Star Trek-like 'warp drive' theorized

WACO, Texas, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've developed a theory that would allow a spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light without breaking the laws of physics.

Baylor University Associate Professor Gerald Cleaver and graduate student Richard Obousy theorize that by manipulating the extra spatial dimensions of string theory around a spaceship with an extremely large amount of energy, it would create a "bubble" that could cause the ship to travel faster than the speed of light.

"Think of it like a surfer riding a wave," said Cleaver. "The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would be traveling faster than the speed of light."

The researchers said their theory is based on the Alcubierre drive, which proposes expanding the fabric of space behind a ship and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship wouldn't actually move, rather the ship would sit in a bubble between the expanding and shrinking space-time dimensions.

And since space would move around the ship, the theory does not violate Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, they said.