If We'll Ever Reach Warp Speed

THE SECRET TO FASTER-THAN-LIGHT physics could be to double down on the number of dimensions, according to research published last December in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity

- Caroline Delbert

Specifically, the solution may lie in three dimensions of time, with just one representing space.

The key concept at play is the "superluminal observer," a hypothetical thing that is looking at the universe while traveling faster than light. It's you in your Star Trek warp-speed shuttle.

Superluminal observers marry together two very different sides of physics: general relativity and quantum mechanics. General relativity is the work proposed by Albert Einstein; it governs how spacetime functions as bodies move around the universe at subluminal, or slower-than-light, speeds. Quantum mechanics explains how subatomic particles behave, or don't behave, in very strange ways on the smallest of scales.

Led by theoretical physicist Andrzej Dragan of the University of Warsaw and the National University of Singapore, the team has theorized that many parts of quantum physics can be explained if you take general relativity and apply its principles to the superluminal observer. In other words, how messy does spacetime get if we take our shuttle up to warp speed? Is everything suddenly in multiple places at once?