Light Speed, Theory of Relativity, and Warp Speed

[Brainsucker]

I'm not a scientist, nor understand physic. I don't even understand theory of relativity. But recently I read about the basic of that theory. Specially in Time Travel Theory. It said that time stop for object traveling the speed of light, and time must go backward for an object traveling faster than speed of light.

So if a ship move at the warp speed. Said, warp 9, how the time doesn't go backward for the ship and the crews inside it?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Warp 9 isn't science. There is no working faster-than-light drive.

Here is a statement from NASA on warp drive:

Is Warp Drive Real?

Ever since the sound barrier was broken, people have turned their attention to how we can break the light speed barrier. But “Warp Drive” or any other term for faster-than-light travel still remains at the level of speculation.

The bulk of scientific knowledge concludes that it’s impossible, especially when considering Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. There are certainly some credible concepts in scientific literature, however it’s too soon to know if they are viable.

[...]

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/warp.html


The answer to your question is literally that it is imagination that makes warp drive work in Star Trek. That includes how time flows for the Enterprise crew when they travel at warp.

If you want to discuss how Star Trek's warp drive works, you need to leave actual science at the door. Star Trek's warp drive is described in Star Trek using cleverly concocted technobabble, so that it sounds like it might somehow work. That technobabble is the inspiration for the work of actual theoreticians such as Alcubierre to attempt to develop FTL, but that's as close as Star Trek's warp drive gets to actual science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive#Relation_to_Star_Trek_warp_drive

 

[C.E. Evans]

Trek generally uses "subspace fields" (or "warp fields") to casually explain away how ships can circumvent stuff like time dilation, exponential mass increase, etc., that occurs near the speed-of-light threshold. Look even closer and you start seeing imaginary stuff like dilithium crystals and verterium cortenide as being the real keys to how warp drive works in Trek.

 

[Timo]

In practical terms, the fancy terminology chiefly serves to turn a complicated issue of nested impossibilities into something familiar to us from the way we drive to work every day. When all is said and done, the ship hasn't merely achieved faster-than-light speed, it has also left all likely complications behind. There's no relativity of motion there - there's just a simple "Newtonian" or "Galilean" world of motion, with an absolute, fixed frame of reference and so forth. Ships moving at high speeds relative to each other don't experience anything more exotic than two guys driving cars at moderate speeds relative to each other. Heck, choice of warp speed doesn't even affect one's agility or power consumption noticeably, so the audience can skip even the minor complications that might arise from thinking in terms of an aircraft analogy or some such.

It takes special doing to introduce any "exotic" elements to warp flight. Time travel isn't a natural byproduct of warp, or something warp normally compensates for - it requires a "cold start" or a "gravity slingshot". Fuel running out doesn't happen until truly exotic circumstances conspire to cause this. Etc. The main thing about warp is that it's a non-brainer deep down!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shikarnov]

The way I tend to think about it is that Relativity would only apply to visuals. So if you traveled from Earth to Alpha Centauri (which is 4LY away, if I remember correctly), the journey would take two days at Warp 9. So if you left on Monday, you'd arrive on Wednesday. That would be true no matter what. But if you looked back at Earth in a telescope, you'd be seeing Earth as it was four years in the past (the time it took for the light to reach your lens). So, in a way, you will have gone back in time...

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Specially in Time Travel Theory. It said that time stop for object traveling the speed of light, and time must go backward for an object traveling faster than speed of light.

You either read something incorrect, or misunderstood something correct. Nowhere in the theory of relativity does it state that time will go backward if you travel faster than the speed of light. In fact, travelling faster than the speed of light is not allowed in the theory! Even traveling AT the speed of light is not allowed for anything other than light (and gravity, but that's not special relativity).

You might have read something about what's called "causality violation". In relativity, the time interval between two events (first A, then B) changes depending on the speed of the person who observes them. A person who is motionless might see a 5 second delay between A and B, but someone traveling close to the speed of light might see a 0.0001 second delay between A and B. No one, however, will see the events reversed -- B never happens before A. IF faster-than-light travel was possible, then someone moving this fast could potentially see B happen before A. But this is bad, especially if A causes B. So, faster than light travel is prohibited from this perspective.

The warp drive theory is completely different (based on general relativity). But if you want to understand it, you need to get a better handle on special relativity.