10 Important Star Trek Details That Are Almost Never Mentioned

In the 24th-century warp speed was segmented into different warp factors from 1 to 10. Warp factor 1 is lightspeed, and 10 is infinite velocity, meaning that the vessel would be travelling so fast that it would occupy every point in space simultaneously.

Warp factor 10 was only achieved once, in the Voyager episode Threshold. The technology was deemed too dangerous to use because it had interesting effects on Human evolution, and turned Tom Paris into a horrifying lizard, but most fans like to pretend that Threshold never happened.

The speeds of warp factors increase exponentially, meaning that warp 2 is vastly faster than warp 1, and so on. Starfleet ships in the 24th century can reach above warp 9.9, and Voyager can even get up to 9.975, which may seem close to 10, but it is actually incomprehensibly slower.

In the 23rd century, during the Original Series, Starfleet used a different scale for calculating warp speeds, which is why in many episodes (The Changeling, for example) the Enterprise travelled at warp 10, 11, or higher.