Very nice, thanks.
Now, here is an apparently, recent paper on the possibility of getting there faster, or running away in terror as they arrive here out of nowhere. It's all Alcubere's, all the way down, Dr. Sagan.
It is well known that, locally, particles cannot exceed the speed of light. However in general relativity particles can travel globally at superluminal velocities [1,2,3,4]. This idea was explored by Alcubierre [5] to propose a way to propel material at velocities higher than the speed of light. The mechanism proposed by Alcubierre creates a distortion of space-time, called a warp bubble, resulting in spacetime contracting in front of the bubble and expanding behind of the bubble as the bubble moves through a geodesic. The line element proposed by Alcubierre was
ds2=−dt2+(dx−f(rs)vsdt)2+dy2+dz2,ds2=−dt2+(dx−f(rs)vsdt)2+dy2+dz2,
(1)
with rs=(x−xs)2+y2+z2−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−√rs=(x−xs)2+y2+z2 and vs=dxsdtvs=dxsdt. This corresponds to an ADM-like decomposition of the line element [6,7,8]. Studying this metric, Alcubierre concluded that the proposed warp implied the violation of energy conditions, since it seemed that a negative energy density would be necessary for the creation of the bubble.
Negative energy, eh? If these Chinese dudes are correct, negative energy is even time-measurable.
I am suspecting that to get anywhere with all this, we will need a large budget, yep!