ANDRE BORMANIS: The biggest technological advance that has yet to happen
to make a ship like the Orville possible,
will be what we call our quantum drive.
(whooshing)
That's how we define
the propulsion system that allows our ship
to travel faster than the speed of light.
Engage quantum drive.
(whooshing sounds)
h'
ANDRE: Sometime in the last 20 years or so,
a Mexican physicist named
Miguel Aicubierre, came up with a theoretical way
of how you could warp space,
so that space
behind you expands and space in front of you contracts
at speeds greater than the speed of light.
And this was the first sort of theoretical demonstration
that it was possible to build something like a warp drive.
(mechanical whirring and whooshing)
One of the things that will prove to be the key to
doing this, if we ever manage it,
is the creation of something called exotic matter.
There are theoretical reasons
to believe that there might be a form of matter
that has what we call negative mass.
So if you had, like, five pounds of this stuff
and you put it on a bathroom scale,
the scale would say "minus five pounds.“
And negative mass,
negative matter, has an anti-gravity effect.
So it pushes on the space around it.
And if you could make enough
of this stuff, and organize it properly,
you could create a system for stretching space behind you,
shrinking it in front of you.
And space itself can actually be expanded and contracted
at speeds many times greater than the speed of light.
And that's the key to building a warp drive.
How far away?
With quantum drive at maximum, six minutes, 21 seconds.
ANDRE: If we can prove it exists and if we can figure out how to make it,
I'm 99 percent confident
that someday, a ship like this could be built
using that as a propulsion system.
(whooshing sounds)
(theme music playing)
'