According to NASA physicist and engineer Dr. Harold G. White, 43, it is possible to bend the rules of time and space that Albert Einstein constructed when he said that it is impossible to exceed the speed
of light. If White is correct, NASA could be closer to the dream of Trekkies everywhere of building a warp-drive engine and to travelling faster than the speed of light.
How might it be possible to exceed Einstein’s galactic speed limit?
White’s research and thinking about the possibility of creating a warp-drive engine and flying faster than the speed of light is based on the theories of Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, who in 1994 theorized that exceeding Einstein’s galactic speed limit was possible if scientists discovered a way to harness the expansion and contraction of space.
The way this expansion and contraction of space might be harnessed is by creating a “warp bubble” that expands space on one side of a spaceship and contracts it on the other. By doing this: “the spaceship will be pushed away from the Earth and pulled towards a distant star by space-time itself,” according to Dr. Alcubierre in his hypothesis.
As one step towards realizing his goal, Dr. White is trying to warp the trajectory of a photon to see if he can propel its travel at faster-than-light speeds. His laboratory floats above a system of underground pneumatic piers. It was constructed in a way that it would be free from seismic disturbances. This is because his team’s measuring devices can pick up the smallest vibrations, even those created from people who are walking nearby.