Warp drives have been a staple of science fiction for many years, even before they were popularized by Star Trek and Star Wars. There is some physical rationale behind them, but until recently it was thought that they require something called "negative energy", which is outside the bounds of physics as we understand it.
However, now there's a new theory that proposes that a warp drive could be built without violating our current physical models, although the engineering involved is well beyond the present state of the art. Still one can hope.
Bobrick and Martire start with the idea of an Alcubierre warp drive, a concept developed by Miguel Alcubierre in 1994—he envisioned it as spacecraft that could contract space time in front of the vehicle while expanding it behind the craft. But such a craft would require a massive amount of negative energy, which would not be feasible for a real spacecraft. Bobrick and Martire suggest instead that a massive gravitational force could be used to bend space time. The trick is finding a way to compress a planet-sized mass to a manageable spacecraft-module size in order to use its gravity. Because of the implied difficulties, a warp drive created from the model developed by the researchers could not be built today, but it does suggest that someday it might be possible.
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