Abstract

A recent breakthrough has moved the concept of a "warp drive" another step along its path from a fictional SF prop-idea to a well founded physics concept that might one day be realized. This improvement on the Alcubierre warp drive was devised by general relativity theorist Chris Van Den Broeck of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. He has eliminated seemingly insurmountable problems with the Alcubierre warp-drive scheme. His improvement employs topological gymnastics to keep the interior of the warp bubble large while making its external surface very small. But before describing Van Den Broeck’s work, I’ll summarize the Alcubierre warp drive concept itself, first featured in my column (#81) in the November-‘96 Analog