Star Trek's warp drive: Not impossible

[Swede]

The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving."

Already happened?
One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang. "If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30600749/

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Very cool. I remember a TNG episode where warp drives were found to

damage subspace. Would be weird if that was also found to be possible.

[MUAD_DIB]

4. Bust several static warp bubles might be able to fix it.

STNG: All good things.

[Towlie]

2. "It's the space-time that's moving" sounds like gibberish. Moving through what?

[targetpractice]

3. The continuum, of course.

;-)

[qazplm]

5. well if its gibberish

then we have problems because inflation theory is what currently explains, well, a whole lot of things.

[Occulus]

7. Itself. n/t

[nomorenomore08]

6. Inflationary theory is some trippy shit, to say the least.

Somebody (I think it was Alan Guth) speculated that the size of the observable universe relative to the size of the universe in its entirety, might be akin to the size difference between a quarter (as in a 25-cent piece) and the entire Earth! :wow: