Warp Drive
When they "returned" to the warm and cozy cabin, the fleet had already escaped Neptune's gravity well. (Remark: The gravity well mentioned here only refers to the range that won't disrupt the warp drive, while in theory, the gravity well reaches infinitely far.) They then switched to warp mode and sped towards Earth.
The distance from Neptune to Earth is about 4.3 to 4.7 billion km. In order to ensure safety, the fleet maintained warp speed at one-tenth light speed into the inner Solar System—this was the most boring part of the trip.
Even though stars flickered outside the portholes, they were just holograms to keep people from getting bored. Strictly speaking, people on the ship can't see the stars while warping.
That's because when the warp drive is activated, the ship does not move; instead, a tiny space bubble created by the warp drive carries the ship and nearby space. Interestingly, during normal cruising mode, people can feel bumps and shakes, but faster warp travel is steadier because the ship stays put relative to space—only space moves.
It's clear that the warp drive is among the most important creations in human history. Looking back in human history, if warp drives hadn't come along, we'd never have found Lagrange points or the Lagrange Network spanning the galaxy; the icy cosmos would've stayed shut to us.
In the year 5012, funded by the Arbiter Committee, Antontas University and Hermann University held a joint seminar to discuss humanity's future. At one of the sessions, Professor Dolan Halton from Antontas University's Cosmic Political Relations Department and Professor Kuhn Fisher from Hermann University's Technology History Department jointly presented a paper about pivotal moments in human history. In their paper, they suggested that on a cosmic scale, humanity's existence is but a fleeting instant.
The universe has been around 13.8 billion years, and it's only been about 400,000 years from the emergence of Homo sapiens to the Lagrange Era when we spread across the starry sea—that's merely 0.003% of the universe's lifespan. During most of those 400,000 years, humanity was in the dark ages; comparatively, we've only had about 10,000 years of recorded history.
In the paper, Professor Fischer noted, "By putting human history on the horizontal axis and civilization index on the vertical, we can plot a curve. We can see the curve is mostly flat for a long time, showing no big shifts until major technology breakthroughs cause noticeable changes. These happen more frequently after recorded history begins. In early human history, it took thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years, for crucial inventions like fire, stone tools, and the wheel to develop and spread across the world. On the other hand, printing and papermaking spread across the world in a few hundred years. In the Information Age, with globalization, information exchange sped up, and technology shifts happened faster—cell phones and computers became common in years, spurring more new technologies—this is the Law of Accelerating Returns.
Therefore, throughout human history, we can see that accelerating returns have been central to technological growth. Every major tech innovation rapidly changed the shape of human society."
The two professors divided human history into eight main phases based on development traits. With technological breakthroughs happening faster, each period's length decreased. The eight phases are the Origin Era, Civilization Era, Inner Solar System Era, Dawn Era, Exploration Era, Sacrum Chu Imperium Era, Dark Era, and today's Post-Lagrange Era. They thoroughly analyzed human history from a science and technology history perspective, pointing out that every era had a crucial scientific leap.
For instance, during the 200,000-year Origin Era, fire was the technology that fundamentally altered human life (Remark: There are also scholars who disagree, like those from the Tethys City Academy of Sciences, who believe that based on current archaeological records, primitive humans mastered fire 2 million years ago.).
During the Inner Solar System Era, the key technology was developing warp drives. The advent of warp drives truly started the era of inner Solar System expansion, greatly accelerating societal progress and setting the stage for the Lagrange Era.
Most importantly, the warp drive's emergence meant humans applied technology to the essence of space for the first time. In the pursuit of greater warp drive, we stumbled upon space resonance, launching us to the Lagrange Era.
Professor Doran Halton remarked, "Warp technology is a revolutionary leap for us, comparable to early humans discovering fire or Galileo using a telescope to gaze at the stars."
In fact, the warp drive idea first emerged during the era of propellant engines thousands of years ago. Humans have always been obsessed with speed— from the ancient Chinese fireworks using black powder to chemical rockets and electric pulse engines, humans have maxed out on propellant engines. However, these engines were all about basic momentum principles— no groundbreaking physics advancements happened here. Scientists at the time agreed that a breakthrough in basic physics was needed to boost spacecraft speeds.
As per the historical records, the early 21st century saw two main research directions for engines without propellant.
Both directions were aiming for the same outcome—by warping the space in front of the spacecraft, they could create a higher pressure zone behind it. With that space pressure gradient, a force acts on the spacecraft, generating thrust for propulsion. That's why this theoretical engine is called the warp drive.
At first, the warp drive was a sci-fi idea that showed up in a bunch of sci-fi stories. It didn't take long for physicists to start seriously exploring whether the warp drive could be achieved. Theoretically, the warp drive's speed could surpass light speed, even hitting thousands of times that. This theory doesn't contradict relativity because the warp drive works by altering the space in front of it, creating a "space bubble" around the spacecraft (also called a "warp bubble"). Thus, the spacecraft stays still while space itself moves.
During that period, the two primary theoretical research paths for propellant-less engines were:
1. Based on general relativity. In this general relativity propulsion model, space is treated like a stretchy rubber field so that you can think of it as an endless elastic body. If spacetime gets bent, it generates inward surface stress, creating a pressure field. Making a bunch of these curved surfaces behind the spacecraft can create a one-way surface force to speed it up.
2. Based on quantum field theory. In this quantum field theory propulsion system, the quantum vacuum is assumed to be made of non-radiative modes and zero-point energy states, representing the lowest energy state discussed in quantum field theory and quantum electrodynamics. It's theorized that matter is made up of fundamental charged entities and particles that function as basic oscillators, interacting with one another. Applying an electromagnetic zero-point energy field allows you to apply Lorentz force to the particles. When used on dielectrics, it can impact the inertial mass of an object, enabling you to speed it up without creating internal stress or strain.
Both types of engines share the same underlying theory, relying on field propulsion related to spatial structures, but they use different theoretical methods to get there.
In the 21st century and for many centuries after, the first concept was pretty much stuck in theoretical and sci-fi territory, with no real progress. The main representative of this engine concept was the Alcubierre drive, which adhered to Einstein's equations in general relativity and created a unique spacetime metric called the Alcubierre metric. The Alcubierre metric outlined the spacetime for the warp drive, presenting as a Lorentzian manifold that enables a warped spacetime bubble to exist in flat spacetime, moving at superluminal speeds. While the Alcubierre metric mathematically aligned with Einstein's field equations, scientists at the time widely believed the Alcubierre drive was practically unachievable due to chronology protection. Furthermore, if you run the math on the Alcubierre metric, you get a negative energy density.
Essentially, to build the Alcubierre drive, you have to create negative energy matter, known as "strange matter." Even though physics and math allow for strange matter, back then, humans weren't technically or theoretically ready to create it. On the bright side, researchers found signs of negative energy while studying the Casimir effect. In a paper, Alcubierre pointed out that the vacuum between two parallel metal plates could be a source of negative energy for the Alcubierre drive.
The quantum field theory propulsion concept, like the EmDrive, made some cool progress with experiments, but it never really took off for large-scale use. This shows the harsh reality of going from scientific exploration to tech application—things get tricky as complexity increases, making it tough for technology to outpace theory. It's impossible to build a fully functional warp drive until we really nail down the core theories behind them.
In short, both ideas hit a wall. Looking back, the root issue is that theoretical physics hadn't made the leaps needed for practical tech—a typical case of tech concepts outpacing theoretical realities, so both engines seemed quite sci-fi back then.
Fast-forward to around the 27th century, when scientists mixed element 688 from the stable continent (Remark: The stable continent refers to an imagined area beyond the island of stability, rich in stable heavy elements.) with Troy Crystals and bombarded it with a high-energy particle accelerator. They discovered they had created strange matter with negative energy for the first time. Thanks to the strange matter, the Alcubierre drive now had a shot at becoming a reality! However, producing strange matter was only the beginning of warp drive; scientists were then off on another quest.
The strange matter we made could open up a curled-up spatial dimension to a macro scale, which is the principle of space distortion. Scientists also predicted that strange matter might come in different forms, and what we've made so far is just the most basic kind. If we get our hands on more advanced strange matter in the future, we could potentially tap into deeper levels of spatial dimensions.
This clarifies why the warp drive could theoretically exceed light speed, but in reality, it only hits about 1/10th of that speed—basically, our understanding and application of spacetime are still quite primitive.
The journey to develop warp drives wasn't smooth; there were multiple accidents along the way. It's worth noting that warp technology actually appeared earlier in the application of spatial gravity.
Essentially, the job of the warp drive is to twist the space around the ship. Simply put, when the ship is warping, it's in a "space bubble" with higher curvature. As long as the warp drive is on, the ship is safe because it stretches the space behind, lowering curvature, while the front space shrinks, raising curvature—creating a gradient, while the ship itself stays in normal space. However, when the ship exits the "space bubble," it's the riskiest part because that means the curvatures in front and back are about to be "flattened." When the front and back curvatures flatten, the space gradient disappears instantly, generating shockwaves at the boundary. These waves rush through the ship's space bubble at light speed, merging it into the normal space around it.
You can imagine space here as something like a stretchy, elastic entity. If unprepared, those two shockwaves could damage the ship nearby, causing minor damage or even frying the core of the warp drive! Keep this in mind—these shockwaves aren't the typical waves you encounter; they come from the fourth dimension at Planck units, affecting everything in three-dimensional space simultaneously, and nothing can escape them!
Those shockwaves get stronger with the warp difference; the higher the power of the warp drive, the nastier the shockwaves get—and the more danger there is. In order to prevent this, the warp drive launches a space bubble at the destination to help smooth out the journey. But to deploy that space bubble, you need to know the exact curvature at your destination. It's important to mention that space isn't flat. According to Einstein's relativity theory, any object with mass bends space, and the influence of that mass is theoretically infinite. Therefore, every spot in the universe is affected by surrounding masses, and things change as those masses move around and distances change. To keep everything safe, it's crucial to accurately determine the curvature at the destination and its related factors, all known as warp parameters. That's why you need an anchor point, basically a warp parameter measuring tool, at the destination for warp traveling. This measuring tool can be built into completed structures and ships, which is why activated operation areas can provide the warp anchor point. (Remark: The mass of incomplete structures keeps changing, so their parameters are unstable and inaccurate.)
With that warp anchor point in place, warp traveling becomes a lot safer. Lacking a warp anchor point means the ship has to dock using pre-estimated parameters, and if the difference is too big, it could lead to disaster.
Typically, in space travel, ships establish a set of warp parameters for their destination ahead of time, called warp coordinates. But remember, these warp coordinates aren't your typical position coordinates; they're a complex data model made up of warp parameters, constantly changing in real time every microsecond. You could say the ship will never nail down perfectly accurate warp coordinates; it can only get infinitely near to that precise value. There's a special term for that difference—it's called Warp Variance. The better the ship's computer system, the less warp variance there is, and the safer the ship becomes. A high warp variance can lead to accidents, such as ships in the same fleet colliding when exiting warp travel due to positional shifts, straying far off course, or, in the worst case, getting torn apart by distorted space.
In the Solar System, around 10 million kilometers away from the Earth-Moon system, the Terran Sphere government built a spaceport offering warp anchor points for all ships navigating the Solar System. After roughly forty-five standard hours of warp travel, the fleet sailed by the orbits of Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter, cut through the asteroid belt, zipped over Venus' orbit, and eventually arrived at the inner Solar System's warp anchor point.
The instant the fleet left warp travel, the view outside changed completely. Stars were visible again. Of course, the most striking one was that faint yellow star!
With the golden sunlight streaming through the porthole, bathing the cabin in a soft golden light, Andre walked up to the large viewing window, lost in thought, as he gazed at that seemingly plain star.
"Is... is that the Sun?"
As he touched the icy cold window, unsure if it was all in his head, Andre felt a noticeable warmth from the sun.
"Yes," Cooper stood quietly next to him, hands clasped behind his back. "Mr. President, this is the sun that nurtured human civilization."
At this point, they're about 150 million kilometers away from the sun—pretty much the same distance Earth is from it. With no obstructions in space, the sunlight was super intense and glaring, but the adaptive glass cut most of it down, making the sun look like a warm, glowing disk. This star appears unremarkable, but it's the star that brought Earth to life and spawned millions of creatures.
The battleship's pulse engines fired back up, and the fleet entered its standard cruising mode. Unfortunately, since they didn't make any stops along the way, they missed the chance to see the Lagrange Institute Memorial between Uranus and Umbriel's L4 Lagrange Node.
The fleet slowly adjusted its course, flying in the direction of Earth.
