Scientists Believe Light Speed Travel Is Possible. Here’s How.
A functioning warp drive would allow humans to reach the far ends of the cosmos in the blink of an eye.
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It's a good primer for anyone who hasn't heard of Sonny White's work or the Alcubierre theory/drive. Currently the best option we have at the moment for making any progress beyond conventional action-reaction rocketry. Also very far away still. The biggest error is in the subtitle, claiming "reach the far ends of the cosmos in the blink of an eye". If it worked it would be magnitudes faster than anything Newton-related we can imagine, but it's still enormously slow compared to the size of even just our galaxy.
A great beautiful video short by the amazing Erik Wernquist (and narrated by the same Sonny White) called "Go Incredibly Fast" shows how big even "near" space is.
Another good example is in the game "Elite Dangerous" which uses the Alcubierre concept for its local space drives making travel within most systems reasonably fast. Even in the game use going from star to star they resort to a more instant "wormhole" technique as the warping effect would take too long to get anywhere in the galaxy.
But without some kind of loophole past Newton and Einstein, we're pretty much stuck in our own solar system, or to end up using generation ships that take hundreds or thousand of years to get anywhere.
I actually used Supercruise to go to another nearby star when I just started in Elite, but was disappointed to find out that the system doesn't load in unless you do an actual jump. Did find the 2001c maximum speed easter egg though, so that's cool
How long did it take? The system didn't load in because those wormhole animations are cleverly disguised loading screens.
It must have taken at least 45 minutes. I remember enjoying the 'realism' though and just left it going while I made a sandwich
