Can you see a ship go by at Warp speeds?

[KottenFutz]

Hey smarties,
Super dumb questions here maybe, but, what does a ship going at warp speeds look like from an outside view? In other words, can you see it zip by if you were looking out the window at it? Can you see the warp field, or is it invisible??

And since warp seems to be a "bending" of space could you even tell a ship is there? Does it go into some other dimension? (for lack of a better term)

I understand it may go by too fast to see with the naked eye, but let's say you could at a distance. What if you were on some lonely outpost near commonly travelled corridors or "space highways", could you see warp traffic?

Just wunderin'

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You would see its afterimage distorted by the "tachyon effect." You wouldn't be able to see it moving towards you, but as it passes you WOULD see a sudden burst of light and then two blurry highly doppler-shifted images moving away from you in opposite directions, one following the ship and one moving back the way it came.

For this reason I've always assumed a starship traveling at warp is nearly blind except by the limited picture it can get from subspace radar, which can only detect massive objects like planets and asteroids and other warp-driven vessels.

 

[Timo]

...Which makes one wonder how ships at warp can chase each other at what looks like point-blank ranges, and target the finer points of each other with the usual Star Trek weapons accuracy.

"Subspace radar" is probably capable of very good resolution, good enough that realtime information can be gleaned on planetary targets more than a dozen lightyears away (as often is case in VOY and sometimes in TNG) - thus, information of corresponding resolution on another starship just half a lightweek away is probably also available, allowing for the targeting of her lower portside phaser banks or the rear shuttlebay doorknob.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've personally always thought that the faster a ship goes at warp speed, the deeper into the subspace domain it goes and becomes pretty much invisible to an outside observer, IMO. I think if a ship zips by you at warp speed, not only won't you be able to see it, you wouldn't even know it unless you were actually scanning for it or it had some sort of localized effect.

I believe that most sensors can scan into subspace and detect ships at warp. The sometimes mentioned "warp engine signature" probably registers on sensors like a radar blip, so you might be able to "see" warp traffic moving through a region that way.

 

[Anticitizen]

I guess it depends on your definition of how warp drive works. If you're bending actual space around the ship, and talking about visual perception, then probably not, as light would follow the curvature of bent space.

Regardless of the mechanism, however, there's really no way. If you're at a stationary position relative to Earth, and a starship flies by at warp 7... there's nothing to see. You're describing a speed at which a ship would traverse the entirety of the solar system in a fraction of an instant. Faster than the speed of light would mean faster than the frequency at which the neurons in your visual cortex fire.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

...Which makes one wonder how ships at warp can chase each other at what looks like point-blank ranges, and target the finer points of each other with the usual Star Trek weapons accuracy.

If they're traveling at the same speed, they'd do it the same way they would if they were both stationary. Separated by a couple of warp factors is another matter, but in those cases the relative speeds are implied as being sublight anyway (for some reason; TOS was kinda weird about this at times) so it wouldn't matter.

"Subspace radar" is probably capable of very good resolution, good enough that realtime information can be gleaned on planetary targets more than a dozen lightyears away (as often is case in VOY and sometimes in TNG)

Only when plot requires it, and wildly inconsistent even then. It's directly implied in "Gambit", however, that it isn't as accurate as EM-based sensors, and if it's the same thing Spock was using in Balance of Terror it's not even good enough to get a solid targeting fix.

 

[Anticitizen]

Of course, Spock was probably inventing the damn technique as we watched it in balance of terror!

...he was cool like that.

 

[SpyOne]

Wow. I hadn't really thought about this, but I'm not sure it would be possible for a human eye to understand what it saw if the object was moving faster than light: the images you would receive would be so brief that I'm not sure they would register at all (most people can't perceive something under 1/10 second in duration).

For this reason I've always assumed a starship traveling at warp is nearly blind except by the limited picture it can get from subspace radar, which can only detect massive objects like planets and asteroids and other warp-driven vessels.

And yet, ships traveling at Warp seem to have a pretty good idea of what is around them. "It is an M-Class planet, Captain" and all that. Clearly they have access to FTL sensors that are pretty sensitive.

 

[Cyke101]

...Which makes one wonder how ships at warp can chase each other at what looks like point-blank ranges, and target the finer points of each other with the usual Star Trek weapons accuracy.

"Subspace radar" is probably capable of very good resolution, good enough that realtime information can be gleaned on planetary targets more than a dozen lightyears away (as often is case in VOY and sometimes in TNG) - thus, information of corresponding resolution on another starship just half a lightweek away is probably also available, allowing for the targeting of her lower portside phaser banks or the rear shuttlebay doorknob.

Timo Saloniemi

I've always wondered how the ship's "cameras" work at warp speeds... we've seen all kinds of viewscreen images at warp, oftentimes of two different objects at two different warp speeds (say, a stationary ship getting a visual of a ship coming at warp 9, or a ship at warp 7 being pursued by a much faster ship). Given that warp factors are exponential, I think we can rule out things like telescoping lens out of the equation. Perhaps the cameras themselves are warp/subspace-powered in some way? Of course, that's just conjecture on my part.

 

[STR]

I've always wondered how the ship's "cameras" work at warp speeds... we've seen all kinds of viewscreen images at warp, oftentimes of two different objects at two different warp speeds (say, a stationary ship getting a visual of a ship coming at warp 9, or a ship at warp 7 being pursued by a much faster ship). Given that warp factors are exponential, I think we can rule out things like telescoping lens out of the equation. Perhaps the cameras themselves are warp/subspace-powered in some way? Of course, that's just conjecture on my part.

It wouldn't be a camera so much as a computer simulation based on sensor inputs. So the viewscreen shows the Borg cube you're chasing, but if you look out the window, you see the relativistically distorted view of practically nothing.

As an interesting sidenote, Firefox wants to capitalize "Borg" seems like Mozilla has some trek fans.

 

[blssdwlf]

Just hypothetically, if an observer were looking at a giant light source (like the sun) and a ship warped by between them would there be anything noticeable? Even though the ship would go by so quickly that we couldn't see it, I can't help to think that the interaction of the ship as it shoves aside a wall of photons from the sun wouldn't leave something behind like a shadow or something in front, like light piled on the bumper (shield)...

 

[Peter the Younger]

You would see its afterimage distorted by the "tachyon effect." You wouldn't be able to see it moving towards you, but as it passes you WOULD see a sudden burst of light and then two blurry highly doppler-shifted images moving away from you in opposite directions, one following the ship and one moving back the way it came.

For this reason I've always assumed a starship traveling at warp is nearly blind except by the limited picture it can get from subspace radar, which can only detect massive objects like planets and asteroids and other warp-driven vessels.

This is how I've pictured it as well. It's one of the things I think ST 09 got right, actually.

 

[KottenFutz]

Yes, interesting insights. I think I've found many good answers here, but it still fascinates me.

I felt it curious what might it be like to have a Galaxy class starship warp by you in space. I know that warp ships can traverse a set path at warp, and with sensors and deflectors avoid larger obstacles with computer assisted piloting and course plotting. Plus space is so very vast and roomy, so the odds of being anywhere near a ship going warp may by unlikley. But what if you were in a slow moving transport and were in relative position to such a large ship going warp right by, would you even be aware of it? Would there be some wake affect? Would it be "felt"? Would it resemble a shooting star way off in the distance in space? And it seems a warped ship can be noticed and tracked with sensors as the Vulcans were able to detect the Pheonix's warp trip in First Contact while travelling thru, or nearby, our solar system... but could it be also visually seen from the Vulcans position?

Again, like I say, I know space is basically huge and empty, (not regarding dark matter, other invisible material, and energy) It's why I can see Venus and Mars in the night sky from my back porch even as they are millions of miles away. (Yes planets are many times larger than the largest ship in starfleet, but my meaning is relatively similar) But say you close in visually on a ship going warp, perhaps just warp factor 1 or 2, and you pull back a few hundred or even thousands of miles until it's just a barely visible speck and you maintain a stopped position to observe... can it still be physically seen speeding by at that distance? The same real world affect of being on a elevated position near a highway ( top of a building perhaps ) and seeing miles of traffic at once, oppossed to standing on the side of the highway where you'd see mostly blurs and instant flourishes of passing cars. What does the "bird's eye" view at a ship going warp look like?

 

[Ronald Held]

Wouldn't you see the space-time distortion of the warp bubble from the light of bacjground objects?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Wow. I hadn't really thought about this, but I'm not sure it would be possible for a human eye to understand what it saw if the object was moving faster than light: the images you would receive would be so brief that I'm not sure they would register at all (most people can't perceive something under 1/10 second in duration).

For this reason I've always assumed a starship traveling at warp is nearly blind except by the limited picture it can get from subspace radar, which can only detect massive objects like planets and asteroids and other warp-driven vessels.

And yet, ships traveling at Warp seem to have a pretty good idea of what is around them. "It is an M-Class planet, Captain" and all that. Clearly they have access to FTL sensors that are pretty sensitive.

Would you need FTL sensors to know a distant planet is M-class? Theoretically we can already do that with current sensors, scanning for chemical traces like oxygen and carbon. Trek sensors are more sophisticated and more sensitive, but there's very little in Trek that ever requires them to gather real time information on distant planets/objects/ships other than their relative position and (in the case of planets) composition.

 

[Cyke101]

I've always wondered how the ship's "cameras" work at warp speeds... we've seen all kinds of viewscreen images at warp, oftentimes of two different objects at two different warp speeds (say, a stationary ship getting a visual of a ship coming at warp 9, or a ship at warp 7 being pursued by a much faster ship). Given that warp factors are exponential, I think we can rule out things like telescoping lens out of the equation. Perhaps the cameras themselves are warp/subspace-powered in some way? Of course, that's just conjecture on my part.

It wouldn't be a camera so much as a computer simulation based on sensor inputs. So the viewscreen shows the Borg cube you're chasing, but if you look out the window, you see the relativistically distorted view of practically nothing.

I thought of this at first too, but then there are the occasional situations where they'll come across an unidentified object, or some sort of phenomenon, or some really good sensor-blocking device, where they can't really read what our heroes are seeing/chasing/fleeing from, but they can still get a visual of it. If the image depends on sensor inputs, and the sensors can't get a reading, how does it pop up on the viewscreen anyway? (aside from looking cool, of course!) Just something that makes me go hmm sometimes.

 

[blssdwlf]

Would you need FTL sensors to know a distant planet is M-class? Theoretically we can already do that with current sensors, scanning for chemical traces like oxygen and carbon. Trek sensors are more sophisticated and more sensitive, but there's very little in Trek that ever requires them to gather real time information on distant planets/objects/ships other than their relative position and (in the case of planets) composition.

Sure. The classic situation that always comes up is deciding where to go in case you're in trouble. You don't want to rely on sensor data that took years to get to you ala light-speed-only information and go to some planet that might no longer be habitable.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Would you need FTL sensors to know a distant planet is M-class? Theoretically we can already do that with current sensors, scanning for chemical traces like oxygen and carbon. Trek sensors are more sophisticated and more sensitive, but there's very little in Trek that ever requires them to gather real time information on distant planets/objects/ships other than their relative position and (in the case of planets) composition.

Sure. The classic situation that always comes up is deciding where to go in case you're in trouble. You don't want to rely on sensor data that took years to get to you ala light-speed-only information and go to some planet that might no longer be habitable.

That's a virtual impossibility. If a planet was habitable five years ago, it'll be habitable now. If there's something on that planet or elsewhere in that solar system that would cause its environment to change so dramatically in such a short period of time, you're probably screwed either way.

 

[blssdwlf]

Oh sure, nuclear war among it's inhabitants or THIS IS CETI ALPHA 5!! are virtual impossibilities Perhaps in the real world it is unlikely to occur, but these things can happen in the fictional world of Star Trek

That's a virtual impossibility. If a planet was habitable five years ago, it'll be habitable now. If there's something on that planet or elsewhere in that solar system that would cause its environment to change so dramatically in such a short period of time, you're probably screwed either way.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Oh sure, nuclear war among it's inhabitants or THIS IS CETI ALPHA 5!! are virtual impossibilities

They kind of are. I repeat: if there's something on that planet that would render it uninhabitable in the time it takes for light to travel a few light years... hell, you're in an escape pod, it's not like you have a wide selection of choice landing sites. Your only real options boil down to "put phaser to head, pull trigger" and "pray real hard we get rescued before the talking apes lobotomize us all."

On that note, it's worth keeping in mind that Kirk's FTL sensors didn't exactly warn him that Ceti Alpha Six was about to explode for no apparent reason.