As a kid, you may have pondered, is there anything faster than light? We would watch movies like Star Wars, Interstellar, and Star Trek and see spaceships going near or above the speed of light traveling through space and sometimes even time! How? Spaceships in these movies would use warp drives, propulsion systems that allow spacecraft to travel faster than light. These systems are commonly used in science fiction, but will they ever cross the boundary from sci-fi to reality? Let’s find out.

What are Warp Drives?

Most versions of the warp drive use a loophole in general relativity to avoid the universe’s ultimate speed limit: the speed of light. As something with mass accelerates towards the speed of light, more and more energy is required to accelerate faster. Because of this exponential increase in the energy requirements, to accelerate just a single electron to the speed of light would require more energy than what exists in the entire universe. …

Our universe is unique, with objects and phenomena that our human brains simply cannot perceive. Such concepts include how the universe really began, or if we are the only complex civilization living in this colossal cosmos. Day-by-day, we learn something new about the abyss we call our universe. A couple of decades ago, we found something that could revolutionize the way we look at our galaxy, the Milky Way: in approximately 4.5 billion years, the two largest galaxies in the Local Group, the Milky Way and Andromeda (also known as M31), will collide and become one. However, what will be the outcome of this collision and how are we sure this is going to happen? …

The cosmos is a dark, unknown place that possesses information we haven’t uncovered yet. Each day, we learn something new which could change our perception of space, but there is still lots to learn. One such discovery occurred a couple of months ago at the LIGO laboratory. Scientists at LIGO used the Virgo gravitational-wave detector in Italy to detect an event, known as GW190814, that emerged as a simple black hole consuming a neutron star. However, further research said otherwise. This new research showed that there was something similar to a black hole, but there was no actual black hole. Now, it’s classified as a black neutron star, but what is this and how did we just discover them? …

Ever since the development of the first civilization, there was always one key problem that prevented the civilization from taking over the entire world: energy. Energy was one of the biggest factors preventing humans from taking over because it fuels everything.

Now, things are different. Back then, no energy-powered technology existed. Today, however, almost everything we use is powered by energy, from our pocket-sized phones to massive TVs. Energy is finite, meaning we don’t have an unlimited supply, and that’s the biggest thing preventing us from conducting interplanetary missions.

Hence, a project was introduced that could revolutionize how humans perceive energy. It was a way that would let us harness nearly 50% or more of the sun's energy, and with that type of power, humans would be capable of becoming a type 2 civilization. However, what was this project exactly and how would it work? …

The Methuselah star has been observed for the past several decades, and it has come to our knowledge that this star could be older than the universe itself.

From the dawn of mankind, humans have pondered about our universe and what it held, but we’ve never thought of anything that could be older than the universe itself. I mean, how is that even possible? However, in the past century, an astonishing discovery was made that said otherwise. According to scientists, the Methuselah star is older than the universe itself. You may be wondering how exactly this star could be older than the entire universe or how we can tell this with certainty. …

We know close to nothing about dark matter and dark energy, but they hold the answers to some of science’s most important questions.

From the early 1990s, scientists had thought that the universe was expanding at a slower rate than it had originally, as gravity was certain to slow the expansion as time went on. However, in 1998, with the release of the Hubble Space Telescope, some observations were recorded that puzzled scientists, and to this day, scientists still can’t piece together what exactly is happening.

The Hubble Telescope had observed that a long time ago, the universe was actually expanding more slowly than it is today. Contrary to scientific belief, the universe is accelerating faster than before. No one expected this, and no one knew how to explain it. But something was causing it, and it couldn’t be gravity. Now, it’s assumed that dark matter and dark energy are the reasons behind the accelerating rate of the universe. However, what are these substances, and why are they making the universe expand at an accelerating rate? …

Antimatter is one of the most valuable and scarce known substances in our universe, and we just might be able to get it.

Antimatter. A substance which you may have heard of before, but don’t quite know what it is exactly. Antimatter is almost identical to regular matter, composed of all the same properties and all the same abilities to make up atoms and molecules that make up the matter as we know it. However, there is one key difference between both matters, Antimatter has the opposite charge. You may think that this is not a crucial difference, however, this difference is the reason why a single gram of antimatter costs a whopping $62.5 trillion per gram. So, what is Antimatter and why is it so expensive? …

Nanobots are new pieces of nanotechnology that can do things in your body that medicine can’t.

There was once a time when humans would depend solely on medicine and antibiotics to protect themselves from deadly viruses and diseases.

Nowadays, that’s not the case, as innovative medical technologies are being created every year. These technologies have helped us fight off viruses more effectively, eradicate diseases, and even repair our bodies at a cellular level.