This visualization of traveling at warp speed imagines what it would look like: with distant objects appearing unchanging but with closely-passing stars whooshing by at breakneck speeds. (Credit: misterfantastic/Pixabay)

I wrote the book on warp drive. No, we didn’t accidentally create a warp bubble.

The same (former) NASA engineer who previously claimed to violate Newton’s laws is now claiming to have made a warp bubble. He didn’t.

In perhaps his most famous quip of all-time, celebrated physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, when speaking about new discoveries, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” When you do science yourself, engaging in the process of research and inquiry, there are many ways you can often become your own worst enemy. If you’re the one who has a new idea, you must avoid falling into the trap of becoming enamored with it; if you do, you run the risk of choosing to emphasize only the results that support it, while discounting the evidence that contradicts or refutes it.

Similarly, if you’re an experimenter or observer who’s become enamored with a particular explanation or interpretation of the data, you have to fight against your own biases concerning what you expect (or, worse, hope) the outcome of your labors will indicate. As the more familiar refrain goes, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” It’s part of why we demand, as part of the scientific process, independent, robust…