrary number of iterations and accuracy. On slower machines this may take some time.
Warp Speeds Chart
Note: warp 10 is meaningless -- a starship traveling at warp 10 would occupy. all points in the universe simultaneously. Speed: Miles per hour: Times speed of light: Earth to moon: (250,000 miles) Across one sector: (20 light years) To nearby Galaxy: (2,000,000 light years) standard orbit 5.000 0.00001 42 hours 2.000.000 years 223.33 Billion ...
Was warp 14.1 the fastest warp in Star Trek?
Yes, higher warps than 14.1 have been recorded. In the TAS episode The Counter-Clock Incident, the Enterprise encounters a ship travelling at warp 36. From the transcript (emphasis mine): SPOCK: Captain, sensors are picking up an unidentified object travelling at an incredible speed, presently on collision course with the Enterprise.
What warp speed actually looks like with real-distance, in ...
@physicsJ twitter, fan production...This is what Star Trek's warp speeds actually looks like with real-distance, in real-time, from 1 to 9.9. Is it faster or...
Scientists Get Serious in the Search for a Working Warp Drive
The most famous example is Star Trek, which relies on the power of its warp drive to traverse the galaxy in a fraction of the time. Galactic journeys that once took centuries could now be wrapped ...
‎Random Rewind: Interview with Garrett Wang: Star Trek Voyager Stories
And behind the scenes, Producer Dez keeps the warp core running smoothly, ensuring that every moment of this epic conversation is captured for your listening pleasure. So grab your tricorders, strap in, and prepare for a warp-speed adventure through the cosmos with Garrett Wang.
Charlie Solis
206 likes, 28 comments - solishoods on April 30, 2024: "Unlocking the Secrets of a Real Warp Drive Ever wondered how the fantastical "warp speed" from Star Trek might work in the ...". Charlie Solis | Unlocking the Secrets of a Real Warp Drive 🚀🌌 Ever wondered how the fantastical "warp speed" from Star Trek might work in the ...
Who Are the Breen?
Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV "Star Trek" channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.
Interview: 'Star Trek: Discovery' Writer Carlos Cisco On Unmasking The
The fifth episode ("Mirrors") of season 5 of Star Trek: Discovery was co-written by Carlos Cisco, working with Johanna Lee. Cisco joined Discovery in season 3 as a writers' assistant, moved ...