The television series Star Trek, was created by Gene Roddenberry. Since that original series which debuted in 1966 for three seasons on NBC in the United States, it has produced many spin-off series. This includes the original series (1966 - 1969), The Next Generation (1987 - 1994), Deep Space Nine (1993 - 1999), Voyager (1995 - 2001), Enterprise (2001 - 2005) and Discovery (2017 - present). This has been an amazing franchise which has also produced 13 motion picture films.
A warp drive Starship from the Star Trek Universe (Paramount Studios)
A key element of the Star Trek universe is the starships themselves, based on some undefined warp drive technology that manipulates space and time in a way that allows it to transport across the galaxy and beyond, and still be home for tea. From a physics perspective this appears to break all of the known laws as we understand them. In addition, the engineering challenges with constructing such a vast machine are daunting to say the least. As the episodes of Star Trek rolled on year on year, there were efforts by the production team to introduce a science basis behind the technology. This led to the invention of an entirely new language with mentions of technologies such as ‘dilithium crystals’, ‘tractor beams’, ‘replicators’, ‘universal translators’, ‘cloaking devices’, ‘deflector shields’ and a whole manner of other ideas.
It is interesting to note that whilst some of these technologies are far from being a part of the real world of science, others have actually maturated into actual devices, and the observation that science fiction inspires science as much as science inspires science fiction is an interesting one. Indeed, far from the sciences being seen as rigorous and the arts creative, it has been said that science needs the creativity to flourish and art needs rigour to have value.
So it was that in 1994, the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre produced a paper titled “The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel within General Relativity” (Classical & Quantum Gravity, 11, L73 - L77, 1994), in which the author demonstrated how the General Theory of Relativity, allowed in principle for space to expand and collapse in a way analogous to a warp drive. This paper was such a seminal publication for the field, that it literally created an entire new genre of theoretical physics research. Even more amazing, when we consider that at the time Alcubierre was a graduate student. Although many of the physics issues for a workable warp drive still look prohibitively difficult, the fact that we can realise so much about this theoretical construct so earlier on in the birth of the idea, gives some optimism that the research may lead to something interesting at least.
Mathematical shape function visualised of the Alcubierre warp drive metric of General Relativity
However, there is an intriguing history of the design of a Starship from the Star Trek universe that many people may not be aware of, which is that, whilst in conventional engineering design shape tends to follow function, it is the other way around thanks to Gene Roddenberry, in that function follows shape.
The history of the creation of this starship, is described in the book by Stephen E Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry titled “The Making of Star Trek” (published by Ballantine Books, 1968). In this book the authors detail the design briefing specified by Roddenberry for the U. S. S Enterprise:
“We’re a hundred and fifty or maybe two hundred years from now. Out in deep space, on the equivelent of a cruiser-size spaceship. We don’t know what the motive power is, but I don’t want to see any trails of fire. No streaks of smoke, no jet intakes, rocket exhaust, or anything like that. We’re not going to Mars, or any of that sort of limited thing. It will be like a deep-space exploration vessel, operating throughout our galaxy. We’ll be going to stars and planets that nobody has named yet...I don’t care how you do it, but make it look like its got power.”
Then, so it was that the set designers came up with the gorgeous concept that we see in the television show and movies today. In the subsequent discussions with the set designers, when they made comparisons to the existing space program, or Buck Rodgers or Flash Gordon, the response of Roddenberry was “This we will not do”. The same response was given when comparisons were made to concepts from companies like North American, Douglass and TRW. What Roddenberry seemed to be reaching for was an acknowledgement that this machine was in the far future, and more advanced than even the most visionary thinking scientists of the day were conceiving.
Roddenberry wanted something that was beyond the reach of existing paradigms. This is consistent with the second law of the science and science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke who said “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible”. It is interesting to note that Roddenberry had previously had extensive discussions with Clarke and so was likely familiar with this law given it was published in his book “Profiles of the Future” published in 1962.
So it was that the team produced the beloved Starship concept of Star Trek, driven by an engine called a warp drive for which nobody could describe how it really worked. That warp drive, seems to have come out of the requirement not to have any smoke, flames or exhaust. From a scientific extrapolation perspective this made no sense at all. But form an artistic perspective it was pure brilliance and perhaps not something science would ever had created on its own; science needs the creativity of the arts.
This demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary thinking and the risks of working only in specialised areas. It is clear that to progress technologically science needs the arts. Would the idea of a warp drive ever been realised if it had not been conceived from this artistic background? We will never know for sure, but as long as we practice both in unison, as a form of joyous dance, the novelty produced from our species knows no bounds.