• Question: In the future, do you think we will develop interstellar travel (a.k.a. hyperdrive / hyperatomic motor)? I know it sounds like a basic question, but the laws of physics do have slight fluctuations e.g. superfluids can go through solid objects, or maybe with quantum physics etc.

    Asked by Rory to anuantony, Duncan, Jayne, Katherine, Sajid on 15 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Duncan McNicholl

      Duncan McNicholl answered on 15 Nov 2017:


      There’s something called an Alcubierre drive, which was designed by a scientist who knows a lot about relativity, and that could allow a spaceship to travel faster than the speed of light. The problem is that it requires something with negative mass to allow it to work, and we’ve never come across anything with negative mass, so it doesn’t seem all that likely. There’s also wormholes, but again you need negative mass matter to stabilise the junction with the universe and stop it from collapsing.
      .
      As a side note, you don’t need faster-than-light travel for interstellar travel: there’s a bunch of people trying to fund a project to make tiny little space probes that will have massive solar sails and be pushed by gigantic lasers to almost the speed of light so that they can get to other stars in only a few years, and sci fi is full of generation ships, where the people who arrive at the other star system are the great great great great great great grandchildren of the people who set off. Good question.

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