Physicists Revisit Whether Warp Drives Could Ever Work

Physicists are increasingly asking whether warp drives, long dismissed as science fiction, could work in principle. Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed in 1994 that spacetime could be contracted ahead of a spacecraft and expanded behind it, creating a "warp bubble" that avoids locally exceeding light speed. The concept requires exotic matter with negative energy density, and whether it could ever be produced remains unknown.