newper wrote:
So in Star Trek, most people know they had a warp drive. The warp drive allows the ship to move faster than the speed of light, but doesn't allow for instantaneous transport. This flies in the face of the theory of special relativity where energy and mass are interchangable. In theory, the ship would interact with objects in the way so there must have been some function that diverted asteroids and such -- I don't know if that was ever discussed on the show or not.
They also had a teleportation device called a transporter. This is basically the concept of teleportation where the bodies were dematerialized into their atoms and then they rematerialize at the destination. The method by which these are sent is never explored -- the binding energy of the atoms would have to be overcome by such a machine and if that machine existed, certainly would be one of the more powerful things on the ship. The need for this energy perhaps explains why they didn't just transporter the ship around instead of warping places. Anyway, this also is not instantaneous, but still pretty fast.
A hyperdrive is the idea that a ship could somehow transfer to an adjacent dimension that is connected in a way that the distance between the source and destination is shorter than that of the current dimension, and you would transfer back after you've traversed the distance. This seems plausible, the tricky part is transfering between dimensions. Usually these trips require careful calculation of what object could be in the other dimension so you don't crash into it.
Now the concept of a jump gate (or stargate) is similar to a wormhole/portal concept. You fly into one end and come out the other. This occurs instantly and seems impossible to me. The Borg supposedly used transwarp conduits in Star Trek that were like this. This would allow for time travel, but again, we're up against plenty of physics rules that render this unlikely.
A jump drive (not a USB drive) supposedly allows a ship to be teleported, requiring neither the transporter mechanism or the presence of a jump gate. This is just completely insane, and even trying to define ways that it works seems impossible.
1st paragraph, there is an episode of Voyager, where Tom Paris is everywhere, he reached Warp 10.
The Borg and another race in Voyager used tube like portals to travel.