In a surprising paper from 2021, scientists Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire suggested that they’d nailed down a physical model for a warp drive, which flew in the face of what we’ve long thought about the crazy concept of warp speed travel: that it requires exotic, negative forces.
The paper proposed a broader way to classify warp-drive spacetimes. In some subluminal cases, the authors argued, a warp bubble could be described using positive energy rather than the exotic negative energy that has haunted the idea since Miguel Alcubierre’s famous 1994 proposal.
To best understand what the breakthrough means, you’ll need a quick crash course on the far-out idea of traveling through folded space—because warp drive has always sounded cleaner in science fiction than it does in general relativity.
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