Quote of the Day
In a surprising paper, scientists say they’ve nailed down a physical model for a warp drive, which flies in the face of what we’ve long thought about the crazy concept of warp speed travel: that it requires exotic, negative forces.
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Where the existing paradigm uses negative energy—exotic matter that doesn’t exist and can’t be generated within our current understanding of the universe—this new concept uses floating bubbles of spacetime rather than floating ships in spacetime.
The physical model uses almost none of the negative energy and capitalizes on the idea that spacetime bubbles can behave almost however they like. And, the APL scientists say, this isn’t even the only other way warp speed could work. Making a model that’s at least physically comprehensible is a big step.
Plus, Alcubierre himself has endorsed the new model, which is like having Albert Einstein show up to your introductory physics class.
Caroline Delbert
December 8, 2025
Warp Drive: Scientists Say a Physical Warp Drive Is Now Possible
Video by Sabine Hossenfelder explaining some things:
I really like this video. It helped me understand space time as well as warp drive theory better than anything other source.
I wish Eric Engstrom were alive to hear about this. One of the lures he used to get me to join his startup on January 1, 2000, was that we were going to become incredibly rich and be able to pay for his immortality project. Then we would be able to “hang around” until warp drive was available, then travel among the stars and maybe even the galaxies.
I was more than a little skeptical about the ending to that story. Did he really believe that? I don’t know. But I do know if you don’t think something is possible then you will never be able to do it. If you think it is possible, it might be something you can accomplish. Placing my bet on the fantastical outcome that might be possible, I went to work for Eric as his first employee. The company folded in about May of 2001 after the dot com bubble collapsed. I never have regretted placing that bet.
Imagine that. It never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving!
Yes. planets, stars, solar systems, star groups, and galaxies moving through space I can handle. I can even conceive of space/time bubbles moving. But space itself?
There are lots of things I don’t understand. A PNP three-lead transistor bigger than the exposed part of a pencil eraser was too much 55 years ago, so maybe I should look at space/time again.
Moving at 1 or 10 times the speed of light is way too slow to explore an universe that is possibly 93 billion light years in length.
So for a limited time only. I will sell shares in the Zorn Industries and the new Space Bender 3000. Rather than go faster than light we will fold space like a sheet of paper.
No negative energy needed!
Heinlein wrote a book about galactic travel as actually zipping across points in folded space: ‘Starman Jones’.
All good.
But what about those people inside the bubble when you stop and open the door?
What about that bubble? How is it moving that fast outside. And you inside, not?
The speed you travel is only a small fraction of the equation.
How would you steer it? Moving whole bubbles of space does not mean you’re moving ALL space and the objects that are back at their old, own speed.
In order to travel through space, one has to know one’s route, and the object in one’s path.
Possible? Well OK. But how useful can it actually be? If the known universe is made up of the same three particles of matter. All you’re going to find is maybe a place they are arranged different to fit the condition of that place in time.
Which would be cool. Unless there are predators there. That tricked us into coming there so they can hunt us on a whole new game preserve.
That might be bad.
Interesting but will still require FAR more energy than we can currently generate, control and make use of safely. In addition we still need to master control of gravity in order to climb out of Earth’s gravity well in addition to making space travel safer by having gravimetric environments on any ship we may build. But it’s a start. A small one but still a start.
This is always how “warp drive” worked, back to the origins of Star Trek. If you pay attention, all the combat happened at sublight speeds.
It’s an interesting mathematical trick, but there is, unfortunately, nothing remotely physical about it. Creating your own pocket universe just isn’t in the cards.
The “LT O’Leary” universe by David Drake uses space travel by shifting between different universes where the physical laws are different. This is not only more interesting, but is slightly less impossible.
The funny part is that within a 100 years of reading this. We’re all going to have learned about dimensional shifting the hard way.
At 70. I’m already learning more than I want to know about gravity. And gravitational shifting. (My joints tell me about it every morning.)