Scientists Announce a Physical Warp Drive Is Now Possible. Seriously.

[Snaploud]

Scientists Announce a Physical Warp Drive Is Now Possible. Seriously.

Humans are one step closer to traveling at faster-than-light speeds.

By Caroline Delbert

Published: Dec 08, 2025 2:33 PM EST

This brings us to the new study, which scientists in the Advanced Propulsion Laboratory (APL) at Applied Physics just published in the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity. In the report, the APL team unveils the world’s first model for a physical warp drive—one that doesn’t require negative energy.

The study is understandably pretty thick (read the whole thing here), but here’s the gist of the model: Where the existing paradigm uses negative energy—exotic matter that doesn’t exist and can’t be generated within our current understanding of the universe—this new concept uses floating bubbles of spacetime rather than floating ships in spacetime.

Scientists Announce a Physical Warp Drive Is Now Possible. Seriously.

Humans are one step closer to traveling at faster-than-light speeds.

www.popularmechanics.com

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.06824

 

[Neb Lleb]

Hopefully, this won't lead to an Event Horizon-style debacle where the warp drive leads to hell itself...

 

[tharpdevenport]

The trajectory to Hell is paved with good intention spacebubbles.

 

[FredH]

I see these all the time, and you’ll notice the linked paper is from 2021. Probably a slow news day. It’s nowhere on the foreseeable horizon, folks.

As a side comment, not actually about this — since at least it’s talking about reputable, actual science — is it just me, or has Popular Mechanics really diven into credulous woo in the last few years? I keep seeing things about consciousness altering the universe, Rupert Sheldrake suggesting stars are conscious, that sort of thing.

 

[Zero Kelvin]

I see these all the time, and you’ll notice the linked paper is from 2021. Probably a slow news day. It’s nowhere on the foreseeable horizon, folks.

As a side comment, not actually about this — since at least it’s talking about reputable, actual science — is it just me, or has Popular Mechanics really diven into credulous woo in the last few years? I keep seeing things about consciousness altering the universe, Rupert Sheldrake suggesting stars are conscious, that sort of thing.

The consciousness thing is several decades old. Even John Archibald Wheeler mooted it. If one looks hard enough, I'm sure some ancient Greek philosopher, such as Parmenides or Zeno of Elea, had a similar notion.

Modifying inertial mass might not be a good idea. Atomic radius depends inversely on the inertial mass of the electron, so reducing your inertial mass might make you explode unless you were able to adjust the local values of the speed of light, Planck constant and fine structure constant to compensate. I don't know that creating a warp bubble would affect inertial mass inside the bubble, but Mach's principle suggests that it might. It's a rabbit hole I'm not prepared to go down. I'm not in any hurry to get to Proxima Centauri or even to go there at all, in fact.

 

[Crisp Conditions]

Hopefully, this won't lead to an Event Horizon-style debacle where the warp drive leads to hell itself...

My advice: Don't decorate the machinery with spikes.

 

[Zero Kelvin]

Don't let Sam Neill design it.

 

[publiusr]

Luigi Coloni spaceships were so flat that the Xenomorphs—seeing no headroom—gravitated to the Warhammer ships with their vaulted ceilings.

 

[Zero Kelvin]

I did hear recently the theory that Event Horizon and Warhammer were related. I have no familiarity with the latter, so I can't comment.