Pentagon Study of Warp Drives Surfaces, Finds Garden Snails Would Outpace Current Designs

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A 2010 report on warp-drive propulsion has appeared among newly released UFO documents, according to the Daily Star. The paper was produced under the Defense Intelligence Agency's Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, known as AAWSAP, and examines whether faster-than-light travel is truly possible.

The Daily Star reports that the study describes the basic idea as an asymmetric bubble of space, contracting ahead of a craft and expanding behind it. The craft would sit still within the bubble while the movement of space itself carried it along. The newspaper's account suggests such a vessel might allow astronauts to roam the Universe in search of extraterrestrial life.

The concept traces to physicist Miguel Alcubierre, who in 1994 proposed a mathematical framework for it. The difficulty, the report notes, is that the bubble appeared to demand far more energy than humanity can supply. The study's authors reportedly allowed that a warp drive could be built in theory, but with available energy the craft would not leave the ground. "Garden snails can crawl faster than this," the author is quoted as saying.

The paper reportedly pins its hopes on dark energy, the little-understood force that expands the Universe, and probes how it might be exploited. Katy Clough of Queen Mary University of London told the paper the work made theoretical sense but was unashamedly speculative. She said she had expected little, since using dark energy for warp drives is a common crackpot notion, and she warned that faster-than-light travel could also break causality.

The Daily Star adds that NASA has separately forecast a nuclear-powered Pulsed Plasma Rocket, under development by Howe Industries, that could cut a Mars trip to two months. That craft, the paper stresses, would still not reach warp speed.