You know that scene in the film Contact where the “Machine” is spooling up, its three spinning rings kicking out crazy light and an electromagnetic field powerful enough to pitch nearby Navy ...
NASA scientist and Advanced Propulsion Team Lead Harold White has the kind of job thousands dream of and few achieve -- he's in charge of the space agency's efforts to determine if a faster-than-light ...
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." On one particular Friday night in 1992, Miguel Alcubierre couldn’t stop thinking about Star Trek. For ...
Humans are one (small) step closer to traveling at faster-than-light speeds.
Warp drive has long been a narrative shortcut for science fiction, but a new generation of physicists is treating it as a serious, if distant, engineering problem. Instead of asking whether ...
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: A research paper proposes a fully physically realized model for warp drive. This builds on an existing model that requires negative energy—an ...
The picture depicted above is not some secret NASA project built in the recesses of the dark side of the moon, but the brainchild of concept artist Mark Rademaker, who designed what could be the first ...
“Scotty, I need warp speed in 3 minutes or we’re all dead.” This command by first generation “Star Trek” Captain James Kirk in the fictional 2020s is a famous line in modern science fiction. It’s the ...
The space economy is becoming a multi-layered commercial market. Falling launch costs are unlocking scale across satellites, data, and communications. Space is shifting from exploration to ...