8 Technologies That We Should Never, Ever Build

5. The Alcubierre Warp Drive

In our minds, the distant future tends to hold at least a hopeful hint of intergalactic travel. Unfortunately, the sheer distances involved are threatening to limit us to our own solar system and no further, unless we can somehow crack Faster Than Light travel.

FTL travel is impossible in linear space, but the warp drive - dreamt up in sci-fi and backed by science - has always offered a little glimmer of hope. Rather that travelling through space at face-melting speeds, it works by bending spacetime around it and bringing your destination to you.

It was all looking like a legitimate, if far-off, possibility, butil a team of physicists in Italy found a fatal flaw.

When you fire up a warp drive, high energy particles that occur throughout the universe get caught up in its warp field. This isn't a problem for travelling, the issue is that stopping at any point will release the particles and could destroy whole star systems - possibly even generating black holes.

Not exactly the best way to make an entrance.