If the Alcubierre warp drive, which would enable “faster than light” travel by warping spacetime around a starship, ever turns out to be possible, it may come with the side effect of generating cataclysmic explosions whenever it’s used. Could we use this as a “technosignature” for detecting advanced alien civilizations? If we could theoretically determine the properties of a warp drive-generated explosion, we could then monitor for such phenomena in deep space. If we ever detected them, it would imply both that warp drive technology is possible and that intelligent extraterrestrials exist to use it – an Earth-shattering discovery on both counts (forgive the pun).

Check out Extreme Tech’s article on warp drives and their (hypothetical) destructive effects at: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/140635-the-downside-of-warp-drives-annihilating-whole-star-systems-when-you-arrive