Warp drive

A warp drive is a spacecraft propulsion system (popular in Star Trek) where a spacecraft equipped with a warp drive may travel at speeds faster than light by many orders of magnitude. The spaceship does not actually travel but rather a high-energy warp core reactor is used to compress 4d spacetime in front of the ship, and decompress spacetime behind the ship, creating a warping of spacetime and the ship achieving a displacement to another point of the warped spacetime.

In contrast to other faster-than-light technologies such as a jump drive where travel is in hyperspace lanes, but rather involves a measurable passage of time in real spacetime using an exponential scale called "warp factor" where a factor of 10 is theoretically possible but never reached. Spacecraft at warp velocity would continue to interact with objects in "normal space". Jump drives are much faster than warp drives as you could jump from point to point almost instantly, taking multiple jumps to get to a destination.

See also:

Warp Drive