“Warp” Drive has been bandied about often in science fiction, to good or bad results. In a nutshell, warp drive means that a vessel can travel faster than the speed of light, sometimes much faster.
This of course is silliness, or creative license. Or is it? Let us examine it from both a scientific aspect and a philosophical one.
Einstein in his seminal publications on Special and General Relativity indicated that no matter in real space can attain a speed equal or above that of the speed of electromagnetic radiation, otherwise know as light. If one examines the equations, it becomes very obvious that when an object with mass approaches the speed of light, henceforth referred to as “c”, relativistic effects become important. Here are the pertinent equations.
Taken to the limit when velocity approaches c without limit, the mass of an object becomes essentially infinite, or in other words, as massive as the sum of the mass in the universe.
There is also the time dilation effect. As a massive object approaches c, the passage of time within the speeding envelope of that object diminishes. This has also been verified experimentally, when short lived particles such as pions and muons with known decay rates at normal velocities can be kept “living” much longer in a particle accelerator. Actually, it is easier than that, since muons are produced in the atmosphere from cosmic rays (actually very high velocity atomic nuclei) that blast the nuclei from nitrogen and oxygen into subatomic particles. None of those should ever reach the surface of the planet because their lifetime is much shorter than the time required to go here. But, since their velocity is not far from c, their natural decay processes are retarded as far as our time reference in concerned. Experiment verifies theory in this case.
The other important thing about Relativity is that mass distorts time space (our universe, as best as we can tell, is four dimensional, with the three spacial dimensions and the temporal one, although some of the theorists like nine, ten, eleven, or even more dimensions. Here is a fact from vector analysis: only in four dimensions (our universe, with the three physical dimensions and time as the forth) and in seven dimensions (a mathematical construct with very pathological mathematical outcomes) is it possible to draw a tangent line on every point of the dimensional sphere. In four dimensions you can “comb your hair” such that every hair lays down in a perfect sphere. In three dimensions, it is impossible, because you will always find a “cowlick”. In other words, in three space there is no way to find a tangent function to every surface, but in four space it is possible, and it is also possible in seven space. However, seven space is dangerous, since the math sort of destroys its domain. Mathematicians, please explain this for our readers. Dammit, I am a scientist, not a mathematician, but those are the rules of vector analysis.
Now to faster than light travel. Most scientists will agree that it is impossible to accelerate a massive object to approach, meet, or exceed the speed of c. I agree. The operative word is “massive”. There are particles that theory sugguests that can not exist BELOW c. These are called tachions, and have never been demonstrated, but theory requires them, just as the brilliant Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac predicted “anti electrons”, only a few years later named “positrons”.