There are places in physics where "negative mass" can briefly appear, but as I understand it, the quantity of such negative mass times the duration of the negative mass is a constant... and a very, very small constant to boot. It's a balancing term in QM interactions, not something you're ever going to hold in your hands.
As I like to say, assume one impossibility in physics, and it's not surprising that you get other impossibilities as a result. Unfortunately, in practical terms, requiring Jupiter sized amounts of stable negative mass and requiring "Voyager" sized amounts of stable negative mass do not appear to be appreciably different in difficulty, both being totally impossible.
I'd also point out that this article isn't even remotely unique. People have been tweaking the Alcubierre equations ever since they came out. Nobody has yet squeezed the "impossible" out of it, but each and every one of them has been accompanied by, well, basically this exact article. I support people trying to tweak them as a scientific Hail Mary, but I wish credulous science writers would stop writing these stories as if moving from "impossible" to "impossible" was some sort of huge step forward in practical terms.
I agree entirely. The journalist in this article is giving the impression that this idea is more widely accepted than it actually is. It paints a picture of scientists agreeing on this when in reality it's a person or small group of people saying this.
At the same time, this kind of research is cool, and is an important part of science. It's just misrepresented by publications.
