10 Examples Of Real Science In Star Trek

Subspace is an entirely fictional concept, but was created by the writers to explain a very real scientific problem with Starfleet's interstellar communication.

Without using a warp drive (or other fictional device), nothing can travel faster than light through the universe, but Starfleet's ships often communicate with Earth or other planets when hundreds of lightyears away. If these signals travelled merely at the speed of light, the communications would have centuries of lag. Real-time conversations would be impossible.

It's for this reason that the writers came up with subspace, another dimension layered on top of ours, likely inspired by the extra spatial dimensions proposed in superstring theory. In the subspace dimension, energy can travel faster than light. Communications are sent through subspace and then back into normal space when they arrive, allowing for instant face-to-face interactions across lightyears.

Subspace communication has a limited range, which is why Voyager could not simply contact Starfleet command when they first got lost in the Delta Quadrant, but it was highly effective across Federation space.