In the sci-fi universe of “Star Trek”, spaceships with warp drives can zoom past the normally impenetrable limit of light speed, or about 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) in a vacuum.

This trouncing of theoretical physics makes reaching alien-rich planets across the galaxy seem like just a convenient TV-commercial-break-length trip away.

But a new animation by the planetary and space scientist James O’Donoghue, who used to work at NASA and is now employed by JAXA (Japan’s national space agency), grounds the warp drives of those fictional spaceships in reality.