Key to fact may well lie in archives of fiction

Scientists at CERN have cautiously announced to the world what Trekkies have known for a long time: that objects can travel faster than the speed of light, no matter the relative merits of Albert Einstein’s theorems. Moreover, Captain Kirk and his doughty band of 23rd-century star-trekkers boldly went where no man had gone before at warp or faster-than-light speeds in a starship USS Enterprise, a considerably-larger entity than the subatomic particle called a neutrino being championed as the new cosmic speed record-breaker.

Actually, CERN’s feat vindicates the Trekkie belief in the prophetic nature of the cult franchise, considering the 1960s TV series was the first to air the possibilities of such speeds even as the first men made their lumbering moonwalk. In fact, CERN’s discovery appears to adhere to the timetable established by the 1990s movie prequel of the S t a r T r e k saga, as the date for the technological breakthrough called the warp drive is set at 2063. That gives today’s white-coat brigade half a century to work on the quantum mechanics of a ‘real’ warp drive to keep to the schedule of the TV series’ Zefram Cochrane.

If the discovery of the neutrino’s nimble-footedness shakes certitudes like E = mc2 and questions the very principles of the time-space continuum, it also establishes the contention that truth is not merely stranger than fiction, it is also slower on the uptake. For, truth is hamstrung by the drudgery of getting research grants, building infrastructure and establishing scientific proof whereas the latter has the artistic freedom to go as far and as fast as imagination can take it. It may be educative, therefore, to trawl the fictional universe to see which other equations about our real one are about to be upended in the future.