boyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian) (07/24/84)
> For instance, what is warp drive? How does it work? Does it > attempt to defy Einstein's Theory of Relativity, or does it > implore subwarps in spacetime? > The latter seems to be the most logical assumption, to my eyes, > but how? In the TV show, no explanation was given. It was just > some neat way to get from one sector to another. And, if it does > indeed implore subwarps, WHY DO DIFFERENT WARP SPEEDS EXIST??? > > (Roger Espinosa) If any of us knew how the warp drive worked, we'd be up for Nobel Physics Prizes instead of sitting here typing away, and reading netnews. Why do you feel that a detailed scientific explanation is necessary? Look at it this way: When you're driving in your car, do you all of a sudden stop what you are doing, look out into a hypothetical audience and explain how an internal combustion engine works? The warp drive *is* nothing more than a convenient de- vice for getting the *Enterprise* from one place to another very quickly, and as Roddenberry and company are not physicists, it's unreasonable to expect them to explain how the warp drive works with anything more than pseudo-scientific lip service. Isaac Asimov once wrote (I'm paraphrasing him) that most sf authors realize that superluminal travel is probably impossible (Asimov himself believes it is), but they also recognize that it is a necessary convention for dealing with stories involving interstellar societies, if you need to get your charac- ters from one place to another quickly. Very few authors try to give more than a cursory idea of how their ftl drives work. As far as pseudo-scientific lip service goes, I think that warp drive warps local spacetime, so that the distance between points A and B are shorter than they would be in normal space. Presumably, warping spacetime takes a *lot* of energy, so controlled matter/anti-matter annihilation is necessary to provide sufficient power. As to why there are different warp speeds, think of them as quantized energy states. In energy state (warp factor) 1, the spacetime warp is sufficient to give the ship an effective velocity of c (the speed of light in a vacuum). At energy state (warp factor) 2, the effective velocity beomes (2^3)c, at state n, the effective velocity is (n^3)c. The fact that warp factors are always given in whole numbers (I don't recall ever hearing of Warp 5.3, for example) does suggest a quantum nature for warp drive. My advice is to tell yourself, "It's magic" and let it go at that. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA
paul@wjvax.UUCP (Paul Summers) (07/25/84)
<I've been told that this line doesn't make it to all hosts> As I recall, Star Trek was created with an eye on the past. A "Wagon Train to the stars" was the way a certain executive producer of reknown referred to it. Kirk's character was, I believe, based on Captain Horatio Hornblower, of the Royal Navy. The similarites are very strong between the historical situations of intercontinental travel on a tall ship, and interplanetary travel on the Enterprise. The captains of either ship must be bold, independent thinkers, and be representatives of the political association behind them. Anyway, back to the topic of Warp Drives, (the above was to set the mood for the point I am about to make), I believe that the speed at which the old sailing ships travelled was measured in "warps". (Aha! I hear you cry) Therefore, an analogy is being made between the Enterprise and a tall ship. Didn't Kirk at one point quote a poem by an ancient earth poet "...And all I ask is a tall ship/ And a star to steer her by"? (Quick, name the episode!, argggg, it's on the tip of my tounge) Paul Summers
boyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian) (07/27/84)
> I believe that the speed at > which the old sailing ships travelled was measured in "warps". > (Aha! I hear you cry) Therefore, an analogy is being made between > the Enterprise and a tall ship. > > Paul Summers The only nautical use of "warp" that I can come across is, to quote the AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY, "To move (a vessel) by hauling on a line that is fastened to or around a piling, anchor, or pier" or "A towline used in warping a vessel". Nautical speed is measured in "knots" --- nautical miles per hour --- though I don't know how far back that term goes. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA
bsafw@ncoast.UUCP (The WITNESS) (07/27/84)
If that's so, then they carried it a little too far in STTMP: why
describe sublight speeds in terms of fractional space-warping quanta? (When
the Enterprise went into warp drive and Sulu sat there saying "Warp point
eight... point nine....")
Of course, we could get out of this one by saying that STTMP was a
mess anyway, but I'd prefer to fit even it into a ST framework.
The novelization of STTMP had an interesting idea (which looks sus-
piciously like Roddenberry got back at Bob Shaw for "Starflight" in ORBITS-
VILLE) about warp speed: instead of being an Einsteinian wall, c was a
force barrier of sorts -- pass through it smoothly and the universe would
seem to shrink (with a cubic relation to speed, obviously). Pass through
it obliquely and you might find yourself trapped in the barrier (wormhole).
Somehow it doesn't seem workable... but who knows, maybe we just haven't
seen the energy needed yet and it's large but finite (just like c itself!).
--
Brandon Allbery: decvax!cwruecmp{!atvax}!bsafw
6504 Chestnut Road, Independence, OH 44131
Witness, n. To watch and learn, joyously.