Star Trek: How it Popularized Warp Speed

A presentation by physicists ran afoul of Star Trek: How it popularized warp speed and incurred the wrath of not just Khan, but the media and readers alike. Sometimes popular culture and media intersect strangely with even the most sophisticated scientific research. Fans of popular media, especially science fiction, who are familiar with any of the Star Trek television series or movies, for example, are well aware that the Starship Enterprise travels at warp speed.

The Physics

Physicist and research professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, William Edelstein and his son Arthur, also a physicist, recently made a presentation to the American Physical Society that was reported in New Scientist and stirred up controversy in unlikely places. In the presentation, William and Arthur Edelstein suggested that space travel at or near the speed of light would prove fatal for humans. Individuals traveling through space at or near the speed of light would be killed within seconds by hydrogen atoms that would plow through their ship and through their bodies. Thus, according to the Edelsteins, neither Captain Kirk nor Lieutenant Spock would reach anywhere near the speed of light or even warp speed and survive the event.

The Response

Although William and Arthur Edelstein included the Star Trek reference in their presentation only for dramatic effect, they were surprised by the response from readers who read their work in New Scientist. Hundreds of readers commented and many, who are fans of Star Trek, asserted that the Edelsteins were wrong. William Edelstein found the furor amusing and maintains that the intense radiation at high speed space travel would kill an entire crew in less than a second. According to Edelstein, this is a major obstacle to travel across the Milky Way.

As physicists, William and Arthur Edelstein set out to answer whether there is friction in space. The response to their work proves that there is not just friction, but also fiction, involved in space travel.