Accidental “WARP BUBBLE” discovery by DARPA-funded researchers opens the door to faster-than-light travel
NASA’s prototype warp drive spacecraft. (Mark It is an incredible discovery that can take us to other star systems in the still very distant future, but somewhat closer than yesterday. The theory behind that engine — proposed in the 1990s by Mexican mathematician Miguel Alcubierre — allows a spacecraft to travel faster than light by curving space, expanding it behind the ship while contracting it at its bow. In this way, the effective distance between two points is shortened and the ship could cover that distance faster than a photon traveling through unwarped space. A nanoscopic bubble The team was working on a different project for DARPA, the Pentagon’s advanced technology division when they came across the bubble by accident. That original project—still underway—is evaluating the possibility of extracting energy from a phenomenon called a Casimir cavity. This effect describes the attraction between metallic objects separated by an extremely small distance. Accordi...