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Star Trek 101: What is warp speed?
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In Star Trek, the warp propulsion system in starships enables travel at speeds faster than the speed of light. Without faster-than-light-speed travel, the Star Trek universe would be impossible, because it would take hundreds, thousands or millions of years to reach most other Milky Way star systems. Warp speed enables travel and exploration by the USS Enterprise and other Starfleet vessels, as well as the conquests carried out by the Klingon and Romulan empires and others, and pan-galactic trade. The development of warp technology is the prerequisite used by Vulcans for establishing "first contact" with a sentient species, as established in Star Trek: First Contact.
Warp drive technology is usually understood to work by creating a "bubble" of space-time around a traveling vessel. In this it differs from the other major fictional faster-than-light technology, hyperdrive, which enables "jumps" from one point in space to another, a major difference being that a ship traveling at warp speed can still interact with its surroundings because it still exists in normal space.
In the Star Trek universe, the first successful warp technology is developed by Zefram Cochrane. Some physicists, notably Miguel Alcubierre, enjoy designing hypothetical warp drive systems as an intellectual exercise. The Alcubierre drive, which has enormous energy requirements, works by expanding the fabric of space behind a ship and shrinking space-time in front of the ship, forming a space-time "bubble" along which the ship slips like a surfer on a wave. Physicist Richard Obousy of Baylor University has proposed a string theory warp drive that could be created by manipulation of extra dimensions to control the expansion of space. NASA sponsored speculative work on warp technology between 1996 and 2002.
Starships in Star Trek have a "warp core", a reactor which taps energy released in a matter-antimatter annihilation. regulated by dilithium crystals (there is no real life substance that corresponds to dilithium).
A point of confusion arises between the original Star Trek series, in which warp speeds that defy the internal logic of the show are sometimes featured, and plots for Star Trek: The Next Generation onwards, in which a new formula for warp speed is applied. "Warp factor" units refer refer to the magnitude of the warp field around the ship. Warp factor 10, infinite velocity, is an unattainable maximum sometimes described as "Eugene's Limit".
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