The Alcubierre Drive The stars are a long way away – even the ones in our own galaxy. And as for galaxies, don’t even ask how far away they are. Not, of course, that this worried science fiction authors, who merrily invented such things as warp drives which inexplicably went faster than light, and worm holes, jump points and the like which mysteriously linked the space around stars that are a long way apart. Some of the more technically astute picked up on a theoretical faster than light drive proposed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994. For a long time the idea has been regarded with more than a little scepticism by physicists. Roughly speaking it involves creating a wave in space-time, so that space time bunches up in front of the drive and stretches out behind it. The device then rides the ‘warp bubble’ of bunched up space-time, going faster than light. Stretching and bunching space-time is exactly what a gravity wave does. In 1994 gravity waves were a theoretical concept which no one had ever detected. Now, of course, we have detected gravity waves, and we even know how to create them. Just bang two black holes together! OK, I concede that there may be a few engineering problems to overcome, but I have every faith in the ability of our engineers to handle them. Anyway, scientists are starting to view the idea of an Alcubierre Drive as something more than a sci-fi fan’s opium dream, and that was really the biggest hurdle of all. But there is another, perhaps even more important, point. Until now scientists had considered the speed of light to be an -absolute- barrier, a speed above which no one could travel. That put the blinkers on any thinking about how anyone could go faster than light. ‘Serious’ physicists didn’t try to buck Einstein’s equations, unless they wanted to be subject to ridicule. The Alcubierre drive may, or may not, be technically feasible at some time in the future. It doesn’t matter. It opens up for enquiring minds to think, “Well if that’s possible, what other ways are possible to go faster than the speed of light, and easier to engineer?”
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