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What’s the speed of my imagination?

Francisco Miraval

 

When I was a child I liked to watch Star Trek, a science-fiction TV series based on the journeys of the USS Enterprise under the leadership of Captain James T. Kirk. At that time, I must add, I was watching television with the later lost innocence of a child, and only in Spanish and black and white.

 

Regardless, I liked the idea of a space ship (so advanced and at the same time so unprepared for many tasks) traveling through space to find new worlds and new civilizations. It was really inspiring, but it was, in my opinion, just a fantasy and it remain a fantasy even after that night in July 1969 when, together with my family, we watched the landing on the moon.

 

We all know that there was a time when people thought earth was flat and that nothing heavier than air will ever fly. Yet, even with those lessons in mind, imagining a space ship traveling faster than light was, in my childish opinion, absolutely impossible. Half a century later, I just discovered I was wrong.

 

So, what’s the speed of my imagination? Certainly, my imagination is not fast enough to escape the attraction of everyday thoughts and self-censorship.

 

Whatever that may be, on June 13, 2014, NASA published the first images of the conceptual design of a spaceship able to travel at speeds several times faster than light. Those images, produced by artist Mark Rademaker, show a spaceship (yet to be built) named IXS Enterprise. In fact, it looks a lot similar to the spaceship in Star Trek.

 

Rademaker worked with Dr, Harold White, of NASA, to produce the design, showing Alcubierre drives, named in honor of physicist Miguel Alcubierre. In theory, those drives could distort time and space in a way that spaceships would move faster than light. (That technology, according to NASA, is still being developed. It is still unknown when it will be available.)

 

The images of the IXS Enterprise led me to think about one of the frequent challenges the Enterprise faced in Star Trek: time travel. It seems than time travel, thought until recently to be impossible, it is not.

 

On June 10, 2014, a report by a British physicist, Luke Butcher, and some of his colleagues says that it is possible to use “negative energy” to open a wormhole in the space-time continuum and to keep it open long enough to send a message using a pulse of light.

 

Obviously, this is just a theoretical experiment by Butcher. Even if that wormhole could be open, it will be too small for a spaceship or even a person to use it. However, it seems to me it is just a matter of time before large and stable wormholes, large enough for the IXS Enterprise, will cross space and time

 

It is fascinating to realize that the science fiction of my childhood could be the science fact of my grandchildren’s childhood. For that reason, I think I need a faster imagination.

 

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