The Alcubierre Warp Drive

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Every Star Trek fan knows how to travel faster than the speed of light. By means of a warp drive that generates a warp bubble around the spaceship, the traveler can cover thousands of light years in a few hours. Miguel Alcubierre found a space-time metric that not only does this job but is also consistent with Einstein's general theory of relativity. The key idea is to contract space-time in front of the traveler and to expand it behind. Here, you can manipulate the size and the thickness of the warp bubble yourself.

Contributed by: Thomas Mueller (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


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Miguel Alcubierre, "The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel within General Relativity," Class. Quant. Grav., 11, 1994 pp. L73-L77.



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