Warp drive

Faster than Light travel method in the Star Trek universe. A necessity if you plan to have stories take place between the stars.
Warp Drive is usually housed in nacelles that contain "warp coils". These power the ship at superluminal speeds called Warp Factors. Warp drive is powered by a matter-antimatter reaction that requires DiLithium to control its interactions in a warp core.
Warp Drive is usually pictured with a steam engine metaphor. With the warp core seen as the boiler, the antimatter as the fuel and the warp coils as the engine itself. Warp cores explode if over pressured, engines can over heat and fail, fuel can run out. Many writers in the 1960s when Star Trek was first written were familiar with the steam engine, and reached for that familiarity to explain the unexplainable. 
The writers were aware of what they were doing. One famous blooper reel clip shows Irving A. Feinberg shoveling coal into the engines of the USS Enterprise.
Numerous attempts have been made to rectify this idea with real world physics. Surprisingly they have not met with total failure. It just might work, if you can harness a negative mass the size of Jupiter and have all the energy in the universe to use as you please.
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