Warp drives, those vague constants of science fiction movies, might actually become real, allowing for travel faster than the speed of light. According to two physicists from Baylor, they’ve come up with a concept for a warp drive that would shrink space, allowing for a craft to jump ahead vast distances without breaking any laws of physics.
A starship could “warp” space so that it shrinks ahead of the vessel and expands behind it. By pushing the departure point many light years backwards while simultaneously bringing distant stars and other destinations closer, the warp drive effectively transports the starship from place to place at faster-than-light speeds.
Of course, to do such a thing we’d need to harness dark energy, the cosmic antigravity force that we know next to nothing about. The plan would be to use dark energy to create a bubble of space that would travel faster than the speed of light, all the while the ship would remain at rest within the bubble. Since space itself doesn’t follow the rules of physics, apparently, we’d be set to travel as fast as we pleased. Finally, a way to make the trip from New York to LA more convenient! [New Launches]
