star trek discovery warp drive

59 Years Later, Star Trek Just Proved It Still Needs Its Oldest Sci-Fi Plot Device

Trek just can’t quit the warp drive, even in the 32nd Century.

After almost six decades and hundreds of years of future history, the fastest way to travel in the final frontier is still by firing up your faithful warp drive. Star Trek’s famous faster-than-light tech was originally conceived as a “time warp” drive in the 1964 pilot “The Cage,” but was later changed to just a “warp” drive to avoid confusion. But why is this concept still around? Surely people living in the 25th and 32nd centuries have come up with something a bit faster? In a new clip from Discovery Season 5, a piece of dialogue reminds us why warp drive is still such a big deal, even 900 years after the era of Captain Kirk.

Although the plot of Discovery Season 5 is still vague, we do know it will involve a galaxy-wide treasure hunt that will see our Starfleet heroes compete against thieves named Moll (Eve Harlow) and L’ak (Elias Toufexis). In an extended preview revealed at San Diego Comic-Con, we find Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) chasing them and jumping on their ship as it goes into warp. As Burnham hangs out inside their warp bubble and tries to disable their engines, another Starfleet ship arrives: the USS Antares , commanded by Captain Rayner, a new character played by Callum Keith Rennie.

Some brief technobabble ensues, in which Burnham realizes that if the Antares keeps their tractor beam on the escaping enemy ship, its warp bubble will collapse and she’ll be crushed. Why can’t the Antares just pull this smaller ship out of warp? Burnham raises this same question, saying, “reverse engines and pull them out of warp.” But Rayner can’t , and it’s all connected to the type of FTL drive his ship is using.

“If I had a Pathway Drive, maybe,” Rayner says. “But we’re still making do with Burn tech out here.”

By “Burn tech,” Rayner means old-school warp drive. The “Pathway Drive” is an experimental propulsion system Starfleet was working on during Season 4 of Discovery . So although the ships in the 32nd Century of Discovery look slicker, they’re running off the same FTL drives that Pike, Kirk, Sisko, and Picard deal with in the 23rd, 24th, and 25th centuries.

Why does this matter? Well, Discovery Season 3 posits that a catastrophe called “the Burn” put the entire galaxy’s ability to develop new technology back roughly 120 years. The Burn also made dilithium, the crystal crucial to stabilizing warp fields, even rarer than it already is. Dilithium also caused the Burn, which is like saying Star Trek’s reliance on warp drive caused Star Trek to become reliant on warp drive.

Star Trek’s alternate warp drives

The Enterprise-D going waaaaay too fast.

Discovery has been trying to make other forms of space propulsion happen since Season 1. The obvious example is the USS Discovery’s Spore Drive, which uses the Mycelial network to instantly transport the ship. But it’s way more complicated and can only be operated by specialists like Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp). The Spore Drive isn’t sustainable, just like Star Trek’s other alternate drives.

In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , the USS Excelsior had something called a Transwarp Drive. This was mostly a punchline, and Scotty was easily able to sabotage it. The Excelsior is still around in Star Trek VI, but had been refitted with a regular old warp drive. In The Next Generation’s “Where No One Has Gone Before,” Kosinski and the Traveler attempt to introduce a thought-based form of propulsion that goes horribly awry, and in “Remember Me” Wesley traps his mom, Dr. Crusher, in an alternate dimension when he tries to create a new kind of warp bubble. And, of course, in the Voyager episode “Threshold,” crossing the Warp 10 barrier turns Janeway and Tom Paris into salamanders.

You get it. Anything that’s not warp drive, in the Star Trek canon, is unpredictable and dangerous. And yet, now that Trek canon has pushed several centuries beyond its original timeline, it seems likely that at some point warp drive will have to become obsolete. Back when The Next Generation was in early development, Roddenberry and other producers briefly floated the idea that in the distant future transporters will be so powerful that Starfleet wouldn’t even need ships. So, if Trek ever does get rid of warp drive, they can just beam people around.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 is expected in early 2024.

• Science Fiction

July 13, 2021

11 min read

Star Trek ’s Warp Drive Leads to New Physics

Researchers are taking a closer look at this science-fiction staple—and bringing the idea a little closer to reality

By Robert Gast & Spektrum

Warp one, engage!

Getty Images

For Erik Lentz, it all started with Star Trek . Every few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Jean-Luc Picard would raise his hand and order, “Warp one, engage!” Then stars became dashes, and light-years flashed by at impossible speed. And Lentz, still in elementary school, wondered whether warp drive might also work in real life.

“At some point, I realized that the technology didn’t exist,” Lentz says. He studied physics at the University of Washington, wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on dark matter and generally became far too busy to be concerned with science fiction. But then, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Lentz found himself alone in Göttingen, Germany, where he was doing postdoctoral work. He suddenly had plenty of free time on his hands—and childhood fancies in his head.

Lentz read everything he could find on warp drives in the scientific literature, which was not very much. Then he began to think about it for himself. After a few weeks, something occurred to him that everyone else seemed to have overlooked. Lentz put his idea on paper and discussed it with more experienced colleagues. A year later it was published in a physics journal .

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It quickly became clear that Lentz was not the only person dreaming about warp drives. Media outlets all over the world picked up the story , and a dozen journalists asked for interviews. A discussion on the online forum Reddit attracted 2,700 comments and 33,000 likes. One Internet user wrote, “Anyone else feel like they were born 300 years too soon?”

A Bubble in Space and Time

There is no doubt that the universe is still far too vast for humans to traverse. It takes more than four years for a beam of light to reach Earth’s nearest star Proxima Centauri. Even with the best available propulsion systems, it would take tens of thousands of years for a human to get there. One can always dream about establishing colonies in other star systems, but it is not a journey anyone is likely to undertake.

But perhaps one day it might be possible to reduce the travel time. There are many ideas about how to do that, from laser-accelerated solar sails to nuclear propulsion. But even with the aid of these technologies, you would not get too far in a human lifetime. The galaxy really is open only to those who travel as fast as light—or faster.

NASA artist’s 1998 rendition of warp drive travel. The ring around the spacecraft generates a negative-energy field. From today’s perspective, the negative-energy field would no longer be necessary. Credit:  NASA; Digital art by Les Bossinas (Cortez III Service Corp)

For that very reason, imaginative physicists have long been pondering the ultimate propulsion system: a bubble in space and time in which a spaceship could dash from sun to sun, just like the USS Enterprise did. This is research at the fringe of science: not necessarily wrong but spiced with a large pinch of optimism.

The fact that scientists are dealing with the idea at all today is thanks to a 1994 paper by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre. At the time, Alcubierre was not just a passionate Star Trek devotee. In his doctoral thesis at the University of Wales College Cardiff (now Cardiff University), Alcubierre also worked on the theory of relativity. Strictly speaking, the theory states that nothing can travel faster than light. But by applying a little creativity, Alcubierre identified an apparent loophole.

For physicists, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity consists of two parts: The “special” theory of relativity, which dates from 1905, deals with the uniform motion of fast-as-light objects. Ten years later Einstein generalized these ideas for accelerating bodies. According to “general” relativity, the three spatial dimensions we are familiar with (up-down, left-right, front-back) are inseparable from time. Every mass deforms this spacetime.

According to Albert Einstein’s epic discovery, we live in four-dimensional “spacetime.” Spacetime is not static. Like a tablecloth, it is deformed by massive objects. Everything that moves across the tablecloth (or through spacetime) can accelerate only up to the speed limit set by light. The tablecloth itself, on the other hand, can be deformed at any speed, as the universe itself shows in some situations.

At the instant of the big bang, for example, the original spacetime structure presumably expanded for a split second and did so much faster than any ray of light could travel. Even today, the expansion continues to drive extremely distant galaxies away at speeds faster than light, which means their light can no longer reach us.

Based on his discovery, Alcubierre surmised that it would only be a small step to a warp drive. If spacetime were contracted in front of a spaceship and expanded behind it to compensate, it would be possible to travel to one’s destination at a speed faster than light. The ship would remain encapsulated in a bubble, and the crew would not sense the magnitude of the interstellar journey. In a 2017 lecture, Alcubierre compared it to being on a passenger conveyor belt at the airport: “You can imagine that the floor behind you is being created out of nothing and in front of you it is being destroyed, so you move along.”

But formulating this idea in the language of general relativity immediately gives rise to major practical problems. First, to deform spacetime so radically, you would need to cram a huge mass into a bubble bounded by a wall thinner than an atomic nucleus. Then you would need two forms of matter to maintain the bubble. The gravity of ordinary mass would cause the space at the front of the bubble to contract, moving the whole structure forward. But at the same time, the space at the back of the bubble would need to expand like rising bread dough. To make that expansion happen, according to Alcubierre, you would need some form of negative energy radiating a kind of antigravity.

The Curse of Negative Energy

For most physicists, that was the end of the thought experiment. Energy—which according to Einstein’s formula E = mc2 is equivalent to unconstrained mass—seems like it must, by definition, be positive. But according to quantum theory, it can indeed have a negative value. This seems to occur only in rare special cases, however—on a tiny scale. In the so-called Casimir effect , for example, the quantities involved are so minuscule that any technological application seems absurd.

Alcubierre, now a professor of physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, concedes this point. In terms of a potential technology, warp drives “are greatly lacking,” he and one of his colleagues wrote in a recent preprint paper . He has now turned his attention to known phenomena, such as black holes. The warp drive concept, however, retains its fascination, especially for Trekkies—and for a few gravitational physicists, who occasionally publish variations on the idea.

Some of these papers have shown how to reduce the bubble’s mass requirements so that the total mass needed to deform spacetime would be less than that of our sun. But no one was able to get around the problem of negative energy—until Lentz took it up during the lockdown in Göttingen. In his enforced isolation, Lentz found a way to construct a warp bubble using only positive energy. In so doing, he may have overcome the greatest objection to warp drives.

What made it possible was a special feature of the geometry of spacetime that Lentz discovered buried in the general theory of relativity—more precisely, in Einstein’s field equations. These equations can calculate how a particular distribution of matter and energy deforms spacetime. Researchers can also use them, as Alcubierre did, to determine the mass and energy needed to produce a specific curvature of space.

Dealing with a dynamic, four-dimensional structure like spacetime is extremely complicated, however. Writing out Einstein’s formulas in full produces a jumble of nested differential equations with thousands of terms. Depending on the assumptions you make about a particular physical situation, you only take some of those terms into account. For theorists, it is an almost limitless playground.

Principle of the Alcubierre drive: Spacetime contracts at the front of the bubble (right), corresponding to a warp in spacetime. Behind the bubble (left), new space is created out of nothing, which is equivalent to stretching spacetime. Credit: AllenMcC Wikimedia  (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Lentz specifically examined the assumptions leading to the negative energy requirements in Alcubierre’s work. Like his colleague, Lentz began by analyzing spacetime, modeling the multidimensional substance as a stack of very thin layers. He found that Alcubierre had only considered comparatively simple “linear” relationships between the equations for shifting one layer onto the next. At this point, choosing more complex “hyperbolic” relations, which typically express rapidly changing quantities, results in a different warp bubble than the one obtained by Alcubierre. It still requires enormous amounts of mass and energy but, according to Lentz’s calculations, only positive amounts. “I was very surprised that no one had tried this before me,” Lentz says.

Lentz’s bubble looks different from the one Alcubierre worked out in 1994. It consists of diamond-shaped regions of altered spacetime that resemble a flock of birds. Creating such a spacetime geometry in reality would involve a complicated layering of rings and disks, not made of solid material but of an extremely dense fluid of charged particles, similar to the substance found in the interior of neutron stars, Lentz says.

That means near-light-speed travel is still very, very far away from applied technology. But now that no exotic negative energy densities are needed—at least according to Lentz’s latest work—the theoretical games are within the realm of established physics. Alcubierre describes Lentz’s paper as a “very important development.” Francisco Lobo, a researcher at the University of Lisbon and a colleague of Alcubierre’s, who has published a textbook on warp drives, cannot find any obvious errors either. “If correct, this has the potential of opening up new interest and novel avenues of research in warp drive physics,” he says.

Lentz’s idea has even aroused interest among researchers outside the small community of warp drive enthusiasts, including Lavinia Heisenberg, a professor of cosmology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Heisenberg and her student Shaun Fell found Lentz’s paper so exciting that they built on it by designing their own positive-energy warp bubbles that would require as little as a thousandth of the mass of our sun.

“The whole thing is much less mysterious than most people assume,” says Alexey Bobrick , an astrophysicist at Lund University in Sweden. Collaborating with New York City–based entrepreneur Gianni Martire, Bobrick came up with some promising solutions to Einstein’s field equations in 2020. According to Bobrick, all that is needed for a warp bubble is an appropriately shaped shell made of dense material that bends spacetime in its immediate vicinity while the universe through which the bubble moves and the space within the shell remain comparatively undisturbed.

Time Goes by So Slowly

“Comparatively” is the key. Alcubierre and later warp architects assumed an abrupt transition between the contorted spacetime in the wall of the bubble and the smooth interior and exterior. But Bobrick and Martire found this “truncation” of the gravitational field to be the reason why large amounts of negative energy are required to stabilize the contortion of space and time.

Abandoning the cartoonish image of a soap bubble, however, makes it possible to build warp drives based on ordinary matter, they claim. The gravitational field would not simply disappear when one moved away from the wall of the shell. Instead it would gradually decay. Spacetime would therefore also be curved inside the bubble. To travelers in a spaceship right in the middle of the bubble, this phenomenon would be most obvious in the passage of time: their watches would go slower than in the rest of space because, according to the theory of relativity, time is affected by gravity.

The slower passage of time on a spaceship might be something interstellar travelers appreciate. Still, Bobrick and Martire describe other obstacles. So far, they argue, there is no known way to actually accelerate a warp bubble. All previous ideas about the subject simply assume that the curvature of spacetime is already moving at high speed.

A beam of light travels 299,000 kilometers per second. According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, this is a physical constant. The speed of light is the maximum speed any particle may reach, and a particle can only do so if it has no mass. Consequently, today’s physics offers no possibility of accelerating objects beyond the speed of light. On closer inspection, however, this limit only applies within the four-dimensional spacetime comprising the universe. Outside of that, even greater speeds appear to be possible.

“None of the physically conceivable warp drives can accelerate to speeds faster than light,” Bobrick says. That is because you would require matter capable of being ejected at speeds faster than light—but no known particles can travel that fast. Furthermore, the bubble could not be controlled by occupants of the spaceship itself because they would lose contact with the outside world, owing to the extremely strong curvature of space around them.

Lentz sees these objections as a problem, too, but he believes a solution can be found. Bobrick, meanwhile, points out that it is also possible to travel to distant stars at a third or half the speed of light, especially if time passes more slowly for the people in the warp bubble. Just do not think about the fact that all your relatives left behind on Earth will probably have died of old age before you get back. “But at least the idea is no longer completely crazy,” Bobrick says.

From Theory to Practice

There is still some debate about whether warp bubbles really can do without negative energy. Recently, three theoreticians suggested that this claim was only true for observers moving next to the bubble. Plus, not everything that seems possible according to the theory of relativity actually exists—or is technologically feasible. For example, Einstein’s field equations can also be used to justify “white” holes (the antithesis of their black hole counterparts), Einstein-Rosen bridges (frequently called wormholes) and other exotic alterations in spacetime that no one has ever observed. That could be because laws of nature, as yet unknown, preclude such phenomena.

Some researchers therefore caution against going overboard with the fantasies. Space propulsion expert Martin Tajmar of the Technical University of Dresden, for example, sees no practical relevance for the current work on warp drives. The huge masses involved simply exceed anything that can be tested on Earth, he says.

Most veteran warp drive researchers would undoubtedly agree. They see their work less as preparation for real-world experiments and more as a way of exploring the limits of relativity. In this endeavor, even speculative “thought experiments” are useful, Lobo says.

Lentz, on the other hand, is actively working toward a practical application of his idea. After his research in Göttingen, he took a job at an IT company. But in his spare time, he still thinks about how to accelerate a bend in spacetime to speeds faster than light and how to reduce the energy required to do so.

Lentz also advocates looking closely at the surroundings of neutron stars. It could be that these ultracompact stellar remnants eject bubbles like those that he describes in his paper. “As long as one doesn’t let personal biases get in the way and accepts what evidence tells you, it’s a field of research that is as worthy of being pursued as any other,” he says.

Jean-Luc Picard would probably see it similarly. “Things are only impossible until they are not,” the character noted in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation . But that’s also easier to say when you live 300 years in the future.

This article originally appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission

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Comment and Physics

How star trek’s warp drives touch on one of physics' biggest mysteries.

Field notes from space-time | Star Trek’s light speed engines may not be possible in our universe, but we are learning more about the particles that fuel them

By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

12 June 2019

Paramount Pictures/RGA

EVERY year, I attend the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, and every year, I get asked whether warp speed will ever be possible. In the Star Trek universe, humanoid species zoom around the galaxy at speeds faster than light, using warp engines fuelled by antimatter. Travelling faster than the speed of light is unlikely, but antimatter is real. Every particle has an antimatter partner that we call an antiparticle.

So, as a particle physicist, what I really want to be asked about isn’t the likelihood of travelling long distances quickly, but instead about the particle type that underlies this fictional technology. Star Trek ‘s futuristic antimatter engine touches on one of the great unsolved mysteries in particle physics: where is all of the antimatter anyway?

The best known type of antimatter is the positron, which is the antielectron. The positron has the same mass as an electron, but the opposite electrical charge. When matter collides with its antimatter partner, they annihilate each other . This isn’t simply a matter of theory: we have seen antimatter in the lab, and not just with the electron and its partner.

Positrons can be made through radioactive decay. They are also created in a pair with electrons when extremely energetic photons, better known as gamma rays, interact with atomic nuclei. Antiprotons have also been produced, and, in 1995, scientists were finally able to directly combine positrons and antiprotons to create antihydrogen.

Although antimatter is real, it is rather difficult to make in the lab. Since matter and antimatter annihilate one another on contact, one has to wonder why we are here at all. If they are each other’s complete opposites, one might expect the same amount of matter and antimatter to have been produced in the big bang, quickly leading to annihilation and an empty universe. Instead, we live in a highly asymmetric version of the universe, where the negatively charged electron is a fundamental particle that forms a core part of all atoms, hovering in their orbitals. Why did nature use only half of the building blocks available to it?

“ Star Trek ‘s futuristic antimatter engine touches on one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of particle physics”

Efforts to make sense of this asymmetry are under way in both theoretical and experimental physics. Many theorists believe that the lopsided bias towards matter is connected to violations of something called charge-parity symmetry, more commonly known among physicists as CP symmetry. This is a property that demands that all particles are interchangeable with their antiparticle when their spatial coordinates are flipped, a kind of mirror symmetry. Most observed particles obey CP symmetry, but it can be violated.

Though most famous for being the facility where the Higgs boson was first detected, the Large Hadron Collider is also home to experiments that are seeking to learn more about CP symmetry breaking.

The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment, for example, specifically focuses on b-physics. B-physics refers not to low-budget physics, something that our governments surely dream of, but instead to the physics of beauty quarks (sometimes referred to as bottom quarks).

Beauty quarks are just one of six flavours of subatomic quarks, which are the constituents of neutrons and protons. The other five varieties have equally delightful names: top, up, down, strange and charm. The fundamental “weak” nuclear force can cause quarks to change flavours, and it also causes the quarks to break CP symmetry. This gives us an important hint that CP symmetry violations are possible, leading theorists to consider matter-antimatter models that rely on it.

In addition to beauty quarks, LHCb can also study the properties of charm quarks. Excitingly, the experiment recently found the first evidence of CP violation among them. In order to achieve this result, LHCb looked at decays of D° mesons – short-lived particles made of a charm quark and an up antiquark.

This result is an exciting affirmation of a phenomenon that scientists had expected to find for decades, but had yet to produce in the lab. The discovery doesn’t radically change our perspective on physics yet because it matches theoretical predictions – and it certainly isn’t a warp engine. But it suggests that, under the right conditions, CP violation can occur. Perhaps those conditions existed during the big bang, producing the nearly antimatterless universe we see today.

• This column will appear monthly. Up next week: Graham Lawton
• particle physics

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The U.S.S. Enterprise , depicted here in the 2013 movie Star Trek: Into Darkness , relies on its warp drive to zip across the galaxy.

Inside the Quest for a Real ‘Star Trek’ Warp Drive

It may be a while before starship captains can race across the galaxy, but engineers and physicists have a few ideas for making it so.

Within the Star Trek universe, traveling across the galaxy is a breeze thanks to the famed warp drive . This fictional technology allows humans and other civilizations to zoom between star systems in days rather than centuries.

Such rapid travel times are impossible in the real world, because our best theory for the way the universe works, Einstein’s special relativity , says that nothing moves faster than the speed of light.

While current rocket propulsion systems are bound by this law, plenty of hopeful engineers and physicists are working on concepts that might bring us a step closer to Star Trek ’s vision of racing across the cosmos.

“Currently, even the most advanced ideas behind interstellar travel entail trip times of decades and centuries to even the closest stars, due to the restrictions of special relativity, and our abilities—or lack of—to travel at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light,” says Richard Obousy , director and founder of Icarus Interstellar, a nonprofit dedicated to making progress toward interstellar flight.

“Being able to build starships with the capability to travel faster than the speed of light would open the galaxy for exploration and possible colonization by humans.”

Nuclear Engines

Distances in space are so vast that astronomers usually measure them in light-years, the distance light can travel in a year’s time. A single light-year equals about six trillion miles.

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The closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is 4.23 light-years away, so even traveling at the speed of light, a one-way voyage there would take 4.23 years. That may seem pokey, but it would be a huge improvement over current technology.

Right now, the fastest spacecraft headed away from Earth is Voyager 1, which is puttering along at about 38,600 miles an hour. At that rate, it would take more than 70,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri.

Still, various teams have proposed ways to at least reach a fraction of light speed and hasten our exploration of interstellar space.

Back in 1958, researchers at San Diego-based defense contractor General Atomics came up with Project Orion , which involved a spacecraft driven essentially by nuclear bombs. A controlled series of nuclear explosions would propel the ship at high speeds, rapidly carrying a hundred tons of cargo and eight astronauts to places like Mars and even the outer solar system.

Faster propulsion technology would allow us to visit our galactic neighbors, like this satellite of the Milky Way known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Blueprints were also created showing how to adapt the technology for interstellar travel. However, all experimentation with this so-called nuclear-pulse propulsion came to a halt with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

Announced earlier this year, the ambitious Breakthrough StarShot initiative represents a less explosive effort to undertake an interstellar mission. Run by a conglomerate of billionaires and big thinkers, including famed physicist Stephen Hawking, the project’s goal is to send a flotilla of postage stamp-size spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, a triple star system that’s 4.3 light-years away. (See “Is the New $100 Million ‘Starshot’ for Real?” )

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The tiny spacecraft would be attached to a thin light sail, a piece of technology that would allow mission managers to propel the probes with lasers shining from Earth’s orbit. The lasers would accelerate the craft to 20 percent the speed of light, and the probes would arrive at their destination in roughly 20 years.

While many of the tiny travelers may never make it to Alpha Centauri, a few of them should survive and may even fly past any planets orbiting the far-off stars , beaming back data about these alien worlds.

“I’m incredibly excited to see private money being used to explore breakthrough ideas that may advance the field of interstellar flight,” Obousy says.

“I hope to see more like this in the future. While there are engineering challenges associated with the Starshot Initiative, none appear insurmountable.”

Warping Reality

Of course, the real breakthrough would be a true warp drive, which requires technology to catch up with our theoretical designs.

In 1994, Trek fans got a glimmer of hope from Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, who came up with a radical theory of hyper-fast space propulsion that doesn't break Einstein’s special relativity.

Instead of accelerating the spacecraft itself to light speed, why not bend, or warp, the fabric of space and time around the ship itself? Alcubierre presented calculations that produce a bubble in space-time in which one end is expanding and the other is contracting. A spaceship could, in theory, be carried along with the warp bubble and accelerated to velocities up to 10 times the speed of light.

While that sounds simple on paper, to make it work, we may need to harness exotic forms of matter, like antimatter, that for now are poorly understood. In addition, numerous unsolved issues plague the creation and control of a warp bubble, Obousy says.

“One such problem, for example, is the idea of causal disconnection, which implies that any spacecraft sitting within the bubble would not be able to ‘communicate’ with the exterior of the bubble, suggesting that a ship would not be able to ‘turn off’ the bubble once inside of it,” he notes.

As is often the case in space travel, developing true interstellar travel like what we see in Star Trek will require significant changes in the cost and energy requirements.

“Currently, the amount of energy and money required to entertain the notion of manned interstellar travel is measured in large fractions of global output—specifically, tens of trillions of dollars, and energy measured on the scale of what many large countries use annually,” he says.

Still, he adds, “the finest minds of the 15th century could not have predicted the technological wonders of the 21st century. Similarly, who are we to say what technology the humans of the 27th century will have mastered.”

Andrew Fazekas, the Night Sky Guy, is the author of Star Trek: The Official Guide to Our Universe and host of NG Live! " Mankind to Mars " presentations. Follow him on Twitter , Facebook , and his website .

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Is Star Trek’s Warp Drive Possible?

The concept of the warp drive is currently at odds with everything we know to be true about physics.

Central to science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, is the ability to travel the galaxy at speeds far faster than light via a fictional technology called a “ warp drive .” What is that, and will we ever have one ?

No Warp Drive for You

A provisional answer is “no.” According to the accepted laws of science, nothing can travel faster than light . Even though light is fast enough to circle the Earth over seven times in a single second, space is very large. It takes eight minutes for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth, and it would take four years for light from our Sun to reach the nearest star ( Proxima Centauri ). Most stars—and hence, most planets—are much more distant, so travel time would be correspondingly longer. The distances are so vast that interstellar travel would take lifetimes.

That makes for a boring sci-fi plot, so the creators of Star Trek invented a convenient, but imaginary, technology. According to Star Trek canon, the warp drive works by creating a “warp bubble” around the spaceship, inside of which space is literally warped. In front of the spaceship, space is compressed, while behind the vessel, it is expanded. In this way, a spaceship never travels faster than light; it merely passes through a shorter distance. For example, if a warp drive could shrink the distance to Proxima Centauri by 1/1,461 times the normal length, it could travel there in a single day.

A Massive Problem

Is this realistic? Maybe. To begin with, our best modern understanding of space comes from Einstein’s theory of general relativity . In this theory, gravity is understood not as a force as we typically imagine it, but rather as a bending of space. So, if space can be bent or distorted in some way, then a warp drive could be within the realm of accepted science.

However, this is where things get tricky. Within the theory of relativity, the quantity that bends space is mass (or, equivalently, energy). In familiar and simple terms, the enormous mass of the Earth bends space in its vicinity. This distortion results in the phenomenon we know of as gravity.

While the bending of space by matter is a fact, it doesn’t help our warp drive very much. The bending of space near the surface of the Earth is relatively modest. After all, the distortion doesn’t appreciably shorten the distance between the Earth and the Sun, let alone the nearest star. Thus, for a warp drive to be a useful propulsion technology, a spaceship might have to carry with it a mass much larger than a planet — or even larger than a star. This extra mass would make the craft too difficult to move, meaning that the idea just isn’t tenable.

Negativity about Negative Energy

Does this completely invalidate the idea of a warp drive? Not quite. The equations governing special relativity are rich and complex and there are many solutions. In 1994, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre found a solution that distorted space in a way very similar to that originally envisioned by the creators of Star Trek . Under exactly the right conditions, it is possible to expand space behind an object and compress it in front.

There is a problem, though. To accomplish this distortion, researchers would have to use negative energy—that is, reduce the energy of empty space to below zero. According to Einstein, a warp drive requires an impossible premise. As an analogy, it’s possible that some mathematical calculation involving a person’s height might have a solution that is negative. But what would it mean for a person to have a negative height? It doesn’t make physical sense.

Therefore, while scientists try to find loopholes in the conditions required for Alcubierre’s solution, most think that a warp drive will not be created this way; negative energy is a mathematical artifact and not a physical phenomenon.

Is a Warp Drive Possible or Not?

Altogether, our current understanding of the laws of nature neither allows for faster-than-light travel nor an Alcubierre-like solution to warping space. However, those who dream of traveling the stars should not give up. Scientists do not have a full understanding of the laws of nature. Indeed, my colleagues and I spend our days looking for new phenomena—things that have never been seen before.

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In speculative science, it is always foolhardy to say that something is impossible. In 1850, if you asked the best scientists of the day if it would be possible to speak in Europe and have someone in America hear you, or if it would be possible to look inside a person’s body, they would have told you “no.” Yet a scant half century later, the invention of radio and discovery of X-rays would have proved them wrong.

That is what it will take for a warp drive to be a reality. Some bright soul is going to have a new idea, something quite different from our current understanding of physics. Then, maybe—just maybe—we will be able to boldly go where no one has gone before.

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Star Trek’s Warp Drive Technology, Explained

In this science fiction universe, anything is possible. Let's explore the technicalities of breaking the speed of light.

The universe created by the wonderful mind of Gene Roddenberry back in the late 1960s contains a myriad of wacky and wonderful things, from fabulous diverse alien races , to a dizzying array of futuristic technology. One such incredible piece of tech sits at the very heart of Star Trek. Without it, there wouldn’t be much of a show at all, and those such as Kirk and Picard would be extremely limited in exploring the miraculously empty Milky Way. The technology, of course, is the Warp Drive, and acts as an important cornerstone within the vast Star Trek history.

The Warp Drive's Role In The Star Trek Franchise

The Warp Drive is fundamental for two distinct reasons. One is that it acts as an important marker for First Contact between the Federation (or the Vulcans before the Federation was formed) and the developing culture . The reason behind this is rather simple: if a species is able to traverse the universe more easily, they will eventually run into alien species, so they may as well introduce themselves. It also acts as a significant marker for a culture being advanced enough to handle the wealth of technology and information shareable by the federation, without it skewing the culture's natural evolution.

RELATED: How Star Trek: The Next Generation Explored Blindness & Accessibility With Geordi LaForge

The second reason behind the importance of the warp drive even simpler: space is really, really big. Traversing it even with warp drive technology can take weeks to months — and that’s just from traveling between two fairly close star systems. The crew of the USS Voyager understand this all too well. Captain Kathryn Janeway 's journey to bring her crew home from the Delta Quadrant took an estimated 70 years, not including pit stops and detours along the way. The writers of Star Trek needed a solution so that each episode was not just a slow moving jaunt through space twiddling their thumbs in the holodeck , and to close the vast distances between star systems, and thus Warp Drive (or Hyperdrive as it was classed in the pilot episode) was born. Audiences may hear the term frequently, but how exactly does it work?

The Technology Behind Fictional Space Travel

Despite warp drive being purely fictional, a lot of thought had been put into explaining and exploring the science as to how it might work. Star Trek drew on various examples of previously written science fiction to create its own fusion of how this intergalactic space travel might work, and it has only been expanded over the years. The first example of such travel using such speeds was first mentioned in the 1915 - 1921 novel Skylark of Space , so the idea had been around for a while. The biggest problem with this kind of space traversal is that the speed in which an object would have to go to travel such distances would have to be faster than light. Overlooking this impossibility sewn by Einstein's theory of relativity, warp travel works by warping space-time like the folds in cloth, bending reality somewhat to allow for travel at such speeds.

To do this requires an immense amount of power. Of course, it would make sense that for a futuristic civilization they would also have a futuristic power source. In Star Trek, the main fuel is created by burning both matter (in this case deuterium, a type of hydrogen gas) and antimatter in a fusion reactor, controlled carefully through the mediation of dilithium crystals. This creates a warp bubble, or field, around the vessel, which would distorts the local space-time continuum and allows for travel that would not normally be permitted by the laws of physics.

These speeds are measured in warp factors, and go all the way up to warp 9.99. It is possible to go faster, as discovered by renegade pilot Tom Paris in the Voyager series , but speeds this great started to bend reality a little too much, and results in being absolutely everywhere all at once. As a result, it is highly unstable and not a plausible method of transportation. Warp factors in the Original Series were defined as the number cubed and then multiplied by the speed of light; for example, Warp 4 is defined as 64 times the speed of light. Things changed, however, as the writers introduced more and more into the universe. During The Next Generation, the specifics behind warp got a little relaxed, and the writers made these distances work for whatever was best for storytelling.

Warp drive technology is at the very heart of Star Trek , and is arguably one of the most important pillars for its storytelling. Not only is it fundamental to almost every single episode, as the necessary means their crew rely on more than anything else to simply get around, but there have been multiple entire episodes exploring the possibilities and problems surrounding it — including, in Discovery , what happens when it is severely limited. It is integral to the series, and will likely remain so throughout the franchise.

MORE: Star Trek: Deep Space 9's Most Heart Wrenching Moment

What Is Star Trek: Discovery's Spore Drive and How Does It Work?

The spore drive on Star Trek: Discovery is the universe's most fantastical technology that works in the show but should never replace warp engines.

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How does the spore drive work in star trek, why the uss discovery is the only starfleet ship with a spore drive, is the spore drive faster than warp speed, why star trek should probably stop using the spore drive.

With Season 5, Star Trek: Discovery embarks on the final mission for its dynamic crew and one-of-a-kind starship. There are many things about this series that diverged from past series or films in the universe created by Gene Roddenberry six decades ago. How the spore drive that powers the USS Discovery works is perhaps the most fanciful concept in Star Trek . When piloted by Ripper the "space tardigrade," Lieutenant Paul Stamets or Kewijan empath Cleveland Booker, this organic propulsion system is one of the most powerful technologies in all science fiction and fantasy.Despite the universe's reputation for somewhat grounded science-fiction, the displacement-activated spore hub drive is squarely in the realm of fantasy. This is not new territory for Star Trek , however.

Vulcan mind-melds, the concept of "subspace" and Star Trek's ubiquitous transporters are all, to varying degrees, magical nonsense. What helps sell these far-out technologies to skeptical audiences is the (lovingly named) technobabble that accompanies them. Vulcans use innate psychic abilities to connect to another consciousness like file-sharing over wifi. Transporters break people down into atoms and beam them to another physical location, where they are reassembled just as they were. Subspace allows communications to travel faster than speed of light, as well as any number of anomalies that create workarounds to the immutable laws of physics. USS Discovery's spore drive is equally able to break the laws of physics and travel on a "mycelial network" that exists outside of regular spacetime .

'Bittersweet and Shocking': Star Trek: Discovery Star Addresses the Series Getting Canceled

Former Star Trek: Voyager producer Bryan Fuller was tapped to bring the universe back to television, and he co-created the series with Alex Kurtzman. He left early in pre-production, but many of the concepts he introduced remained, such as the controversial Klingon redesign . The spore drive was one such concept, which drew from the research and philosophy of real-world mycologist Paul Stamets. This is why Anthony Rapp's character has that name, after all.

Next to engineering, the USS Discovery has a room where Lieutenant Stamets grows the spores needed to power the drive. He created it with his friend Straal, and Starfleet "co-opted" the technology once the Klingon-Federation War broke out. It was Straal who figured out the spore drive needed a pilot with compatible DNA to pilot the ship. He used a creature which Michael Burnham called a "tardigrade." Eventually, Stamets injected himself with tardigrade DNA which made him the only person capable of successfully using the spore drive. Later, Cleveland Booker was also able to serve as a navigator because of his natural empathic abilities.

Through their connection to the spores, the navigator is able to pilot the ship using invisible connections on a galactic mycelial network. In Star Trek: Discovery this network is represented much like the Quantum Realm in the Marvel Cinematic Universe . Like the Avengers, the ship is able to travel through this lower dimension and emerge in real space anywhere. However, the network the ship can travel on is limited to the Milky Way galaxy. Put another way, the spore drive allows the USS Discovery to teleport anywhere in the galaxy in an instant.

Star Trek: Discovery's Mary Wiseman, Wilson Cruz and Blu del Barrio Hype Finale

Despite existing a decade before the time of Star Trek: The Original Series , the USS Discovery was a bleeding-edge scientific vessel before the war. Once the USS Glenn and Straal were killed in their accident, Lieutenant Stamets became the only person in the universe to understand how the spore drive worked. While he sent his designs to Starfleet, none of their scientists could get it to work. Once the ship time-traveled to the 32nd Century, Starfleet was able to build a working prototype, but it was destroyed when it was stolen by Booker in Season 4 .

Even if Starfleet's scientists and engineers were able to replicate the machinery that made the spore drive function, they still lacked a crucial element: a navigator. Without the tardigrade or a compatible human, the spore drive could only safely travel a few hundred kilometers. Stamets can only serve as the navigator because of the tardigrade DNA he injected into himself. Since the creatures are sentient, difficult to catch and the Federation is against genetic modification, no one else can use his method. Booker's natural empathic abilities allowed him to serve as navigator, but his gifts are unique to Kwejian, which was destroyed in Season 4 .

In the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 , Stamets is depressed because Starfleet has abandoned its efforts to recreate his technology. He wanted the spore drive to be his legacy. Instead, Starfleet and the Federation committed to a technology called the "pathway drive," an unknown method of faster-than-light travel that doesn't require dilithium crystals like warp engines. This means that the USS Discovery will be the only serviceable Starfleet vessel capable of traveling via the mycelial network, at least so long as Stamets or Booker are willing to serve as navigator.

How Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Connects to TNG's Biggest Open Mystery

While it's natural to compare the spore drive to Star Trek 's famous warp drive, the USS Discovery isn't traveling at speed when it jumps. In fact, it's closer to Star Wars ' hyperspace , a dimension that exists underneath spacetime. Yet, unlike the Millennium Falcon, the USS Discovery is able to enter and exist the mycelial network in mere seconds. Ships traveling through hyperspace still take time to get from one point to another. The USS Discovery's spore drive flies through the network far faster than warp drive, but it's a completely different method of travel .

Of all the sci-fi Star Trek inventions, warp drive is one of the more plausible ones. Einstein's Theory of General Relativity established that the speed of light is as fast as anything can go through space, but not how fast spacetime itself can go. Thus, while Starfleet vessels travel faster than light, they do it by slipping through a loophole in the laws of physics. Warp engines create a bubble that bends spacetime itself. The ships ride it like a wave and are able to go faster than Einstein's universal speed limit. However, with the spore drive, the USS Discovery is able to just pop out of reality and emerge at a different physical location in the galaxy.

While there are some actual scientific concepts behind both the spore and warp drives, the latter is far more sound . Physical travel via the mycelial network is as plausible as trying to use tree roots as a subway. Still, even though the math works for warp drive, there are countless other effects that would make traveling at those speeds unsurvivable. This is why bridge and engineering officers in Star Trek are always talking about "inertial dampers." Similarly, travel via the mycelial network is not without risk, specifically from "Hawking radiation." This theoretical energy somehow turned the crew of the USS Glenn inside out after a test jump in Season 1, Episode 3, "Context is for Kings."

Star Trek: Discovery Wasn't Originally Going to End With Season 5, Reveals EP

All science fiction requires some level of suspension of disbelief, and there are many technologies in Star Trek that are just as magical as the spore drive. Still, the concept was met with a lot of criticism from fans that goes beyond the typical reluctance to embrace new iterations of this universe. "Although physically implausible, warp drive isn't laughably ridiculous. The [spore] drive is, " scientist Steven Sazlberg wrote for Forbes . Of course, Star Trek is full of ridiculous concepts like Thomas Riker, Will Riker's "transporter clone. " The fantastical nature of the spore drive isn't why it should stay on the USS Discovery.

The USS Voyager-J was revealed to be the first ship set to test the new pathway drive, whatever it is. However, if the spore drive existed and worked in the 24th Century, the original USS Voyager could've used it to get back from the Delta Quadrant before Captain Janeway's coffee got cold . Everything about the USS Discovery was classified at the end of the show's second season, which explains why the spore drive was never even considered as a means to rescue the USS Voyager. They also lacked a compatible navigator. But more importantly, the spore drive would have made the seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager unnecessary.

The spore drive is a fun conceit for Star Trek: Discovery , but in truth it is simply too powerful a technology. The purpose of Starfleet is, after all, to explore the unknown. If every vessel in every Star Trek universe had a spore drive, at least 500 of its 900 total episodes wouldn't have happened. That Stamets is the only person truly able to crack this technology also speaks to the unique nature of humanity. Even with all of Starfleet's brilliance, there is an irreplaceable human contribution to make its most magical technology work.

Star Trek: Discovery debuts new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery

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Published Apr 16, 2024

WARP FIVE: Callum Keith Rennie on Discovery's Gruff First Officer

The Star Trek: Discovery actor talks Rayner's second chance, command style, and more!

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains story details and plot points for the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery.

Getty Images / StarTrek.com

Welcome to Warp Five, StarTrek.com's five question post-mortem with your favorite featured talent from the latest Star Trek episodes.

We're only three episodes into Star Trek: Discovery 's final season, but the stakes could not be higher. Not long after saving the entire galaxy from the Dark Matter Anomaly, Captain Michael Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery is handed a Red Directive mission from Dr. Kovich.

An 800-year-old science vessel was found on the edge of the Beta Quadrant. Aboard that ship is "something vital to the security of the Federation." They are to retrieve that artifact; however, they're not the only ones on the hunt for the artifact's ancient power. While chasing two criminals in the fifth season opener, " Red Directive ," Burnham comes across Captain Rayner and the U.S.S. Antares who is also hot on their trail and unwilling to let Moll and L'ak go as easily as the Discovery captain.

StarTrek.com had the opportunity to speak with actor Callum Keith Rennie on making first contact with Star Trek , demotions and second chances, his approach to Discovery 's newest distinguished yet gruff first officer, and more.

Point of First Contact

"Under the Twin Moons"

StarTrek.com

Like many others, Rennie was first introduced to the franchise with The Original Series in his youth.

"My first contact with Star Trek was watching it on TV with the original," remembers Rennie. "That's the one that I always reference. If it comes on, I watch it still. For me, I did see all of those other variations as they came out, but I held onto my Spock and my Jim Kirk."

For the Love of the Federation

"Red Directive"

In "Red Directive," as Burnham and Discovery is in hot pursuit of this season's main antagonists, Moll and L'ak, they soon learn that the Antares captain has been pursuing them for quite some time, and he refuses to let the slippery pair go each time they're within grasp.

When asked how big of a threat Moll and L'ak, as well as the Progenitor tech, pose to the Federation? Rennie teases that more will be revealed in time, "He has a history [with them] that will be explained later."

Speaking on the choices we've seen Rayner make in response to the two criminals, he shares, "That's Rayner's style of command. His is, 'We're to get those people; we're not to make concessions.' There's no other way outside of what he wants to do. His drive is to succeed; 'Pick a thing, I'll go do it.' That's what he knows how to do."

The distinction is clear; Rayner is a gruff, smart Starfleet captain who holds a clear line between commander and crew — he leads, they follow. His approach is, you get the job done and apologize later.

In an earlier discussion with StarTrek.com , executive producer and co-showrunner Michelle Paradise noted, "What's interesting about [Captain Rayner] is that he is going to be a bit of an antagonist, but not in a bad guy way. He's going to push Burnham, and we'll get to see new sides of Burnham and new growth in Burnham because of her interactions with him."

He has a storied track record of wartime success. In " Under the Twin Moons ," Federation president Rillak has to remind him that times have changed and they're no longer at war. However, the Antares captain sees threats everywhere, arguing that the Breens are in-fighting, the Orions are regrouping, and war is always a possibility. Not only that, Moll and L'ak now have a head start at retrieving a piece of technology with unbelievable power. He wants everyone to stop living in a "candy-colored holo fantasy."

The Fallout of Q'Mau

During Burnham and Rayner's first run-in, while Discovery 's captain sabotages the fleeing thieves' ship while on the hull of their ship, she tells the Antares captain to release its tractor beam hold as the enemy vessel's warp bubble is starting to collapse and her ship can't beam her out to safety while she's in the diminishing bubble. Then, while on Q'Mau together, Rayner continues to pursue Moll and L'ak on his own leaving Burnham and Cleveland 'Book' Booker behind; stating he doesn't have time for their "strategic advantages." Rayner plans to thwart their getaway by detonating the explosive charges hidden in a mountain's entrance, risking the potential of harming those living on the settlement of Q'Mau. Burnham reminds him they're on a non-Federation planet undertaking a highly sensitive and classified mission. When the detonation spirals into a fast-moving avalanche that would decimate the local inhabitants, Discovery requests Antares aid them in creating a shield to block the avalanche as there is not enough time to evacuate. However, Rayner holds off on letting Antares leave orbit at the risk of allowing the two thieves to evade them again.

When Rayner is held accountable for his actions as Federation Headquarters holds an inquiry to the events on Q'Mau. Despite his commendable 30 years of service to Starfleet, and his longstanding friendship with Admiral Vance, the Antares captain was forced to take an early retirement.

"Here's a guy who's been in command for 30 years," Rennie distills. "He goes in to help Burnham and her crew, and then the next thing you know, he's dismissed. So, all of that is bad. If he didn't show up to participate in any of that, he would still just be running his own crew and doing his own thing. He'd be happy on the Antares until the end of time. But he went to help, he made a decision that caused a problem, and then he was fired, sent out to pasture, and he has to make a decision to go, 'Am I done or am I not done?'"

Second Chances and Second Contacts

"Jinaal"

Valuing Rayner's aid he provided her crew while she was on Lyrek, Captain Burnham tells Rayner she'd like for him to be part of her crew — her first officer position has opened up — and she knows he's not ready to end his Starfleet career here. After all, no one understands the value of a second chance more than Burnham herself.

Reflecting on the opportunity presented to his character Rayner, Rennie notes, "He wants to try to be a better person. He's looking at his stuff going, acknowledging at times that he's been too impulsive and doing the the thing that he shouldn't have done, and but doing it anyway."

On his second chance, Rennie adds, "Does he want to be retired or does he still want to be part of the Federation and Starfleet? And he makes that choice, believing, 'What's the worst that can happen? They'll fire me again.'"

An important component of modern Star Trek has been to show the many facets of Starfleet and the Federation. It's not a monolithic institution incapable of faults.

"You do the best job you can at the given moment, and sometimes that works out and sometimes that doesn't," reflects Rennie. "You have to be, 'Well, let's take that risk.' From a commander standpoint, nothing's infallible. There's certain missions that only certain people will be assigned to because of their style. He's the man for the job," before teasing, "You'll soon discover why he's a little harsh at times."

In " Jinaal ," while Burnham heads to the surface of Trill to unlock their latest crew, Rayner is tasked with getting to know the senior crew better. While his first impression wasn't great, he now has the opportunity to make a second first impression. Unfortunately for him, his second contact isn't off to a great start when he offers the crew 20 words to provide him insight into them.

It's not going to be an overnight scenario for Rayner to change his ways. "He doesn't want to participate with the Discovery crew the way Burnham wants him to be a team player," he explains. "He's not in that space yet. He's not good at, 'Let's all be friends.' It's not his style."

Joining the Discovery Family

Rennie's experience joining a series in its final season mirrors Rayner's experience joining a tight-knit crew.

"Coming into a show, you're a new kid in school, you don't know who you're going to be friends with," states Rennie. "You don't know if you're going to get along with anybody. Much like Rayner is there to do his work, I'm there to do my work. But, my [personal] experience was fun. Episode to episode, time spent with everyone, you warm up. There's a warmth that just grows as you move along [with Sonequa Martin-Green and this cast], and you've become part of something."

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Christine Dinh (she/her) is the managing editor for StarTrek.com. She’s traded the Multiverse for helming this Federation Starship.

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.

Displacement-activated spore hub drive

• View history

The displacement-activated spore hub drive , commonly shortened to spore drive or s-drive , was an organic propulsion system the Federation experimented with during the 2240s and 2250s . The technology used mycelium spores harvested from Prototaxites stellaviatori to "jump" or "leap" across the mycelial network . During such jumps, the ships were not in normal space but in the mycelial plane . ( DIS : " Context Is for Kings ", " Choose Your Pain ")

• 1 Origins and concept
• 2 Program history
• 3 Technical details
• 4.1 See also
• 4.2 Background information
• 4.3 Apocrypha
• 4.4 External link

Origins and concept [ ]

P. stellaviatori mycelium spores, key to the drive technology

The spore drive was based on the ideas of two colleagues and friends, Paul Stamets and Straal , who had been working on the concept since 2244 . They were eager to get to the "veins and muscles" that held the galaxy together.

Their research was based on the insight that at a quantum level , there was no difference between biology or physics , and specifically that spores were not only the progenitors of panspermia , but also the building blocks of energy across the universe . This allowed Stamets and Straal to approach physics as biology. As such, the equations involved were reminiscent of both quantum astrophysics and biochemistry . ( DIS : " Context Is for Kings ")

Program history [ ]

The USS Discovery helm with spore drive activation control

Initially confined to a lab, following the outbreak of war with the Klingons , Starfleet co-opted the research for military applications, much to the displeasure of Stamets. The two scientists were split up and given two different teams on different vessels – the USS Discovery and the USS Glenn – so, they could work twice as fast. The Discovery also contained a large cultivation bay .

By late 2256 , six months after the start of the war, both ships were conducting " black alert " maneuvers, in which they made jumps across the mycelial network. These jumps were associated with the ship's walls becoming damp. Containment of the spores was important to prevent accidents.

Key to the research was to increase the interval, which was expressed in Speirin , higher Speirins being associated with large displacement. Jumping was probabilistic, meaning that the longer the jump, the more possible outcomes there were. The two ships lacked the processing power to make the requisite number of calculations, and so long jumps resulted in navigational instability. Some six months after the start of the war, the Discovery had reached Speirin 12, and leaps measured in the hundreds of kilometers . This was considered a poor result by Discovery captain Gabriel Lorca . ( DIS : " Context Is for Kings ")

However, its sister ship Glenn made a breakthrough and achieved Speirin 240. The fact that they did not grow their own spores somehow resulted in the acquisition of " Ripper ", an alien creature resembling an Earth tardigrade that lived in some kind of symbiosis with the spores and was capable of communicating with them, as well as utilizing the mycelial network. These abilities resulted in its function as a sort of "navigator" for the Glenn . Emboldened by the breakthrough, Straal reported that he was going to attempt Speirin 900, even though Stamets was concerned about the feasibility and safety of such a massive displacement. ( DIS : " Context Is for Kings ", " The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry ")

The Glenn managed to travel back and forth into the Beta Quadrant , a ninety light year jump, in 1.3 seconds . However, soon after, the crew of the Glenn hit a Hawking radiation firewall while exiting the mycelial plane, causing the death of its crew. ( DIS : " Context Is for Kings ", " The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry ")

The Glenn was later scuttled, though Ripper was beamed to Discovery and secured within that ship's own spore drive assembly. ( DIS : " Context Is for Kings ", " The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry ")

A demonstration of what was possible with the technology at this point in the war included putting someone in a test chamber with spores and allowing them to see where the spores had been and were going to. The subject quickly cycled through a number of planetary destinations. ( DIS : " Context Is for Kings ")

After the Discovery 's first successful jump using the tardigrade, Stamets transmitted the drive schematics to Starfleet. Production of the drive was begun at a classified Starfleet facility in Jefferson , Iowa on Earth . All Federation ships, starbases , and colonies were placed on alert to search for more tardigrades. ( DIS : " Choose Your Pain ")

It was possible to use the spore drive even while a ship was traveling at warp speed . The Discovery used this technique to return to the planet Pahvo , going from warp five to a complete stop in the process. ( DIS : " Into the Forest I Go ")

Following the conclusion of the war in 2257 , Starfleet decommissioned the drive until a non-Human interface could be developed. In order to investigate one of the red bursts , Captain Christopher Pike authorized the use of the drive to travel 51,450 light years to the planet Terralysium , believing the crisis worthy of special dispensation. At the same time, Ensign Sylvia Tilly began working on the possibility of creating a coherent resonator to interact with the spores as a replacement, dark matter -powered navigational interface. ( DIS : " New Eden ")

After Discovery was reported destroyed in a battle with an armada of ships controlled by Control , Lieutenant Spock recommended to Starfleet that all remaining officers with knowledge of these events should be ordered never to speak of Discovery or its spore drive, under penalty of treason . ( DIS : " Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2 ")

In the databases of Starfleet in the 32nd century , the Discovery was reported as destroyed as in 2258 ; however, there was no mention of the spore drive. ( DIS : " Die Trying ")

The refitted Discovery about to make a spore jump

In 3189 , during the refitting of the Discovery , a new and improved spore drive interface was installed. Instead of mechanically connecting to the pilot via cybernetic shunts , the pilot merely had to rest their hands on nanogel control pads, with the gel acting as a quantum transducer . The ship's nacelles would have to be attached before the drive could be activated. ( DIS : " Scavengers ", " Unification III ")

The spore drive's new form: An easily moved module.

A second-generation spore drive was developed and a prototype able to be quickly and easily installed into any ship was built. It still required a compatible pilot. ( DIS : " ...But to Connect ")

It was the belief of Federation President Laira Rillak that spore drive technology was the closest the Federation have come to ending its dilithium dependence. After the only functional new prototype was stolen by Cleveland Booker and Dr. Ruon Tarka , she feared that if word of its theft spread it would put everything in jeopardy. ( DIS : " All In ")

During the mission to make first contact with Species 10-C , Discovery 's spore drive was burned out while escaping from a 10-C orb. Stamets predicted this outcome beforehand and warned that they would need a drydock to fix it, but the crew were left with no other choice. This left the Discovery stranded decades away from Federation space at warp speed, but the 10-C used the DMA wormhole to return the Discovery to Earth after the successful negotiations. ( DIS : " Coming Home ")

Technical details [ ]

Spore drive maneuvers were signified by the ship going to black alert . ( DIS : " Context Is for Kings ")

The reaction cube , in which the spores were injected, was a key part of the drive's operation. One possible density in the chamber was 68%. Another factor in spore drive was spore germination rate . ( DIS : " Choose Your Pain ", " The Wolf Inside ")

Excess energy cavitation was part of the initiation process of the spore drive. ( DIS : " The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry ")

A specific spore drive deactivation sequence was needed. Failing to follow the sequence could cause the induction coil to become saturated. ( DIS : " Choose Your Pain ")

All personnel working around the spore drive were inoculated . ( DIS : " Point of Light ")

A level 3 diagnostic was run on the entire spore drive every ten hours. ( DIS : " If Memory Serves ")

Appendices [ ]

See also [ ].

• Super-mycelial reactor

Background information [ ]

The spore drive was first identified as such on a monitor near the end of " Context Is for Kings ", Lorca giving its full name in " The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry ". Prior to the latter episode, StarTrek.com referred to it as the "organic-propulsion system". [1]

The technology was conceived during Bryan Fuller 's time on the show, based on his interest in the work of Paul Stamets , the real-life mycologist Trek 's Stamets was named after. ( AT : " Context Is for Kings ")

One real-world scientist published an opinion piece criticizing the story line and technology. [2]

Some of the drive's properties, such as its high speed, dependence on a preexisting network and the need for an organic pilot, make it similar to the slipstream drive from Andromeda , a TV series based on concepts by Gene Roddenberry . The animation used in " What's Past Is Prologue " is also not unlike the one in Andromeda .

According to a fact sheet shown at a mirror universe exhibition running concurrent with San Diego Comic Con 2018, the ISS Discovery had a spore drive, which translated to approximately warp factor 1,431. [3]

The Discovery version of the Star Trek Universe animation, introduced in DIS : " Red Directive ", begins with the USS Discovery arriving via spore jump.

Apocrypha [ ]

In Star Trek Online , it is revealed that the Elachi have their own version of the spore drive that is far superior to the one used by the Glenn and Discovery . It is possible that this enhanced spore drive is what first caught the attention of the Iconian civilization and led to their becoming a servitor species.

External link [ ]

Displacement-activated spore hub drive at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works

Who Was Airiam? Star Trek: Discovery’s Tragic Cyborg Officer Explained

Warning: This Article Contains SPOILERS For Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 4, "Face the Strange".

• Star Trek: Discovery season 5 episode 4 brought back Lt. Commander Airiam, who died in season 2.
• Airiam was an augmented human USS Discovery officer who was taken over by the enemy A.I. Control.
• Airiam was played by Sara Mitich in Discovery season 1 and Hannah Cheesman in season 2; Cheesman returned as Aiiam in season 5.

Star Trek: Discovery shockingly brings back Lt. Commander Airiam (Hannah Cheesman) in Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 4 , "Face the Strange", written by Sean Cochran and directed by Lee Rose. Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Commander Rayner (Keith Callum Rennie), and Commander Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) are forced to hop through different eras of the USS Discovery's past and future. Their time travel puzzle places the trio back in Star Trek: Discovery season 1, when the USS Discovery was commanded by Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs). Instead of Lorca, however, Burnham finds that Airiam is in command, a year before Airiam's death in Star Trek: Discovery season 2.

The cyborg Airiam's unique appearance stands out among the mostly human characters in Star Trek: Discovery , inviting curiosity as to Airiam's origin. With striking blue eyes and facial features divided into pale white and silver chrome segments, Airiam could have been a member of an alien species new to Star Trek: Discovery , like the Kelpien Commander Saru (Doug Jones), or a 23rd-century synthetic life form, like a precursor to Star Trek: The Next Generation 's Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner). Neither an alien nor an early android, Lt. Commander Airiam was an augmented human, enhanced with cybernetic parts after a shuttle accident that left Airiam in critical condition and killed Airiam's new husband.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Returning Cast & New Character Guide

Who was airiam & how did she die in star trek: discovery, airiam sacrificed herself to protect the future of sentient life..

Lt. Commander Airiam was a cyborg science officer who served on the USS Discovery in Star Trek: Discovery seasons 1 & 2, and often took command of Discovery when the Captain and First Officer were not available. As the spore drive operations officer, Airiam worked as a liaison between Discovery's command crew on the bridge and Lt. Commander Paul Stamets in engineering. Airiam was close with the rest of the USS Discovery's bridge crew, and counted Ensign Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), Lt. Joann Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo), and Lt. Keyla Detmer (Emily Coutts) as some of her closest friends. Burnham didn't know Airiam well then, but would soon.

Airiam's enhancements were sometimes a boon, like when processing 10,000 years of data from the Sphere, but also ultimately led to Airiam's death in Star Trek: Discovery season 2, episode 9, "Project Daedalus". Control, the threat assessment A.I. developed by Starfleet's Section 31, hijacked Airiam through her cybernetic augmentation to get to the Sphere data, with the goal of becoming sentient and wiping out sentient life. Control managed to get 25% of the Sphere data before Airiam realized her death would be the only way to stop Control. Airiam pleaded with Burnham and Lieutenant D. Nhan (Rachael Ancheril) to release Airiam from an airlock, and Nhan ultimately complied.

In Star Trek: Discovery season 3, Lt. Nhan stays on the USS Discovery in the 32nd century to honor Lt. Commander Airiam's sacrifice.

2 Actors Played Airiam In Star Trek: Discovery

Sara mitich and hannah cheesman both played lt. commander airiam..

Star Trek: Discovery 's Lt. Commander Airiam was played by two different actors, starting with Sara Mitich playing Airiam in Star Trek: Discovery season 1. Mitich may have had an allergic reaction to the cyborg makeup, which would prevent her continued performance as Airiam after Star Trek: Discovery season 1. Instead of leaving, Airiam's original actress played Lt. Nilsson , a new human character, beginning in Star Trek: Discovery season 2. After Airiam's death, Nilsson took over the role of spore drive ops officer, and stayed on the USS Discovery in the 32nd century until Star Trek: Discovery season 5, when Nilsson transferred to the USS Voyager-J.

Hannah Cheesman took over the role of Lt. Commander Airiam in Star Trek: Discovery season 2, and played Airiam again in Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 4, "Face the Strange". Although the episode revisited Discovery season 1, when Sara Mitich played Airiam, it made sense that Airiam's second actress, Hannah Cheesman, returned to Star Trek: Discovery . The story relies on having a consistent through line from the connection between Cheesman's Airiam and Michael Burnham before Airiam's tragic death in Star Trek: Discovery season 2, episode 9, "Project Daedalus", and Airiam and Burnham meeting in Discovery season 5, episode 4, "Face the Strange".

Hannah Cheesman also plays a fully human version of Airiam seen in flashback recordings from before Airiam's accident in Star Trek: Discovery season 2, episode 9, "Project Daedalus".

Why Airiam Was Key To Star Trek: Discovery Season 5’s Time Travel

Burnham's knowledge of airiam's death proved valuable..

Lt. Commander Airiam was the key to solving the time travel problem in Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 4, "Face the Strange". Stamets' plan to contain the time bug by breaking Discovery's warp bubble required cooperation from Discovery's bridge crew in order to work, an impossible task to achieve at a time when Discovery's captain was Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) and Michael Burnham was considered an untrustworthy mutineer. Fortunately, the duty roster revealed Lorca was not on the USS Discovery , and Airiam was in command, so Captain Burnham's job of convincing the bridge crew to help was downgraded from impossible to merely difficult.

Although Burnham wasn't particularly close to Lt. Commander Airiam, Michael was present when Airiam died, and privy to all the pain of Airiam's last moments. Burnham's testimony of Airiam's death was met with protest from Detmer and Owosekun but unlocked a solemn understanding from Airiam herself. Airiam knew herself, and what she would do, far better than even her friends did. Convinced that Burnham was telling the truth about being from the future, Airiam allowed the plan to proceed, and helped get the USS Discovery out of its time loop. Just like in Discovery season 2, Lt. Commander Airiam's trust saved the future in Star Trek: Discovery season 5.

Star Trek: Discovery streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery

Cast Blu del Barrio, Oded Fehr, Anthony Rapp, Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Wilson Cruz, Eve Harlow, Mary Wiseman, Callum Keith Rennie

Release Date September 24, 2017

Genres Drama, Sci-Fi, Adventure

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Alex Kurtzman

Directors Jonathan Frakes, Olatunde Osunsanmi

Showrunner Alex Kurtzman

Where To Watch Paramount+

Screen Rant

Star trek: discovery ripper origin & navigator explained.

Star Trek: Discovery introduced an alien unlike any in Star Trek before. Here's how a tardigrade named Ripper became the ship's new Navigator.

One of the guiding principles of Starfleet is " to seek out new life and new civilizations. " Though Star Trek: Discovery began its 15 episode voyage introducing the backstory of its lead character Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and setting up the Klingon War, the series has since settled in and begun embracing the more familiar characteristics of Star Trek . In the past two episodes, Discovery has introduced a new alien species that is rather unlike anything seen before in Star Trek , and then pulled off the neat trick of revealing a surprising function for the alien on board the U.S.S. Discovery.

The Discovery, commissioned as a science and exploratory vessel, has been forced to become a warship. Under the command of Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs), Discovery's new mission is to find a way to win the war and pursue any avenue to achieve this objective and save the Federation from the Klingons. As such, Lorca has been searching for any and all types of weapons and technology that would give them an advantage over the Klingons.

Discovery and her sister ship the U.S.S. Glenn were the only two ships in Starfleet that possessed experimental displacement-activated spore hub drives. Based on technology developed by Lieutenant Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), the spore hub drives allow a starship to travel on the Mycelium spore network, which encompasses the known universe. Essentially a starship could jump to any point and the universe and back instantaneously. The technology was unreliable; the Glenn had found a way to use the drive to make longer space jumps where Discovery could not, but the Glenn suffered a fatal accident when it crashed into an undetected Hawking radiation firewall, killing all hands aboard. Except for one life form.

In the third episode "Context Is For Kings," an away team from Discovery boarded the derelict Glenn and encountered the bodies of Klingon soldiers trying to steal tech. They then encountered a giant monster, that chased them around the ship, until Michael Burnham was able to distract it long enough for the away team to escape on their shuttle craft. Later, Captain Lorca ordered the monster beamed on board Discovery where he imprisoned it within his secret war room , containing a menagerie of deadly weapons and artifacts he is studying to help Starfleet gain an edge on the Klingons. In the newest episode "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For the Lamb's Cry," Lorca gave Burnham her first assignment as a member of Discovery's crew: find out how the creature has claws that can rip through the hull of a ship, how its hide is able to withstand a phaser set to kill, and weaponize it against the Klingons.

What Burnham discovered when she analyzed the creature is that it shares natural traits with the tardigrade species found on Earth. The tardigrade, or water bear, is a micro animal that can survive extreme heat and sub-freezing temperatures, including the vacuum of space. The tardigrade on Discovery has a natural aversion to light and was not carnivorous; it had passive means of obtaining nutrition. Burnham theorized that the tardigrade was not an inherently hostile creature but attacks in self-defense.

These findings weren't good enough for Commander Landry (Rekha Sharma), who only saw the tardigrade as a monster. Landry named the tardigrade "Ripper" and insisted they follow Lorca's orders and find a way to immediately weaponize it. She foolishly released it and attacked it; the tardigrade rampaged in self-defense and quickly made short work of Landry.

However, Burnham's theories about Ripper not being inherently hostile were proven correct when she asked First Officer Saru (Doug Jones) to the menagerie and showed him the tardigrade. Saru, a Kelpien, possesses threat ganglia which warn him of imminent danger. When Saru's threat ganglia didn't immediately react to Ripper, Burnham confirmed Ripper was not a direct threat to life. Ripper has a different function entirely than as a weapon.

THE NEW NAVIGATOR

Discovery's new mission was to jump 84 light years and save the colony of Corvan 2 - the galaxy's largest supplier of dilithium crystals, which power the warp drive of every starship - from Klingon attack. With less than 6 hours before Corvan 2 would be destroyed, Discovery needed to make a jump farther than it ever had successfully before. However, Discovery lacked the ability to maintain navigational stability to make long jumps accurately. The away team brought a device on board from the Glenn that was an augmentation they used to their navigation system which allowed them to make perfect long jumps on the Mycelial spore network, but it was missing a super computer that could process the calculations necessary to make the jumps accurate.

Burnham realized the tardigrade was reacting to the spores during Discovery's "Black Alert" when they made their jumps and it was communicating with the spores. She and Stamets proved this theory correct and then placed Ripper in the reaction cube in Engineering, where Ripper interfaced with the device from the Glenn. Ripper was the super computer the Glenn was using; Ripper can achieve a symbiosis to communicate with the spores and accurately calculate the coordinates for their jumps. With Ripper's help, Discovery was able to make the jump to Corvan 2, destroy the attacking Klingon ships and save the colony.

Though Ripper proved itself to be an invaluable 'member of the crew,' Burnham learned interfacing with the Mycelium spore drive takes a physical toll on Ripper. "I'm sorry," Burnham told the tardigrade as she offered it more spores to sooth its pain. Like Burnham herself, Ripper is now under the thrall of Captain Lorca and enlisted into the war effort. But at what cost?

One thing's for sure, Star Trek: Discovery has contributed something new and unique to Star Trek lore with Ripper, a starship navigator quite unlike Mr. Chekov (Walter Koenig), who will be the Starship Enterprise 's navigator a decade from now in the timeline . Ripper is yet another example of how Star Trek teaches not to judge a species by its appearance, because you never know what valuable contribution a life form can offer to the greater good.

NEXT: NO, THE ORVILLE IS NOT BETTER THAN STAR TREK: DISCOVERY

Star Trek: Discovery streams at 8:30pm ET Sundays on CBS All-Access and on Netflix internationally.