A Warp Bubble is Made

A properly constructed Alcubierre warp bubble. As space constricts in front of the vessel and expands behind, the ship is theoretically pushed forward at speeds faster than light.   Image: LSI, White, et al.

Space is vast. Really, really vast. So vast, in fact, that it would take Voyager 1, the furthest man-made object from earth, more than 73 millenia to reach the nearest star to our Sun, Proxima Centauri, at its current speed of over 38,000 mph, if it were headed that way to begin with. In short, if we're ever going to find a way to explore beyond our own solar system, we need to find a way to bend the laws of physics to make faster-than-light travel possible.

A team of scientists working with DARPA, including warp drive pioneer Dr. Harold G "Sonny" White, may have just taken us one step closer to that reality with the announcement that they've discovered a space-warping bubble, the fundamental thing needed for the faster-than-light travel of the Star Trek universe.

Before we jump ahead to romantic visions of space travel, Dr. White said, we need to think about what we could do with a microscale warp bubble, like the one his team discovered, before even dreaming of what it could be in the future. Dr. White is passionate about space travel, but says we need to start simple. "there may be lots of other things along the way before we ever get there that could have some really interesting implications," he said.

What is a warp bubble?

This is a pretty complicated notion that involves a ton of math, but at its most basic level, a warp bubble is a bit of space that's contracted in the front and expanded in the back. The contraction/expansion theoretically pushes the bubble, and its contents, forward at speeds surpassing the speed of light without ever violating the laws of physics: You're not technically traveling faster than light, you're surfing a bubble of condensed space.  READ MORE...