How exactly is the warp drive actually explained to work?

[GalacticWierdo]

Was there any point in any Star Trek series or movie that actually references or explains how the warp drive works? Not the Matter/Antimatter and Dilithium and all that, but about how the Warp Field actually looks or works?

Now I know that there are theories out there already, and are popular warp drive references, people generally think of Miguel Alcubierre's warp drive theory, where space behind the ship is expanded and the space behind the ship is contracted. But I was thinking about something. When the field of an Alcubierre Drive was turned off, wouldn't the ship just bounce back to its original position?

How I imagine the warp drive to work is by pulling space in front of the ship around to the behind of the ship, making space behind the ship, and subsequently moving it forward, like a vacuum in air.

So basically what I'm asking is, "Have either of these theories, or any other at all, been specifically referenced in the show at all?"

 

[Mysterion]

Not on-screen that I recall. It would kind of slow down the story if they did, I think.

I would recommend the ST:TNG Technical Manual by Sternbach and Okuda for the best explanation of how warp drive works.

 

[Wingsley]

If you want something in writing that involves Roddenberry, you might want to check out "The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture" that his secretary co-wrote with him. There's a section in there about a NASA scientist named Jesco von Putkammer who advised Roddenberry on TMP. In that passage, JVP explained how warp drive was supposed to work using a "cosmic surf board" analogy. This analogy was used in the 1980 fanon publication "Star Trek Maps", illustrated in part by Rick Sternbach. JVP made a little splash in Starlog magazine around the time TMP was released, capitalizing on the supposed science behind the sci fi.

 

[Lord Manitou]

You will read about the facts of warp drive velocity. The ship is inside a bubble called sub-space that must be very symetrical for the warp field that sits on top of the sub-space. This must initiate an acceleration vector that is off the scale in Newtonian dynamics. The warp field sends this bubble to a very high velocity because anything inside it is slightly off center from the space time continuum.

A good site is http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/

Thinking about warp-drive- the sub space must be an artificially created 3 dimensional environment like in a holo-deck but realtime.

 

[rumbeard]

The non-canon book Starfleet Dynamics also made a semi-plausible attempt to explain warp drive.

Basically the anti-matter/matter core of a starship is a controlled annihilation reaction which generates high energy plasma. That plasma is fed through dilithium crystals which like quartz crystals are a trans-stator to convert the heat/light/kinetic energy into electricity on a massive scale. This is then fed to the nacelles which contain some unknown technology which generates gravimetric fields. These gravity fields are strong enough to create a bubble around the ship of tachyons (faster than light particles). The ship exists in a bubble or real-space inside real-space. By distorting the bubble from spherical into perhaps a football or teardrop shape, the ship bubble is shunted along like squeezing one's hands together around a wet bar of soap at FTL velocities. The flux chillers on the nacelle sides are like heat sinks for the activity going on and energy dispersal in the nacelles. I forget at the moment what the bussard collectors do other than collect protons while flying through space. (i.e. not seeing a use for that).

Impulse drive is even more real science. That nice dome crystal on Enterprise and Enterprise-A is a simple Tokamak style toroidal hydrogen fusion reactor with the plasma vents shunted straight back and into space.

 

[Cyke101]

If you want something in writing that involves Roddenberry, you might want to check out "The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture" that his secretary co-wrote with him. There's a section in there about a NASA scientist named Jesco von Putkammer who advised Roddenberry on TMP. In that passage, JVP explained how warp drive was supposed to work using a "cosmic surf board" analogy. This analogy was used in the 1980 fanon publication "Star Trek Maps", illustrated in part by Rick Sternbach. JVP made a little splash in Starlog magazine around the time TMP was released, capitalizing on the supposed science behind the sci fi.

I can't remember where I read it or who said it, but I've read an expanded analogy on the cosmic surfboard idea and have stuck with it.

Basically, most warp ships are like boats with outriggers. They're designed to keep boats and ships afloat and stabilize them on water. If water is space and nacelles are like outriggers, the nacelles would be meant for maintaining the warp field (float). Of course, that doesn't mean nacelles can't be built for speed, either. After all, warp engines and warp nacelles are two different things with different functions, but upgrading one or the other in some way seems to help increase speed.

We've also seen ships without nacelles at warp speed, just as there are obviously boats out there without outriggers. But boats with them tend to be a bit harder to tip over.

 

[snap107]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the warp drive works by generating a subspace bubble around the ship. In this bubble of subspace the speed of light is much faster so the ship never actually breaks the speed of light the coils that are in the nacelles generate this bubble and by manipulating the power through the coils from front to back the ship moves forward at warp speed. The faster the flow from front to back the higher the warp speed. When tmp came out it was said that those nacelles would generate the bubble but the impulse drive would actually be the motive power moving the ship.

 

[Verteron]

Based solely on screen evidence from TNG onwards:

1. Matter & Antimatter are fed in to the Warp Core. There is only one ratio - 1:1 (as stated by Wesley Crusher during his entrance exam, no matter what the technical manual babbles about).

2. They seem to annihilate in a dilithium chamber, and produce some sort of 'plasma' (superheated gas), which heads out of the core via the two plasma conduits to the nacelles. I don't think there is a huge amount of clarity on screen for the precise nature of dilithium crystals, but it seems they regulate the reaction in some fashion to make the energy produced by matter/antimatter reactions (which would be gamma photons) in to a useful power source. Clearly there's something special about these crystals as they can sit around all day having antimatter fired at them without vaporising.

3. The Warp Plasma ends up in each nacelle. In each nacelle there are "warp coils". These take the energy provided by the plasma and produce subspace fields.

4. Subspace fields somehow change the geometry of space and reduce the vessel's mass allowing it to go faster than the speed of light.

A subspace field interacts with the subspace domain - which seems to be the substrate where our universe resides. We've seen lots of subspace phenomena - including rifts (a tear in the fabric of space, allowing subspace to exude in to our universe). Wormholes etc. are also deeply connected to subspace. Other universes (where those nasty clicky creatures live in TNG) have been described as "subspace manifolds". So clearly the subspace field - or warp bubble/shell - has some ability to effect or defy the properties of our universe, like that pesky light speed limitation.

A ship is still very much in our universe and spacetime though - you can use your sensors to pick out distant ships and planets, you can collide with things (witness the wormhole effect in TMP), and so on. It's not a jump drive.

Quite how, I'm not sure it's really described on screen, and it depends on how much you trust books like the TNG Technical Manual.

Personally I think it's just a question of saying "Engage".

 

[SicOne]

I can't recall exactly where I heard this explanation, but it was years ago and stuck with me...warp speed is not the perfect balancing of warp fields from each of the two warp nacelles, but rather results from the ship manipulating a slight, manufactured imbalance of the warp fields, and the deliberate offset of the two fields propels the craft forward at warp speeds.

This theory helps to explain why Trek ships have two or four nacelles, but doesn't do much to explain single-nacelled designs.

As I recall the explanation, it was also symbolized by the Enterprise's delta symbol, with the smaller leg of the inverted-V to represent the manufactured imbalance.

Does the delta symbol have an official name, actually?

 

[snap107]

Was looking around the net and found where I read about the warp drive in TOS. It was in the book wounded sky:

According to the aforementioned book, warp drive does indeed create a bubble of space-time around the ship; however, it is explained that the ship is surrounded by a bubble of subspace — another universe where the speed of light is much faster than in ours; furthermore, the alternate universe is attuned with our own, such that planetary bodies are in exactly the same place, which simplifies navigation — thus the book leans toward the theories of superstring-manipulation, rather than those of warping normal space-time.
The transwarp device invented by the Hamalki uses a different approach to the same idea; in this case, it creates a field around the ship which allows it to enter De Sitter space — a space in which there is infinite energy, zero mass (with exceptions) and no absolute laws of physics. This essentially allows the Enterprise to enter De Sitter space and travel millions of times faster than light. In the narrative, the Enterprise succeeds in reaching the Small Magellanic Cloud (200 years away at warp 8), a dwarf galaxy in orbit around the Milky Way galaxy. Went back and read the book and yup thats where I read it.

 

[The Green Mushroom]

It works just fine, thank you.

 

[Ronald Held]

That sounds like a Mike Okuda response, similar ot that of the Heisenberg compensators.

 

[Ian Keldon]

How I imagine the warp drive to work is by pulling space in front of the ship around to the behind of the ship, making space behind the ship, and subsequently moving it forward, like a vacuum in air.

So basically what I'm asking is, "Have either of these theories, or any other at all, been specifically referenced in the show at all?"

There was never any dialogue, but some of the display graphics in Engineering in various TNG eps suggest what you posit above.