Well. This could be a game changer. New Warp Drive theory

[weirdspecter]

Hmmm, s'pose that's fair, Todd.

I was thinking back to the legacy drives which were a part of the setting -- things like the differential sail -- which seemed (from the old articles I've found on the wayback machine) to be in the hands of ordinary sophs? I think it's fair to put the magic in the hands of the gods to some extent, it's just a shame we don't get to see more of those technologies precisely because they're largely held above modos and low transaps.

As for mass-energy usage, I was thinking specifically about the article about warp bubble production at different S levels and the extreme requirements involved -- multiple Earth mass black holes orbiting sol-mass holes, knotted cosmic strings, exotic basement universes with gravitational gradients -- if these soliton... drives? can be produced in less extremal conditions, that would at least be interesting for the setting, and would potentially lessen some of the logistical issues of the void bubbles in setting, what with these proposed drives not relying on exotic matter.

Definitely agree on letting it percolate, though -- could be that even though it's passed peer review, this paper is totally wrong. It does strike me as... *optimistic* to say the least that the authors has talked about building FTL drives 'within a lifetime' in some press releases on his work.