Science: Warp bubbles - 'Star Trek' becoming reality?

The good news is two U.S. scientists claim they've found a way to travel faster than the speed of light.
The bad news is we may have to sacrifice Jupiter to get the energy to do it.
The link to the article can be found over at ABC News, but the trick basically works like this: Scientists would need to create a warp bubble by manipulating dark energy and the 11th dimension. Simple, right?
Hardly.
But the idea jives with physics, at least theoretically speaking.
See the problem with faster than light (FTL) travel is that according to Einstein (who's pretty much the go-to-guy for this stuff) it can't be done.
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, any object -- be it a planet or a speck of dust -- requires an infinite amount of energy to reach light speeds.
There's one problem with that idea though -- since the 1970s scientists have observed the very universe is expanding faster than the speed of light.
So what gives?
In recent years, scientists have pinned dark matter as the culprit, saying this mysterious (and presumably massless) substance is somehow propelling our universe's expansion at warp speeds.
So by manipulating this material, scientists suspect objects in our universe could, in effect, ride a dark matter "wave" to faster-than-light (FTL) speeds. Much like a surfer rides a wave at the beach.
All we'd have to do is create a massless dark matter bubble and piggyback inside that through the universe.
Thus, FTL travel falls in line with Einstein's theory of relativity and everyone's happy, right?
Well, maybe not.
The amount of energy needed to manipulate dark matter and create a warp bubble is would be nothing short of phenomenal. Roughly on par with the total mass of Jupiter, scientists say. And that's just the initial kick. To keep the ship moving through space, more and more energy would be required.
There's also the theory's reliance on string theory, which is unproven at best and a theory many physicists are decrying at a misguided "theory of everything" that will be disproved in the coming decades.
So, right now at least, the world of Star Trek seems to be pretty far off.
But theoretically, the idea of zipping to distant star systems does seem possible. And that's good news for all us science fiction fiends.