103 A Wrench in the Works (Warp and Subspace - Star Trek)
Description
This article is from the Star Trek Tech FAQ, by Joshua Bell inexorabletash@hotmail.com with numerous contributions by others.
103 A Wrench in the Works (Warp and Subspace - Star Trek)
NOTE: There are two distinct problems to be solved when describing any
FTL drive:
1. Special Relativity predicts (and this has been verified by
thousands of particle accelerator experiments) that it will take
infinite energy to accelerate an object to the speed of light, and
that acceleration past the speed of light is not possible.
2. In a relativistic universe, if you could get from point A to point
B faster than light could by ANY means (including leaving the
universe altogether), you have traveled backwards in time from
certain reference frames. Thus, you could, for example, relay a
message to yourself before you underwent the FTL travel, and
create a paradox.
Both must be addressed to form a believable FTL system.
"Warp works by <insert idea here>!"
Some favorites include:
* Making space into waves, and skipping between the crests.
* Bringing points in space closer together.
* Changing the speed of light around the ship. *
* The ship's mass is reduced to 0, and it can go any speed.**
* Leaving our universe, and going through a hyperspace.
* Entering subspace, and taking a bubble of real space with you.
* Compressing space around the ship to make the distance shorter.
All of these attempt to get around the first problem, but ignore the
second. And none of these match the evidence seen on screen and in the
Tech Manual, which is that the FTL effect is created by powerful,
nested subspace (a.k.a. warp) fields that push off each other to
generate FTL speeds.
Further, without any additional effects, each of these can lead to a
violation of causality, meaning every time you go into warp you time
travel, from a certain frame of reference. This is addressed in great
detail in Jason Hinson's "Relativity and FTL" FAQ.
Ships in warp interact with things in normal space, one of the reasons
for the navigational deflector. Things in warp require a subspace
field to enter and stay in warp, and it takes an enormous amount of
power to generate this. When the subspace field decays, a ship drops
out of warp returning to some STL velocity.
* The point has been made that by constructing a space with a
hyperbolic geometry between the source and destination of two points,
you can get away with FTL travel without the nasty causality violation
effects pointed out by Jason's FAQ. However, this involves making
changes to space-time along your entire flight path before you travel,
and it does not appear possible to construct this path faster than c,
so you'd have to set up a travel network beforehand. This obviously
isn't what is used in Star Trek.
** A subspace field does reduce the inertial mass of an object within
it, i.e. it appears lighter. But it does not lower the mass to zero,
nor on its own would this effect allow FTL travel, as massless
particles in our universe are still restricted to light speed. It
turns out that this effect isn't even considered for warp travel,
although it is used for impulse engines - less mass to push around.
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