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A Warp Drive Breakthrough Inches a Tiny Bit Closer to 'Star Trek'

Physicists have figured out how a warp drive could work—even if it's more useful for our understanding of gravity than interstellar travel.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity is a tool kit for solving problems involving gravity that connects mass and energy with deformations in spacetime. They have some physical scenario, like a planet orbiting a star or two black holes colliding, and they ask how those objects deform spacetime and what the subsequent evolution of the system should be. In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, the researchers dug deep into relativity to explore if any version of a warp drive could work.

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