We cordially invite you to attend the KSE Mathematics Seminar on the topic: “Faster than Light Space Travel in the Framework of General Relativity”

Speaker: Greg Huey.

KSE Mathematics Tournament for School Students

We invite students of schools, lyceums, and gymnasiums to participate in the KSE Mathematics Tournament — an intellectual competition that combines deep mathematics, teamwork, and the atmosphere of a true academic challenge. It is an opportunity to test your abilities, meet like-minded peers, and experience the excitement of solving complex and non-standard problems.

Dates: May 8–10, 2026Location: Kyiv School of Economics, Dragon Capital Building (3 Shpaka St.)

Participation Requirements

Teams of 3–6 students are invited to participate. Each team must select a captain who will represent it throughout the tournament. Prior registration is mandatory by April 15, 2026 (inclusive).

The tournament is based on a pre-published list of 20 problems from various areas of mathematics. To qualify for the on-site round, a team must solve at least 10 problems (fully or partially).

Tournament Stages

Online Stage (until April 15, 2026)Teams register, solve the problems from the list, and submit their written solutions in PDF format to [email protected]. While students may consult with teachers during preparation, the main work must be completed independently. By April 22, the jury will announce the list of teams invited to the on-site stage and determine the initial group distribution.

On-site Stage (May 8–10, 2026)The program includes qualifying mathematical battles, a team written олимpiad, and final battles for the highest-ranked teams.

The KSE Mathematics Tournament is a space where mathematics becomes a tool for critical thinking, argumentation, and fair competition. We invite you to take on the challenge and join a community of strong and motivated students.

The problem set is available via the link.The tournament rules are available via the link.Registration is open until April 15 via the link.

For participants from other cities, the organizers will cover travel, accommodation, and meal expenses.

Greg Huey’s academic background bridges physics and mathematics. In July 2024, he left his position as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Sweet Briar College and came to Ukraine as a volunteer with the organization Technology United for Ukraine to provide technical support for the military.

His research interests include high-energy cosmology, data analysis, general relativity, algebraic geometry, deformation quantization, and number theory. Since arriving in Ukraine, his focus has temporarily shifted to drone-borne sensors and algorithms for coordinating drone swarms.

Date: February 25
Time: 16:30–17:30
Location: KSE Dragon Capital Building, 3 M. Shpaka St., Room 4.07

In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre proposed a model of faster-than-light travel within the framework of general relativity. He envisioned a scenario in which a traveler remains locally at rest within a compact region of flat space-time, while a surrounding distortion of space-time moves this region at a velocity exceeding the speed of light relative to a distant observer.

Although this idea is highly intriguing, subsequent research has identified significant challenges, including issues of construction, stability, and the requirement of so-called “exotic” matter. In particular, such models have been argued to require negative energy density — formally, a violation of the weak energy condition — leading to claims that they are physically impossible.

However, the no-go theorem supporting this conclusion assumes that space-time is free of singularities. In general relativity, different space-times can be joined along co-dimension 1 boundaries. This typically results in a singularity that supports a thin membrane at the boundary — a framework familiar from brane-world cosmology.

In recent work, the speaker constructed a model of faster-than-light travel by joining regions of different space-times along thin membranes and demonstrated that no violation of the weak energy condition occurs. Technically, arguments claiming that superluminal warp-drive models require negative energy rely on the Landau–Raychaudhuri equation, which describes the evolution of the divergence of a congruence of null geodesics. In the proposed model, the discontinuity in extrinsic curvature across the boundary membrane provides a positive contribution to this equation, thereby removing the requirement for negative energy density.

Please feel free to share this announcement with colleagues who may be interested.