Trekkies Unite!

Or . . .How I Was Out-geeked At Work:

Aaron sent me a link to a U.S. patent application for warp drive technology. I'm not sure which was cooler, that somebody went to the trouble of thinking this all through and making said application, or that Aaron knew why the patent wouldn't stand. I asked him, in jest, to "Please tell me this was actually approved." His reply:

Hey there Bernie,

Unfortunately, no.
It would be cool if it worked though, eh?

Aside from strict patentability issues, the major reason it's unlikely is that the "invention" relies on a directed flow of gravitons.

Gravitons are hypothetical particles.

From Wikipedia:

"Detecting a graviton, if it exists, would prove rather problematic. Because the gravitational force is so incredibly weak, as of today, physicists are not even able to directly verify the existence of gravitational waves, as predicted by general relativity. (Many people are surprised to learn that gravity is the weakest force. A simple experiment will demonstrate this, however: an ordinary refrigerator magnet can generate enough force to lift a mass against the force of gravity generated by the entire planet.) Gravitational waves may be viewed as coherent states of many gravitons, much like the electromagnetic waves are coherent states of photons. Projects that should find the gravitational waves, such as LIGO and VIRGO, are just getting started."

The coherent states of many gravitons that they mention, i.e., gravitational waves, are incredibly weak.
From Wikipedia:

"Gravitational waves are very weak. The strongest gravitational waves we can expect to observe on Earth would be generated by very distant and ancient events in which a great deal of energy moved very violently (examples include the collision of two neutron stars, or the collision of two super massive black holes). Such a wave should cause relative changes in distance everywhere on Earth, but these changes should be on the order of at most one part in 10^21. In the case of the arms of the LIGO gravitational wave detector, this is less than one thousandth of the "diameter" of a proton. This should give some indication of why it has proven very difficult to detect even the strongest gravitational waves!"

Here are some links to some real, super-sensitive gravity-related experiments that are currently underway:

Cheers,
Aaron

Again, I bow before your superior geekiness Aaron.