FTL - Faster Than Light

If you read or watch scifi at all, you're probably familiar with the term FTL, or faster than light travel, because it's the only way we will ever be able to explore more of our solar system - nevermind the universe. Well, okay, not the only way (wormholes come to mind), but the fact is because everything in space is so damn far away if we want to know more then we've got to invent FTL travel.

One method would be to employ an Alcubierre drive, which, unlike most methods of FTL travel actually conforms to the General Theory of Relativity rather than violates it. This method of travel was conceived by Miguel Alcubierre who imagined a bubble of normal space–time around a spacecraft that would allow for FTL travel by expanding space itself behind the ship and compressing it in front. Normal physics still applies within the bubble, and so the passengers don’t feel any acceleration at all. The bad news according to Popular Mechanics:

You can’t get in or out of the bubble. Crossing the threshold would probably crush and obliterate a spaceship.

You can’t destroy the bubble. One must deform space–time to make the bubble in the first place. How would you re-form it? No one knows.

You might destroy your destination. Even if scientists knew how to stop the bubble once it started, decelerating would release high-energy particles from the front-facing side. Anything at the destination "would be high-energy-particle blasted into oblivion." 

It requires energies that might be impossible (or incredibly difficult) to achieve. In mathematical models, the sides of the bubble would require energy per unit of volume to be less than zero. We’re not sure this "exotic energy" exists. And if it does, it would take 10 billion times the mass of the observable universe.

The good news is NASA is actually working on this (is that not so cool?!) and physicist Harvey White says the energy problem may be surmountable by "tweaking the warp drive's geometry" and thereby reducing the energy needed from "a planet with a mass equivalent to over 300 Earths, down to an object that weighs just under 1,600 pounds.

What’s more, if you oscillate the space warp, White claims you could reduce the energy load even further. Instead of taking “decades or centuries,” White says this would allow us to visit a spot like Alpha Centauri — a little over four light years from us — in as little as “weeks or months.”

So, where do you want to go?