I used to get really excited about upcoming sci-fi movie previews (because I'm a nerd) until I watched the preview for Apollo 18.

But first some background to this tragedy of a film:

(Image Credit: By Apollo 16 astronauts (NASA Apollo 16 photograph AS16-3021) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Pictured here is the lunar farside, sometimes called the "dark" side of the moon, which, by the way, is a complete misnomer because it is illuminated by the sun just as often as the side facing Earth. We call it the "dark" side of the moon because we fear the dark much like we fear the unknown and it makes for great horror-film-esque movies like Apollo 18.

I loooove Apollo 13 - now there's a movie about the tenacity of the human spirit during the golden era of space exploration (I cry every time I watch it during the moment when the re-entry capsule re-emerges from the atmosphere). I personally believe that this movie singlehandedly inspired many a young American to go into the STEM fields.

Flash forward to Apollo 18 - the preview started out in such a way that reminded me of Apollo 13 so I naturally got really excited. But then it turns horrible horror-film-esque as they discover aliens on the moon. And this bugs me in two ways. First off, it's completely unrealistic; we've explored the moon thoroughly and there are no aliens there. Second, one of my biggest pet peeves is when Hollywood chooses to exploit our fears of the unknown, specifically space, but in a completely irrational way. 

There are so many better things to be afraid of in space then aliens on the moon. My personal biggest fear of space is its vastness.

In the words of the wise Bones:

“Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.”— Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy, Star Trek 2009

There's a reason it's called space - even if we had nothing but time, with the current rocket technology we wouldn't even be able to make it to the nearest star.  Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth, is 4.24 light years away and we're nowhere near to traveling at the speed of light. And this is fundamentally lonely for the human race.

But we like to dream big, so science fiction movies love to depict easy interstellar warp travel. All too often, the technology the Captain Kirks or Han Solos of the fictional universe use to travel between star systems is a pure product of our imagination. What would happen if we consulted scientists in the production of the movies - do we have any idea how to actually travel between stars in a human lifetime, or does this topic remain solidly in the realm of science fiction? 

I think I've found a movie that might lean towards the science aspect of science fiction...

Flash forward to earlier this month when I saw my first preview to the movie Interstellar:

Don't get me wrong; I love Matthew McConaughey and Christopher Nolan to death, but I believe the true draw of this new film will be its ability to hit upon our worst fears. Just watch the preview - it gave me shivers:

This film comes at a really vital crossroads in human history. I think it's a pretty safe bet to assert that we're coming to believe that as a species, we're fundamentally altering our planet's climate in an irreversible fashion. And this is a horrible realization, but we have no idea yet how bad it will get. It looks like Matthew McConaughey's character really hits upon these effects of global climate change; he's a farmer who's struggling under these new conditions of famine and terrible weather events. It looks vaguely reminiscent of the dust bowl. 

So first of all, I'm excited that this film will work with our fears of climate change and give people an idea of what reality may become.

(Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures. )

But what I really want to touch on is something I saw in the preview once Matthew McConaughey and crew leave Earth. They appear to travel through some sort of warp bubble (see the image to the right). Nolan did his homework, because warp bubble travel is something real scientists are studying right now!

What? Let's be real. What's actually going on here?

It's about time for a short lesson in Einstein's General Relativity.

There is an absolute cosmic speed limit - relativity dictates that no object can travel faster then the speed of light at 300,000 km/s. The implications for space travel are that even with the fastest rocket imaginable to date (Project Orion is a rocket powered by nuclear explosions that can travel up to 5% of the speed of light; note that Project Orion is distinct from the Orion Capsule, which NASA is currently developing), it would still take roughly 85 years to arrive at the nearest star system (Proxima Centauri). And this is an issue for those among us who would like to travel between stars in a timespan shorter than the average human lifetime. [In comparison, Voyager 1 is the current fastest manmade object, and it would take 80,000 years for it to arrive at Proxima Centauri. But it's not even going the right way....]

Given the incredible amount of money and resources that go into designing even the current non-relativistic generation of rockets, it seems unlikely that the current government or investors in the private rocket companies would throw money at a rocket like Project Orion. Because even if we could make it to Proxima Centauri, stars in the galaxy are like ______________________ fill in the blank, I can't even think of a good metaphor that captures the scale of this problem (stars are farther apart than 4400x the orbit of Neptune); there’s so much space between them, this wouldn't be practical to enable our vision of galaxy-wide travel. 

So we need some technology that can send us from point A to point B in a warp-like fashion. If you’re unfamiliar with the notion of warp, you could turn to both Star Trek or Einstein’s 1916 paper “The Foundations of the Generalised Theory of Relativity”. The notion here is that the only way to get around the cosmic speed limit is to bend the fabric of space-time itself. It turns out the sci-fi notion of warp travel is not entirely fiction. The Alcubierre drive, first proposed in 1994, is a theoretical spaceship that could travel faster than light by expanding space behind it while it contracts space ahead. It creates a warp bubble in which it travels at speeds slower than light, but by bending the fabric of space-time, from an outside observer’s point of view, it is traveling faster than light. 

Here are some plots of the varying geometries of warp bubble that could be produced by an Alcubierre drive and a source of negative energy.

(Image Credit: Dr. Harold White, NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

This idea of a warp bubble is being investigated further by Dr. White’s team at NASA Eagleworks - inside Johnson Space Center. This project is classified, but it's been revealed that the team is running physical experiments related to the concept of a warp bubble.

Sounds great, let’s send the plans to NASA. Of course the problem is that this type of warp drive demands some sort of exotic matter with negative mass that has yet to be discovered. But the point is that a warp drive is not entirely founded in fiction (although the name was first coined by the original Star Trek). And if science’s wonderful partnership with industry has shown us anything, it is the concept of an existence-proof.

The notion of existence-proof being that once something is proven to be possible, science will work together to find a way to make it a reality. Already, scientists have modified Alcubierre's initial idea of a warp bubble to one with geometries that require less negative energy; in theory, this new geometry is far more realistic and could be produced using the Casimir effect with parallel conducting plates.

Here's Buzz Aldrin on the moon, posing to allow Neil Armstrong to take a selfie using Aldrin's visor.

(Image Credit: NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

The bottom line is that we're currently experiencing a technological explosion. On the fourth of October 1957 (57 years ago), Sputnik 1 became the first manmade object in orbit. 57 years later, we've populated Earth orbit with spy satellites, amazing orbital telescopes, a freaking space station for people to live in orbit, we've visited the moon, sent probes to every planet (New Horizons will get to Pluto (the dwarf planet) on July 14, 2015), driven around Mars with robots, and even sent probes out of our solar system! If you had told scientists 60 years ago that we would accomplish all this, would they have believed you?

So although right now it seems extremely difficult to travel between star systems, who's to say what will happen in the next couple of decades?

It’s easy to cast scientists and engineers as labcoat-wearing, chalk-wielding, fun-hating old white dudes. But many of us are die-hard nerds at heart. And I believe that one day one of these nerds will make their beloved Star-Wars universe a reality.

A not so long time from now, in this universe.

(Image Credit: Wormhole travel as envisioned by Les Bossinas for NASA)