But that thinking is based on the concept of Alcubierre warp drive. I'd like to suggest another means of exceeding lightspeed. We know that the speed of light varies depending upon the medium through which it travels (higher speed through air than water, higher through open space than air, etc.) But space isn't exactly emply. The Casimir effect demonstrates that there is something there: virtual particles, zero-point energy, whatever you wish to call it, which slows things down less than air or water, but does have some effect. And saying that time itsef slows down as you push the envelope may just be a colorful way of saying that processes are slowed down by resistance from those virtual particles. Learn to disspiate those guys as you go (don't ask me how; I'm not a Starfleet engineer), and you might just be able to get around that speed limit. And that has nothing to do with bending space, exotic matter, or wormholes. But it would also require a new propulsion strategy, also possibly based on dealing with virtual particles.
That may seem too far out there, but recently researchers at Harvard University have done some strange things in this area, since research into anything to do with manipulating the Casimir effect has become important to development of nanomachines.
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