Red/Blueshift Effects on Warp Drive

[CuttingEdge100]

You know, I was thinking one of the biggest threats to space-ships at warp other than small objects getting in the way is the doppler-effect.

The faster you move forward the more blueshift you get, by the time you'd be travelling at several hundred to several thousand times the speed of light, the radiation you'd be getting would be absolutely searing. In fact it would probably be so much that it would probably destroy the ship, let alone vaporize every single person onboard.

One could use the shear energy power stuff on the ship, I suppose. After all the bussard intakes often are listed as "Space Energy/Matter Acquisition". One could use the energy to make fuel alternatively. If I recall if two beams of energy pass each other either perpendicular or pass like skew-lines you'll get a particle/anti-particle pair. (In fact part of me wonders if the particle/anti-particle pair-production that we believe to be random quantum flux are actually energy reactions like these. We can't actually see the energy unless they interact with something, and particle/anti-particles attract to each other and annihilate)

Granted to get that kind of energy paths you'd have to direct the beams of energy once they entered the space energy/matter sink. Still you could absorb the shear energy and use it to power stuff and throttle the ship's engines down a lot.


CuttingEdge100

 

[JuanBolio]

Once the radiation passes through the warp field itself and is inside the bubble of space/time carrying your ship along, it wouldn't be moving very fast at all. Not locally.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Juan Bolio,

As I understand it space is compressed in front of the ship, as would all the energy coming at it...

 

[Plecostomus]

You know, I was thinking one of the biggest threats to space-ships at warp other than small objects getting in the way is the doppler-effect.

The faster you move forward the more blueshift you get, by the time you'd be travelling at several hundred to several thousand times the speed of light, the radiation you'd be getting would be absolutely searing. In fact it would probably be so much that it would probably destroy the ship, let alone vaporize every single person onboard.

One could use the shear energy power stuff on the ship, I suppose. After all the bussard intakes often are listed as "Space Energy/Matter Acquisition". One could use the energy to make fuel alternatively. If I recall if two beams of energy pass each other either perpendicular or pass like skew-lines you'll get a particle/anti-particle pair. (In fact part of me wonders if the particle/anti-particle pair-production that we believe to be random quantum flux are actually energy reactions like these. We can't actually see the energy unless they interact with something, and particle/anti-particles attract to each other and annihilate)

Granted to get that kind of energy paths you'd have to direct the beams of energy once they entered the space energy/matter sink. Still you could absorb the shear energy and use it to power stuff and throttle the ship's engines down a lot.


CuttingEdge100

Could be... sounds interesting. Perhaps the Connie warpdrive worked on this principle. The reactors propelled the ship over the threshold and once in warp your method takes over and provides power.

Lemme ponder it a bit.

 

[sojourner]

You know, I was thinking one of the biggest threats to space-ships at warp other than small objects getting in the way is the doppler-effect.

The faster you move forward the more blueshift you get, by the time you'd be travelling at several hundred to several thousand times the speed of light, the radiation you'd be getting would be absolutely searing. In fact it would probably be so much that it would probably destroy the ship, let alone vaporize every single person onboard.

One could use the shear energy power stuff on the ship, I suppose. After all the bussard intakes often are listed as "Space Energy/Matter Acquisition". One could use the energy to make fuel alternatively. If I recall if two beams of energy pass each other either perpendicular or pass like skew-lines you'll get a particle/anti-particle pair. (In fact part of me wonders if the particle/anti-particle pair-production that we believe to be random quantum flux are actually energy reactions like these. We can't actually see the energy unless they interact with something, and particle/anti-particles attract to each other and annihilate)

Granted to get that kind of energy paths you'd have to direct the beams of energy once they entered the space energy/matter sink. Still you could absorb the shear energy and use it to power stuff and throttle the ship's engines down a lot.


CuttingEdge100

Warp drive imparts no true "speed" to the ship. There would be no doppler effect just as there is no time dilation.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Yep. Otherwise, you'd get some kind of silly result, like photons striking the ship at 1000c. How do you even begin to calculate the kinetic energy of an impact like that?

 

[JuanBolio]

Juan Bolio,

As I understand it space is compressed in front of the ship, as would all the energy coming at it...

More accurately space is compressed/contracted in front of the independent bubble of normal space/time that the ship rests in. Either the particles and radiation revert to their rest state once they've passed through the warp and enter the bubble, or are channeled around it either by the warp field itself or the navigational deflector.

This would make a ship effectively blind to all EM radiation, fore and aft, as well as invisible. The only way it could see or be seen would be with subspace sensors.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

I'm not saying that the light hits at 1,000c. I'm saying they get compressed to lower wavelengths and then hit at 1c.

 

[Myasishchev]

I'm not saying that the light hits at 1,000c. I'm saying they get compressed to lower wavelengths and then hit at 1c.

Which raises the energy of the photon by a thousandfold, energy that could only come from the warp field itself, basically making light a source of great friction for the ship at warp.

I sort of like to think of the light as being lensed through the field, producing that neat warp flash effect in the TNG-era stuff (as opposed to the "photonic boom"/light shockwave that seems to result in Star Trek 11).

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Myasischev,

Well, NASA's portrayal of the induction ring did show effects of red shift and blue shift.

In front of the ship everything would be bluer, behind, redder.

 

[JuanBolio]

Myasischev,

Well, NASA's portrayal of the induction ring did show effects of red shift and blue shift.

In front of the ship everything would be bluer, behind, redder.

At FTL they would be so blue ahead as to be instantly deadly, and thus needing to be deflected, and behind so red as to be utterly invisible, as you're traveling faster than any light coming at you from that direction.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

JuanBolio,

I don't remember the specifics, but they did show at different FTL equivalent values what the redshift in the rear and blueshift in the front would look like.

Past a certain value their would be an increasingly large area behind the ship that would be just black...


CuttingEdge100

 

[Ronald Held]

IF warp drive is GR based, the incoming light would be blueshifted and the rear redshifted. There are also angular effects. I have not see any recent stills or movies on this.

 

[aridas sofia]

Myasischev,

Well, NASA's portrayal of the induction ring did show effects of red shift and blue shift.

In front of the ship everything would be bluer, behind, redder.

At FTL they would be so blue ahead as to be instantly deadly, and thus needing to be deflected, and behind so red as to be utterly invisible, as you're traveling faster than any light coming at you from that direction.

This is an important point -- I guess the deflector would be needed at warp, primarily for this high end radiation (but also for any dust or even penetrating through the small forward opening that would link the bubble to the rest of the universe.

 

[sojourner]

^Once again. At warp, the warp bubble is moving a ripple in the fabric of the universe at FTL. inside the bubble, the ship is technically not moving and would detect no doppler shift.

 

[JuanBolio]

^Once again. At warp, the warp bubble is moving a ripple in the fabric of the universe at FTL. inside the bubble, the ship is technically not moving and would detect no doppler shift.

Nor would it be able to see anything beyond its bubble. Also, any lightwaves that travel through the compression of warped space ahead of it might emerge into the bubble (if not deflected) in a super-compressed/accelerated state, meaning deadly radiation for the crew.

 

[aridas sofia]

This is where the Trek conception of warp drive is disconnected from what was described by Alcubierre and elaborated upon by Krasnikov, Van Den Broeck, Thorne and others -- a conception that attempted to mathematically reconcile what was going on with General Relativity. (In fairness, Christopher L. Bennett has attempted to incorporate an understanding of warp drive grounded in the latest theory into his Trek writing). Per any of these descriptions the "bubble" of warped spacetime is still connected to the universe. The ship is, if I understand correctly, stationary within a kind of wormhole that has extremely small openings at the ends, and which is inflated around the spacecraft (by the effects of antigravitational negative energy).

I never gave much thought to the possibility that a deflector might be needed while the ship was traveling within this warped space. However, it makes sense that these openings, however small they might be, would permit leakage of radiation and matter into the bubble of distorted spacetime.

The use of the same negative energy-based antigravity technology that inflates the bubble -- but somehow directed forward -- might screen the ship from the dangerous leakage.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Okay, for the time being, let's look at the Alcubierre model since it's closest to Star Trek.

No motion would be felt when at warp obviously, inside the bubble, would you be able to see outside the bubble? Also even though the bubble is either moving faster than light, would the radiation entering the bubble, if that could happen, get compressed into the bubble?


CuttingEdge100

 

[JuanBolio]

Okay, for the time being, let's look at the Alcubierre model since it's closest to Star Trek.

No motion would be felt when at warp obviously, inside the bubble, would you be able to see outside the bubble? Also even though the bubble is either moving faster than light, would the radiation entering the bubble, if that could happen, get compressed into the bubble?


CuttingEdge100

On the first question - no. The ship could not see out, and nothing on the outside could see in. Not with any sensors that pick up electromagnetic radiation, anyway. "Subspace sensors" are of course another matter.

Question two - unknown. Its possible that light and particles would be deflected around the ship due to the nature of the field. If not, they'd have to be deflected with a separate apparatus before they intersected the field.

 

[Ronald Held]

Yes incoming EM and other radiation could be detected by the ship, depending on the magnitude of the angle of of the direction of motion.
Now radiation from the rear might not get to the ship if the speed of the ship were to great. Try this paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9907019