8 Times Star Trek Actually Did Change The Laws Of Physics

3. Warp 10

Ok, don't let this picture bother you too much as it pertains to the whole Warp 10 thing. Warp speed is a veritable mire of confusion for many as the speeds and their meanings change between decades or even between episodes. We mostly know that the Enterprise, Defiant, Voyager and most Federation and non-Federation ships can generally only get to Warp 9.7. But what about Warp 10? In relatively recent Trek lore, Warp 10 is defined as infinite velocity, the point where you're occupying all points of space simultaneously and the current possible Warp Factor speed is a re-calibration from the original series speeds. OK, so let's say Warp 10 is possible and traveling at that speed negates any wait times for StarFleet, or any space-faring fleet, to travel from their home planet to, say, the Devron System. But since we know what Warp Drive is, you're essentially not traveling at speed, but relative speed. In other words, unless you're a tachyon, you're actually going at sub-light speed but you're being propelled at Warp with space itself being warped around your ship. So then, knowing this, and going back to the picture above from the Voyager episode, Threshold, how are you accelerating so fast that you speed up your own evolution? Especially knowing you didn't actually accelerate that fast! Key word: accelerate. Even if Paris and Janeway were accelerating at that speed and had sufficient inertial dampers, they would have slowed down in aging and not accelerated their evolution. And don't get me started on the whole "Warp 13" thing from the TNG finale, All Good Things.