NASA working on faster-than-light space travel, says warp drives are ‘plausible’

Researchers found that making adjustments to the design of a real-life warp drive first proposed by physicist Michael Alcubierre in 1994 significantly reduces the amount of energy required to power it.

Alcubierre’s design called for an American football-shaped spacecraft with a flat ring attached to the ship. Space time would warp around it, accelerating the ship to as fast as 10 times the speed of light without the ship itself ever breaking the speed of light. This would make trips to local stars a relatively quick jaunt: a trip to Alpha Centauri — some four light years away from Earth — would take just shy of five months.