More on ripping...

Alright, so ripping apart isn't all that simple and probably should have been given a little more attention. 

Scientists have playing with making their own miniature black holes for a little bit now with some success.  Ripping apart space and time is well within our grasp and we just have to get better at it.  Dangerous?  Yes. 

The tiny little experiments that we are doing now pose little threat as the tears in the fabric are microscopic.  Pinholes that don't weaken the overall strength of the universe.  At most, a few atoms can slip through the hole but what happens if we need a hole big enough to fit a ship through?

The best case scenario is that the universe wants to stay together.  If we poke a finger into a bowl of gel then pull it out, the gel settles back into the space our finger occupied.  If the fabric of space works like this then we'll be alright.  The hole our warp drive makes will seal itself after the ship passes through.

Now, there is another scenario that isn't very appealing.  If the universe is more like Jello then we have an issue.  Poking a finger into Jello leaves a distinct channel where our finger has been.  It does a fair job of resealing itself but the damage has been done.  If we keep poking at the same piece of Jello, it begins to fall apart and we're left with a delicious yet sticky mess.

If our warp travel through the universe leaves these little tunnels where we've been then eventually we're going to make a mess of things.  Every trip will make a wormhole that will leak energy and matter from one end to the other.  More and more wormholes means more and more leakage.  Eventually the wormholes criss-crossing through the universe will make a mess of the universe.  Matter and energy will slip about in the universe at random and if the wormholes start to grow then we could see entire solar systems swallowed up and flung about the universe.  Scary.

The problem I see is that I don't know if we'll be able to tell which scenario it will be until it's too late.