Warp 10 Barrier

[Thomas Kelvin]

Aside from being a plot point, this concept makes no sense (to me). A warp bubble's relative velocity through space is only limited by the amount of power you can throw into it. Theoretically, it has no limit. I suppose if you threw enough power into a smaller warp field, it might cause a spacetime rupture, but that's dependent on the starship's size, meaning that you can't say the barrier is at a specific relative velocity. I've come up with my own ship (and design) and other non-canonical stuff - and in my "universe", the Warp 10 barrier doesn't exist (neither do tractor beams - yet). Thoughts?

 

[Timo]

The concept of infinite speed being, well, infinite and impossible to exceed is pretty intuitive regardless of the drive system involved. If warp 10 is the accepted designation for infinite speed in the 24th century (for whatever odd reason), then going faster than that is a meaningless concept: at warp 10, you already spend zero time traveling any and all the distances you wish to travel.

(Of course, Riker in "Time Squared" points out the one meaning the concept might still have: exceeding warp 10 would result in less than zero time being spent between A and B, i.e. the ship arriving before she left. Time travel for dummies, basically. But that's not a "method" of time travel, that's a conceptual presentation that Riker probably intended as flippant in the episode.)

Now, why would a warp factor (and not even warp infinite at that, but warp 10) be associated with infinite speed? We can't really even be certain that warp factors are associated with speeds in general - they might be throttle settings for all we know, the resulting speed depending on how long the setting is applied etc. But warp is not an engineering concept in Trek as much as it is a natural phenomenon: warp factors are expressions of the structure of the universe, with each factor coinciding with a power consumption minimum. There's nothing to say that such minima would be lacking between warp 9 (and its associated speed) and warp infinity (and its associated infinite speed), in which case warp infinity could just as well be called warp 10.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Thomas Kelvin]

I understand what you're saying, but you have to consider the fact that infinity is a concept. You can't ever reach infinite velocity because, in a way, it doesn't exist.

 

[Spot261]

1 is a concept, yet it is also something real.

We can't reach infinite velocity in the real world, but sci fi has it's own rules. If the show's writers declare it possible, then possible it is.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think the original intent was to simplify the warp scale and to avoid cumbersome warp factors like warp 87, warp 196, warp 612 and so on--while at the same time preventing ships from zipping across the entire Galaxy in a matter of seconds. As originally conceived, warp 10 was an impossible value (no matter what), but anywhere near it (like warp 9.6) would still be "ludicrous speed" fast enough to suit storytelling purposes.

It just really wasn't enforced all that well by writers and producers, IMO, because we still wound up with cumbersome stuff like warp 9.975 and ships that could still cross vast regions of the Galaxy as fast (or as slow) as a story demanded them to. And eventually, we wound up with VOY's "Threshold," in which Warp 10 should still have been impossible no matter what new technobabble was discovered (no matter how much energy you pour into a warp engine, the nacelles could only produce so many warp layers within measurable time).

 

[Dryson]

The problem with a warp bubble is not the mass of the ship itself but the mass of the Universe. As a ship travels faster and faster it occupies more space. As the ship occupies more space at a faster velocity it encounters more particles that will change their atomic structure due to interactions with the hull of the ship. Such interactions could change the alloy used to a different atomic structure causing different electromagnetic and magnetic interactions to take place with the particles in space as well as the gravity generated by suns, planets and other objects within the travel path of the ship.

So basically as the ship is traveling faster and faster and occupying more and more space it will encounter more and more electromagnetic and magnetic fields that would be attracted to the ship at faster rate.

Image a small toy U.S.S. Enterprise with a magnet in representing the warp bubble. The model is attached to a string that is 100 yards long. Situated at various distances of 25 yards on either side of the string are magnets of various intensities. Some extremely strong while others are extremely weak. The model is propelled along the string at 10 miles per hour. As it encounters each magnetic field it would be effected differently. Slightly at first but even greater when the velocity of model is accelerated to 50 mph where it covers more distance and encounters more magnetic fields at once. The first magnetic field that is encountered strong enough to pull the model away from the string at 10 mph would cause the model to experience an immense amount of turbulence and would be thrown out of control. Then would encounter the next strongest field and so forth where eventually the model crashes into something. Basically the ship would be trying to pull large suns and planets like Jupiter with it based on magnetic and electromagnetic interactions.

The key to a warp bubble is to reduce as much electromagnetic and magnetic interaction with the ship as possible which would include designing the hull and all aspects of the ship around lightweight materials that would withstand slight interactions but still able to be structurally stable enough to not fly apart.

The second aspect of the warp bubble would be to remove as much mass from any particle that would come into contact with the bubble as possible.

With particle mass removed as much as possible the space around the ship that the ship would be flying through would be similar to space as it was prior to the Big Bang when gravity generated from suns and planets didn't exist because such celestial objects hadn't been born yet.

With space being rendered to a no gravitational state around the ship in theory and speculation the ship in the bubble could travel faster than the speed of light and even greater than Warp Ten. You have to remember that the Big Universe is infinite and does not have any edges or bounds as our Universe does. So regardless of how fast you traveled you would simply occupy more and more space at faster rate of time.

 

[Spot261]

All of which is assuming you have the slightest clue how a warp bubble would actually work.

Which you don't

 

[Thomas Kelvin]

Yeah, warp bubbles have practically nothing to do with electromagnetic interaction - the only thing being changed is the fabric of space itself.

 

[Christopher]

Aside from being a plot point, this concept makes no sense (to me). A warp bubble's relative velocity through space is only limited by the amount of power you can throw into it. Theoretically, it has no limit.

Yes, that's exactly the point. "Warp 10" is just a really crappy name for infinite speed, which is, by definition, the absence of a limit. It's misleading sticking a finite number on an infinite value, and it's done nothing but create confusion for the past 30 years.

The thing is, when TNG started, Roddenberry wanted to impose a limit on starship speeds for dramatic reasons, since limits on your characters' power are generally a good thing to have. So he arbitrarily decided that warp 10 would be the fastest a ship could go, even though there had been references of warp factors up to 13-plus in TOS (and warp 36 in TAS, though in a really stupid episode that's generally best ignored). At first, it was assumed to be a finite value, hence Geordi's line "We're passing warp 10" in "Where No One Has Gone Before." But somewhere along the line, it was decided to redefine it as infinite velocity -- keeping the name "warp 10" as a sop to Roddenberry, but abandoning the concept that it represented any kind of actual speed limit. So from warp 1-9, the velocity equalled the speed of light times the warp factor to the power of 10/3 (theoretically, according to the published charts, although the onscreen speeds were almost always much faster than the charts alleged), but beyond that, it was an asymptotic curve with the velocity increasing to infinity as the warp factor approached 10. So instead of sensibly increasing the warp factor, you were stuck with doing things like warp 9.9, warp 9.999, warp 9.9999999, etc. It didn't represent any actual limit on speed, just an arbitrary unwillingness to use a number higher than 10.

The TNG Tech Manual struggled to rationalize this by asserting that there were nine velocities at which the interacting fields of the warp bubble stabilized in a way that reduced the power utilization, making it easier to travel at those effective speeds than at intermediate ones, and these were the integral warp factors 1 through 9. But there was no such stable configuration between warp 9 and infinite speed, and thus infinite speed was named "warp 10." Which is really contrived and confusing.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Aside from being a plot point, this concept makes no sense (to me). A warp bubble's relative velocity through space is only limited by the amount of power you can throw into it. Theoretically, it has no limit. I suppose if you threw enough power into a smaller warp field, it might cause a spacetime rupture, but that's dependent on the starship's size, meaning that you can't say the barrier is at a specific relative velocity. I've come up with my own ship (and design) and other non-canonical stuff - and in my "universe", the Warp 10 barrier doesn't exist (neither do tractor beams - yet). Thoughts?

You keep saying "relative velocity." Relative TO WHAT? Even the term "specific relative velocity" is actually kind of meaningless in space if you don't define a coordinate system that is in some way consistent with the ship's or the observer's frame of reference.

If you must think of warp drive in terms of absolute speed, you need to define velocity with respect to a fixed point (e.g. your destination planet). The maximum velocity you can travel is then a practical limitation based on how fast you can actually go and still be able to reduce speed and reach the destination without overshooting. Alternately, you could just throw out the "normal" conceptions of warp drive and think of a warp factor as a degree of acceleration and not as a factor of speed.

 

[Thomas Kelvin]

You keep saying "relative velocity." Relative TO WHAT? Even the term "specific relative velocity" is actually kind of meaningless in space if you don't define a coordinate system that is in some way consistent with the ship's or the observer's frame of reference.

If you must think of warp drive in terms of absolute speed, you need to define velocity with respect to a fixed point (e.g. your destination planet). The maximum velocity you can travel is then a practical limitation based on how fast you can actually go and still be able to reduce speed and reach the destination without overshooting. Alternately, you could just throw out the "normal" conceptions of warp drive and think of a warp factor as a degree of acceleration and not as a factor of speed.

I'm sorry - that term is kind of ambiguous. When I say relative velocity, I mean velocity relative the space itself. The warp bubble is the only thing moving, not the ship, so the velocity is relative to spacetime.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'm sorry - that term is kind of ambiguous. When I say relative velocity, I mean velocity relative the space itself.

Your velocity "relative to space itself" is always exactly zero. This is espcially true in warp drive, which is the reason why warp speed produces no noticeable g-force (your ship isn't moving at all, the space AROUND it is being moved).

Velocity can only be measured as a function of distance over time. That is, the distance between two discrete points (A and B) and the amount of time it takes to move between that points. Your "frame of reference" is the point of view of the person looking at point A and point B; in an inertial frame of reference, A and B do not move relative to each other, so you're measuring the velocity of an object moving between them. In a non-inertial reference frame (e.g. where you are sitting right now) A and B are both accelerating towards the center of the Earth at 9.8m/s, so you're measuring the velocity of an object that is moving between those two points AS WELL as falling towards Earth at 9.8m/s.

The warp bubble is the only thing moving, not the ship, so the velocity is...

Zero.

So now you have to measure the velocity of the "warp bubble" relative to an external point. Theoretically, a volume of warped space can move at literally any velocity it wants to as long as nothing OUTSIDE that volume can interact with anything INSIDE of it in real time.

 

[Wingsley]

Please, please, please, people. Nobody's head should explode over this, okay?

One of my contacts in the early 1990s lived in the same part of western Canada that Richard Arnold (former Star Trek archivist and Mr. Roddenberry's personal manservant) originated from. By unique happenstance, these two people encountered each other then, and they had a few conversations through the mid-1990s. The plethora of funny rules (such as the Warp 10 infinity rule) came from Mr. Roddenberry desire to assert himself once he got TNG off the ground. During the 1970's and '80's, Paramount the the novel publishers apparently did a lot of things (including publishing the FJ Tech Manual) without consulting him. Once TNG was up and running, Mr. Roddenberry found himself in a position of remarkable clout.

He sought to demonstrate his power by declaring that some past works need not be considered "100% Star Trek fact": apparently, his administrative version of personal head canon. This seems to have included some things he previously endorsed or was otherwise involved in on some level (TOS Year 3, TAS, FJ's Tech Manual, TMP Blueprints, etc.) Roddenberry also made up some rules on how Federation starships could be configured: how the nacelles could be arranged, etc. Arnold became Roddenberry's spokesman to assert this new "continuity."

It would be reasonable to fret over this Warp 10 business if it had some purpose. Could there be a principle that would speak to the philosophy of the Trek universe? Obviously not. This extreme velocity mythos only showed up in a couple of episodes in the entire franchise, and this rule never firmly enmeshed itself in the broader philosophical nature of the Trek universe in any appreciable way. Wormholes, transwarp/slipstream drive and transwarp conduits eventually bypassed any Warp 9.9999999 limitations anyway. So, in the end, the whole infinite velocity weirdness fell flat on its face.

So now, the Warp 10 = infinity rule is largely irrelevant, thrown under the bus shortly after Roddenberry's passing.

The whole silly mess was just internal office politics promulgated by Roddenberry. May it rest in peace with him.

 

[C.E. Evans]

As perhaps originally intended, anywhere around Warp 9 would have been more than enough for dramatic purposes and would have enabled our heroes to go anywhere they needed to go in a hurry. By itself, the idea of Warp 10 as an absolute value isn't that bad, and fewer warp factor numbers does keep things simple for most viewers, but it might cause problems for those who don't like the idea of Warp 9 as being sufficiently fast enough.

 

[Christopher]

So now, the Warp 10 = infinity rule is largely irrelevant, thrown under the bus shortly after Roddenberry's passing.

In fact, I think the warp 10 = infinity rule was how they got around Roddenberry's wishes. Like I said, he originally wanted warp 10 to be a finite maximum on starship speed (as seen in "Where No One Has Gone Before" where they're said to have passed warp 10). Once he was no longer directly overseeing the show due to his failing health (i.e. by the end of the first season), warp 10 was arbitrarily redefined as infinite speed, which allowed them to keep the letter of Roddenberry's rule (that there could be no warp factor above 10) while completely ignoring its spirit (that there was a maximum speed starships could achieve).

 

[Kor]

Future Captain Crusher and Captain Riker pulled off quite a feat by getting their ships to go at warp thirteen. My head is spinning.

Kor

 

[Timo]

The Okuda way, this makes perfect sense!

Imagine the warp power curve setup as shown in TNG (that is, the TNG Tech Manual). The nine power curve peaks, so prettily spaced on the (oddly chosen) horizontal axis, are a natural phenomenon - but "warp theory" on them might be wholly empirical: as engines grew more powerful, they encountered more and more of these peaks. The first few were misinterpreted as representing "the TOS scale", until better engines accurately revealed the higher peaks and "the TNG scale" (which supposedly differs from the TOS one mainly on these higher values) was adopted. But that, too, would eventually be proven false by better engines which would reveal further peaks beyond #9, perhaps after a big gap that threw off 24th century engineers.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Silvercrest]

Of course, Riker in "Time Squared" points out the one meaning the concept might still have: exceeding warp 10 would result in less than zero time being spent between A and B, i.e. the ship arriving before she left ... a conceptual presentation that Riker probably intended as flippant in the episode.

Future Captain Crusher and Captain Riker pulled off quite a feat by getting their ships to go at warp thirteen. My head is spinning.

It just means Riker was serious. And in an episode that already features phenomena traveling backward in time, it actually fits!

ETA: The previous comment was a joke. This one is slightly more serious.
Another way to interpret that line is as an extra hint that reverse time travel is involved. It may be that Warp 13 actually is impossible in the Trek universe, but — Since the entire AGT future seems to be Q's construct, having a character make reference to an impossibility (but a relevant one) would be Q's way of slipping in another clue.

Now, I don't actually accept this. There are several reasons why it doesn't work in the story. But it was an interesting (if peripheral) connection.

 

[Avro Arrow]

One of my contacts in the early 1990s lived in the same part of western Canada that Richard Arnold (former Star Trek archivist and Mr. Roddenberry's personal manservant) originated from.

Wait... Richard Arnold is *Canadian*? In all my time here, I don't think I've ever heard that mentioned before.

Great, another thing for everyone to blame us for...

 

[Christopher]

^Shatner and Doohan were born in Canada too.