Interstellar Travel.... fact or Fiction

Below is the extract from the third Sci Fi newsletter where a competion result was posted. the aim was to explain Hyperspace and Warp Drire differences....

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Ask & Answer
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In the June 19 newsletter I asked the readers why Star Trek's Enterprise had different Warp Factors, if speed has no meaning in hyperspace. Here's how you responded:

Each of these writers receive 500 gift points for their rather entertaining explanations:


Teapot wrote:

Greetings and Salutations! My theory is that the "speed" of a warp engine is to create a "down time" when the characters have time to develop. If a story's characters zipped around as you have explained, then they would quite simply be just another dude doing adventurous stuff. Thank you for the opportunity to put my two cents in.


Dark Angel wrote:

The only difference I can see it making is how many more times the crew has to fix the brakes. If you are speeding up that much, think about how much more powerful your brakes would have to be. The Enterprise seems to warp through space going super fast then shoots out and stops almost immediately. How can they do that?!?! There isn't a way to make your brakes that well. Besides, they explained in an episode from the original Star Trek that if they were to slow down while in hyperspace, their ship would be slowly destroyed.

Needing an explanation...


Medussa wrote:

LOL! I never gave that whole "warp" thing that much thought, but you are absolutely right! I guess I like the Babylon 5 concept of hyperspace. To get into hyperspace, you either had to have a specialized engine on your ship, or you have to get to a "jump gate." Travel isn't instantaneous; you have to get to a certain point within hyperspace before you are able to jump out. Hyperspace in the Babylon 5 universe isn't an easy thing to transverse, either. You have to follow beacons while in hyperspace to get from one point to another. If you go off beacon, you get lost. If you get lost, you're more than likely never going to be heard from again.

As far as why there are different speeds of "Warp" in Star Trek...I think Scotty made it all up. I think he was trying to make Capt. Kirk feel better during some crucial chase. The dialog probably went something like this:

Uhura - "Captain, the Klingons have caught up to us!"

Kirk - "Dammit, Scotty! Can't you make us go any faster?"

Scotty - "We're already in warp, sir. We can't go any faster"

Kirk - "Well, can't we go to warp 2? I need speed, Dammit!"

Scotty - "Uh, OK, captain. I'll just adjust the engines. It'll take 10 minutes...

Kirk - "You have 5!"

(4 minutes later)

Scotty - "Captain, I've done it! See the computer monitor? It shows that we're in 'warp 2' now..."

Kirk - "Scotty! You're a genius."

Scotty - "Of course I am."

And the rest was history (so to speak).

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750 gift points go to jappo for this interesting explanation:

Ok. So you want a reason for hyperspace having "speeds."

Here we go:

Hyperspace doesn't have speeds. Consider: there are different kinds of matter. So far, so good? Well, I think there are different kinds of space, too. I can name two types: occupied space and unoccupied space. So far, u with me? K. Now here's the deal: Hyperspace "speeds" aren't actually speeds at all. It is defining the TYPE of space that one would like to travel to. Therefore, if one wanted to go to a place where the space was unoccupied, one must specify that is what they want. I also think there are different kinds of unoccupied space. I think that that is just a category. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to me that there are different "speeds" when it comes to hyperspace. (Isn't hyperspace a type of space itself?)

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The Swirling Brain receives 1000 gift points for coming up with a cool analogy and mentioning Dune:

I'm certainly not a guru on pseudo technology, but I think that Star Trek's Warp drive is similar yet different than your idea of Hyperspace. Warping as it implies would warp space so that you could move a short distance quickly. This is sort of like jumping from one point in space to another as in hyperspace, however you don't have an unlimited distance you can travel, you only get to go a short distance. Consequently, you have to do this warp over and over to get where you're going. The rate at which you do this warp over and over is your warp speed. Anyway, I don't know for sure, that's how I resolve this pseudo technology. Think of this speed sort of like watching a film that has many frames. It may take only an instance to get from one frame to the next, but it takes two hours to get to the end of the film jumping one frame at a time. I think Dune also had their own concept of "folding" space which I think was where you made space into some type of waves and you jumped from one peak of the wave to the next and from peak to peak until you get to your destination. I guess it's sort of somewhere between or around the same idea as Hyperspace and Warp drive.

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Michael Shadowood receives 1500 gift points for this multi-dimensional explanation:

Cool newsletter. Hyperspace is an interesting idea. Very important to the development of any story that takes place over galactic distances. You had an error I caught in your definition. We live in a 4 dimensional world, the 4th being time.

One idea for the levels of warp can be concocted by the fact that there are no limit to how many extra dimensions. Scientists feel, by analysing the mass/energy rate and the need for an extension of available geometric shapes with equal sides and volume (4, I think, in our 3d universe), that there are actually 13 different dimensions, all played out on a smaller scale (Sub-atomically). (How they come up with this number is an extensive explanation. I found it originally on an info website yet I lost the address since.) One could imagine that with each level of dimension, travel is not instantanious but distances are distorted. Or that, being the 4th dimension is the 3rd dimension's 'Time', it could be imagined that each additional dimension plays the timepiece for the previous dimension. As one jumps from one dimension to another, "time' or the speed of, changes. It could be stated that as one goes higher up the dimensional chain, time is shortened. Each level would take more energy to achieve therefore it would be harder to reach level 9 then level 5.

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Finally, Force Master receives a whopping 2000 gift points for going all out with this fascinating explanation of the principles behind the Warp Drive, which will probably wind up winning the Nobel Prize for Physics:

Here are a few more details to expand upon the last newsletter, regarding Hyperspace and Warp Drive.... warning, it is physics intensive at some points!

How a 'real' Warp Drive would work....

The idea that validates warp travel is that one can show explicitly in the context of general relativity that the following is possible in principle:

Say you want to travel to the nearest star but don't relish 10,000 years in a rocket ship. Well then all you have to do is travel to a 'La grange' point (where the gravity of 2 or more planetary bodies cancel each other out, like the one 3/4 of the way between the Earth and the moon) and remain there at rest with your engines off. (You don't have to travel there to do this, but it really does make the entire process easier as you do not have to factor surrounding gravity fields into the equations!).

Now arrange for the space between you and the nearest star - all 4 light years of it - to collapse in, say 1 second, while the space behind you (where the Earth is) expands correspondingly in the same period of time. After space has done its thing, you look around and find you're now only a short distance away from Alpha Centauri, and some 4 light years away from Earth - all without moving! Then simply turn on your sub-light engines and go the rest of the way!

However... This to me sounds very fishy, but the equations of general relativity have been solved to reveal exactly such a possibility.

However, consider the following....

1. Expanding space would require a kind of matter unlike anything we have observed directly - a kind of matter that is gravitationally repulsive rather than attractive. While the laws governing the behaviour of matter on the subatomic scale make such a phenomenon realizable on that scale, we have no idea whether such material could be created EVEN in principle on a macroscopic scale.

2. It would take more energy than the sun will emit in its entire lifetime to make such a material useful for moving any macroscopic object, even if the material could be produced.

The theoretical physicist Larry Ford and his colleagues at Tufts University have shown that in order not to violate known laws associated with energy conservation, space must expand and contract (at any one time) only in the thin surface layer of a bubble surrounding the spacecraft. (This is where Star Trek got it right with the Warp field!)

Anyway... It turns out that to maintain a region of exotic matter within a thin shell encircling a macroscopic object (a spacecraft!), you would need an energy roughly equivalent to 10 Billion times the entire mass of the Visible Universe! Perhaps we might imagine transporting single atoms at warp speed, but not spacecraft.

How a Star Trek warp field works....

According to Star Trek, a Warp field distorts not just the space continuum, but time as well. So as you approach c. (c. = lightspeed), time is dialated so you do not encounter the slowing of time that Einstein says must occur. The effect of space/time distortion is a warp field. Outside of the field, space remains unchanged.

Actual Star Trek Warp drives never actually attain c. instead they 'straddle' the c. 'wall', alternating between two velocity states while remaining at neither for longer than a Planck time (the smallest measurable time part, that is 1.3 x 10(-43) seconds) This has the net effect of maintaining velocities at c. while avoiding the infinite energy expenditure which would otherwise have been required.

The theory behind the different levels of warp speed is the number of overlapping warp fields. The cumulative effect of the force applied by multiple fields drives the vehicle forward, using 'asymmetrical peristaltic field manipulation'. This means that the infamous 'Warp field coils (devices in the engines of Star Trek ships) fire sequentially fore to aft. The more often they fire, the greater the build up of field layers, and the less time for the ship to slow down between field emissions.

Each new field expands outwards, experiencing a rapid coupling and decoupling, (as the fields collide and separate) at the variable distances from the ship, simultaneously transferring energy and separating from the previous field layer at velocities between 0.5c and 0.9c, providing the ship with sustainable forward energy.

Now, if you understood any of that, it is entirely allowed within the boundaries of normal physics, effectively circumventing the limits of General, Special and Transformational Relativity.

Now, during the force coupling, the radiated energy allows the engines (and attached ship) to make the necessary transition into subspace, applying an apparent mass reduction effect to the spacecraft, allowing it to bypass the mass increase that Einstein says must occur as ships approach c.

It is actually in subspace that the real travel occurs. Everything that has gone before was similar to you getting your car ignition turned over, putting it in 1st gear and taking your foot off the clutch to start moving.

It is in subspace, where the traditional laws of physics do not apply (you have sub-space physics instead) where the multiple overlapping warp fields begin to accelerate the ship past c.

Again, the more warp fields you emit, the faster the ship moves. Now, in order to proceed, some of subspace must be explained (argh!)

Subspace exists in conjunction with normal space (that is it occupies some of 'real space' while still being separate from it. (In this way it is similar to Hyperspace) the further into subspace you go, the less the laws of physics affect you. It also explains why a ship in Star Trek is visible to the naked eye, as it is only partially buried in subspace (kind of like a ocean going ship - you know there is more of it beneath the waves, and you can see it through the water, but the deeper the water, the harder it is to see!)

Now, because subspace alters the laws of physics, it means that you can have more warp fields emitted by your ship, causing it to 'bypass' the c. wall (which is the upperlimit of speed as defined by Einstein). Top speed in subspace is dependent upon the number of overlapping fields you can force into a given space, which is dependent itself upon the maximum energy levels those fields can sustain, which, according to Star Trek is 10(8) megajoules, rendering you with a supposed forward momentum of 3053 times the speed of c., which is about Warp 9.9 according to the Warp scale,

Now that is fast, but to show HOW fast...

0.000440 seconds to go from earth to the moon,
13 seconds to cross the solar system,
14 hours to travel 5 light years (easily putting you past Alpha centauri!
2 days to travel 20 lightyears (one sector in Star Trek)
33 years to cross the Federation (supposedly 10,000 c.years)
and 655 years to travel to the nearest galaxy!

Phew...!

Now - onto Hyperspace! (Oh no, I hear you cry!)

Hyperspace is indeed supposed to be a higher dimension as mentioned in the last Sci-Fi newsletter. However, the theories currently surrounding Hyperspace - and surprisingly enough how it is portrayed in Star Wars, is that the 'dimension' of hyperspace is shaped like a triangle (bear with me and all will be explained).

The bottom of the triangle (the longest side) is the side closest to 'realspace' (the dimension we all know and love!) The further away from 'realspace' you can get, the smaller the hyperspace 'dimension' and the closer you come to achieving mergence with the 3 dimensions that make up our universe (height width and length) and the entire universe becomes a singularity. This then results in entering into hyperspace from one point in the universe, one can move instantaneously to any other point in the universe.

Now, in order to get further from realspace, would require more energy to go deeper. The deeper you go, the shorter your journey. This explains why the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars goes .5 past lightspeed. It is the energy level that the ship can achieve to get deeper into Hyperspace than other ships.

There.... i'm done!

There is no try, there is do.
There is no anger, there is serenity.
There is no death....
There is the Force!

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