The Semi-Science of Jump Points and Lightspeed Engines in the MCU

There are many space travel methods known in the MCU. Most of them basically utilize wormholes in different forms. A wormhole is an Einstein-Rosen bridge, that connects two different places in space through a higher-dimensional short-cut path, even if the places are lightyears apart from each other in the regular space. These short-cut paths can transport people and objects between the two connected places in no time.

Bifrost bridges, magical portals, and the portals created by the space stone work in the same basic principle. However, these methods work for a single person or a group of people; and cannot be used to maintain an actual space traffic.

So, advanced civilizations like the Kree and others use the jump point technology. As shown in the movies, jump points look like sets of hexagonal-shaped portals, which are permanently placed at many locations in the universe. They are usually invisible, but appear when spaceships approach to enter inside. Spaceships travel to distant planets in very short time through these jump points. With these observations, I have come up with my theory of what the jump points are.

Image : A spaceship coming out of a jump point. Image Source : Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017).

In my version of the story, a long time ago one of the advanced civilizations took the first step of setting up a permanent space-traffic system. They created a huge grid of wormholes, with openings near the destination planets. These openings are the jump points we see. By going through a jump point, a spaceship enters the wormhole grid. Through the grid they conveniently travel to the destination planet.

Imagine a hilly land with dense jungles. Compare it to the regular space. Travelling from one place to another by climbing the hills and walking through the jungles is seriously inconvenient. But now imagine a number of tunnels through the hills. Compare these tunnels to the wormholes in the grid. Roads passing through these tunnels can easily sustain a healthy traffic.

Permanently sustaining such a cosmic grid of wormholes requires energy at a cosmic scale. The only natural way to obtain such energy is to harness solar energy. So, in my theory, many jump points are created near massive stars to harness solar energy at a reasonable rate. This energy can be transported everywhere in the grid through the grid itself, assuring its stability.

Thus, the jump point technology seems to be a very convenient way of space travel. In fact, the spaceships themselves don’t need to have lightspeed. All types of spaceships, from large motherships to small space-pods, can access these jump points. Then, why was Mar-Vell trying to build a lightspeed engine for space travel?

To find an answer, first we need to understand the inconveniences of the jump point technology. The basic problem is that, while creating the grid, the number of wormholes and jump points had to be minimized in order to minimize the energy consumption. So, jump points had to be created only at selected places, from where nearby planets could be accessed. With this restriction, the creators of the grid obviously could not build jump points at all places. This means, not all places in the universe are accessible through jump points. A regular space traffic may not require to access all places; but scientific explorations and army operations, like those of the Kree and the Nova Corps, may require going to deserted planets and other new places in the universe where jump points are not set up. This kind of places must be accessed by travelling through the regular space from the nearest available jump point. With the regular spaceships, such travels can take hours, days, or even months!

There is another problem — a much bigger one! The observable universe is billions of lightyears in diameter. Setting up a wormhole grid everywhere in the universe would take probably trillions of years — more than the age of the universe itself! So, obviously, whichever advanced alien civilization started building the grid, got enough time to cover only a very tiny part of the universe — probably one galaxy, or a few nearby galaxies. Probably that’s why most of the times we see the Guardians and other alien groups talking about galaxies only, but not about the entire universe, since their field of operation is limited by the reach of the wormhole grid only.

Compare the jump point technology with old machines in our real world. As years pass, we always realize the need of newer and more efficient machines; and that’s why technology evolves. Similarly, the MCU civilizations eventually realized that newer and more efficient technologies were required for real space exploration at a universal scale.

Meanwhile, Asgard’s Bifrost technology, earth’s magic portals, and most importantly, the tesseract were already known to work for groups of people to help reach distant places in the universe. Inspired by these, Mar-Vell took up the project to build spaceships which would work in a similar way. That’s when she came up with her design of a lightspeed engine, powered by the tesseract.

This brings us to the concept of how the lightspeed engine works. In my theory, this engine works by using the principle of space warp, as shown in the Star Trek movies. Einstein’s relativity says that nothing can move faster than light. But his theory also says that spacetime is warpable. The Star Trek movies show that, using the principles of relativity and quantum mechanics, the space itself on a path can be shrunk. Then a spaceship can travel through that shrunk space at a regular speed; but to the rest of the universe it would look like as if the ship is travelling at a superluminal speed. This is the basic principle of the warp drive technology.

Image : Space flight using warp drive. Image Source : Star Trek Beyond (2016).

Of course, there are technical problems in building a warp drive using real-world physics. (You can Google-search ‘Alcubierre drive’ for some fascinating real-world information.) But the MCU scientists can ‘easily’ build it by using the tesseract/space stone. In fact, the tesseract doesn’t need to be physically placed inside the engine; because Mar-Vell already found a way to extract the tesseract’s power and to store it into the engine itself. So, many spaceships with lightspeed engines can be built using Mar-Vell’s technology. These can be used for space exploration at distant parts of the universe, as well as for eventual traffic-system operations.

Image : Mar-Vell's lightspeed engine. Image Source : Captain Marvel (2019).

Unfortunately, Mar-Vell never got the time to complete her project. So, none of the civilizations in the MCU currently possess lightspeed engines. The jump point technology is their only stable space traffic option right now. But hope still remains. Mar-Vell’s space-lab and her research notes are still there, waiting for some new scientist to work on them.

This summarizes my ideas on jump points and lightspeed engines in the MCU. Let me know what you think about this. Also you can share your own ideas in the comments below.

P.S.  Ego’s Spaceship

We have also seen a different faster-than-light spaceship in the MCU — the oval shaped white spaceship that Ego was using in his human form. That ship was probably working in the same principle of space warp; but being a Celestial, Ego surely had his own way of building it.

Image : Ego's spaceship. Image Source : Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017).