Re:

I'm pretty sure you're talking about a spacetime metric invented by
Miguel Alcubierre.  The abstract for his paper is here:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0009013

If you check out the full paper, it has a bit of math to get through,
but
on page 7 there are two equations that give the time from outside the
warp
bubble (capital T) and from inside (tau) to go some distance D between
two
star systems.  It even mentions the fact that you need to engage the
drive
some distance away from the starting star.  It might be useful for those
that want some real equations to use in figuring out FTL travel.

The real problems with something like this is that it takes a lot of
mass
(or energy) to warp spacetime to that degree, and it requires a negative
energy density to contract spacetime, something that may or may not be
achievable in real life.

Randy Wolfmeyer
Dept. of Physics
Washington University

On Wed, 20 Mar 2002, Allan Goodall wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Mar 2002 13:27:24 +0000, John Lambshead <pjdl@nhm.ac.uk>
wrote:
>
> >New Scientist reports on a theoretically not impossible way of
pushing a
> >space craft FTL.
>
> This was discussed in Scientific American about two years ago. It's a
neat
> idea, though, and I've been using it as the basis of my own FT
universe.
>
>
> Allan Goodall 		 agoodall@hyperbear.com
> http://www.hyperbear.com
>
> "At long last, the earthy soil of the typical,
> unimaginable mortician was revealed!"
>  - from the Random H.P. Lovecraft Story Generator