NASA physicist Dr. Harold White and Dutch artist Mark Rademaker have collaborated to create designs for a new spacecraft that could travel faster than light.
The illustration shows a spacecraft powered by an Alcubierre Drive engine, which was first suggested in 1994 as a way to achieve speeds faster than light, according to The Independent.
The device warped space-time by expanding the space behind the ship and contracting the space in front of it to produce a 'warp bubble'. The bubble moves space and time around the object instead of making the craft move at speeds impossible to achieve.
White has previously gone public with his research about a craft that was able to achieve faster-than-light speeds. He published a report in 2011 that aimed to prove the feasibility of the concept, RT reported.
Rademaker is known for the Star Trek-inspired graphics he's created in the past. He said to NBC News that he has been studying White's research from NASA's Johnson Space Center, and that he wanted to create a concept he could show to the public.
"I could have walked away, but I wanted this to be really good, so I put in an extra three months of spare time, with the new images as a result," Rademaker told NBC in an email.
The team behind the design has named the spacecraft the "Enterprise."
"My own designs for the most part followed these guidelines," he said. "I do put research in things like era, events in the Trek timeline, plausible registry numbers and specifications of a ship. I put about three months of research in the XCV-330 Ringship that Matt Jefferies sketched in the 1960s. I was asked to convert that sketch/blueprint as a 3D CGI model, I wanted to look spot on."
Rademaker also said his latest design for the spacecraft "includes a sleek ship nestled at the center of two enormous rings, which create the warp bubble." In theory, the bubble would make it possible for the ship to achieve F-T-L propulsion, RT reported.
He added that in one day, copies of the designs that were posted on his Flickr account received over two million views.
