The First Physical Warp Drive Models
Are not what you expect
Of all the ideas we have for faster-than-light exploration — wormholes, hyperdrives, tachyon particles, teleportation — the most promising has always been the warp drive. Promising. But not necessarily realistic. Any idea for faster-than-light (FTL) travel is going to be highly speculative and exotic, especially considering that it’s hard enough as it is to reach 1% the speed of light, much less to surpass it. And what makes warp drives so much more promising than all the others? We’ve assessed, designed, and theoretically gone further with the idea of warp drives than with any other FTL technology. It was even an idea thoroughly analyzed by NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratory, resulting in detailed 3D renderings of a warp drive ship.
Recent papers by different scientists have continued this public fascination with warp drive travel, seemingly bringing us closer and closer to real life blueprints for constructing a craft. One of the most exciting advancements was announced in the paper “Introducing Physical Warp Drives” released this year in the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity. It gives us the most realistic model to date of a working…
