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Davephaelon
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I was watching an excellent presentation of the theory of the Alcubierre warp given by Miguel Alcubierre himself at the 2017 Starship Congress (link below). At the 43:55 mark Alcubierre explains that the negative energy is located around the circumference of the craft in a toroid. I always thought that it was located at the rear of the craft where spacetime is expanded, so this was a surprise. But that made me wonder how does the craft decide which way to move, since at first glance the configuration seemed to be perfectly symmetrical forward and back. I did, however, notice that in the diagram on the screen, (at 43:55), the side profile view of the negative energy region looks to be slightly forward of center, as defined by the x-y coordinate grid. So maybe that's the answer.