Moving Slow at Warp Speed

[Discofan]

Nah, it's fine. Plenty of functions have vertical asymptotes. See for example the trig functions of tangent, cotangent, secant, and cosecant, each of which in fact has infinitely many vertical asymptotes.

What's proposed with warp 13 is that the part of the speed scale on the other side of the vertical asymptote at warp ten behaves differently from the part before. According to the TNG tech manual, warp factors occur where power consumption is locally efficient. The idea is that if the abscissa (warp factor) parameterizing warp field geometry is increased beyond ten, new optimal nodes appear, one of which is indexed by the abscissa value of 13.

I am sorry but that doesn't work. A vertical asymptote means that before you get to warp 11 for example, there is an infinity to go through first. I don't care what you do when you're at wrap eleven if to get there you have to go through an impossibility first.

Same thing about real physics. You can't get to the speed of light without an infinite amount of energy. You could argue that once you're at say twice the speed of light things get normal again but to get there you must dispose of an infinite amount of energy and that's impossible.

 

[Timo]

...Unless you cheat, which is pretty much what tunneling is: you skip the part where you ought to expend high energies, because you can.

Does warp work by cheating and tunneling through energy barriers to the other side? We really have no idea. This might not be how warpships get past lightspeed, but it might be related to how they get to higher warp factors, through the Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme barriers.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I am sorry but that doesn't work. A vertical asymptote means that before you get to warp 11 for example, there is an infinity to go through first. I don't care what you do when you're at wrap eleven if to get there you have to go through an impossibility first.

Nope.

In TNG "Where No One Has Gone Before," the Enterprise was cruising at warp 1.5 when Kosinski and the Traveler entered their warp field modifications, which cause the ship to jump immediately past warp ten.

In other words, there's nothing that says the ship has to pass continuously through all warp values between nine and 13 to get to warp 13. The ship could be cruising at less than warp ten, jump immediately to warp 11, and then from there accelerate continuously to warp 13.

Same thing about real physics. You can't get to the speed of light without an infinite amount of energy.

That's not actually what real physics says. For one thing, light always travels at the speed of light, although a photon has finite energy. For another, you might want to take a look at mathematical solutions to the equations of general relativity by Alcubierre et al that at least theoretically describe the possibility of superluminal travel for material objects [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive].

Anyway that's irrelevant. We're not talking about real physics, we're talking about the fictional warp drive in Star Trek.

 

[Discofan]

Nope.

In TNG "Where No One Has Gone Before," the Enterprise was cruising at warp 1.5 when Kosinkski and the Traveler entered their warp field modifications, which cause the ship to jump immediately past warp ten.

In other words, there's nothing that says the ship has to pass continuously through all warp values between nine and 13 to get to warp 13. The ship could be cruising at less than warp ten, jump immediately to warp 11, and then from there accelerate continuously to warp 13.


That's not actually what real physics says. For one thing, light always travels at the speed of light, although a photon has finite energy. For another, you might want to take a look at mathematical solutions to the equations of general relativity by Alcubierre et al that at least theoretically describe the possibility superluminal travel for material objects [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive].

Anyway that's irrelevant. We're not talking about real physics, we're talking about the fictional warp drive in Star Trek.

Well, but in that case, it's no different from saying that it's just bullshit and leave it at that.

In normal speak when you say "come here immediately!" you don't expect people to just appear before you, you are usually aware that they have to walk the distance between where they are and where you are.

I am not talking about photons. Photons ARE at the speed of light they don't get there. Material objects must get to the speed of light and that means to get through all the speeds in between.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Material objects must get to the speed of light and that means to get through all the speeds in between.

So, you skipped over the link I provided? OK.

 

[Discofan]

So, you skipped over the link I provided? OK.

Your link is about speculation based on assumptions that are nearly insane, like the possibility of creating a region of space with a negative mass. How do you do that?

If I tell you that you can make yourself invisible if you eat ten kilos of salt in one day. Try to prove me wrong!

Like Scotty once said: "If my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon"

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Your link is about speculation based on assumptions that are nearly insane, like the possibility of creating a region of space with a negative mass. How do you do that?

If I tell you that you can make yourself invisible if you eat ten kilos of salt in one day. Try to prove me wrong!

Like Scotty once said: "If my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon"

Lulz. It's a link to actual theoretical science.

 

[Discofan]

Lulz. It's a link to actual theoretical science.

Tsk, tsk... It doesn't even refer to any peer-reviewed document.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Tsk, tsk... It doesn't even refer to any peer-reviewed document.

"Classical and Quantum Gravity is a peer-reviewed journal...."
"Physical Review is an American peer-reviewed scientific journal...."

 

[Discofan]

"Classical and Quantum Gravity is a peer-reviewed journal...."
"Physical Review is an American peer-reviewed scientific journal...."

All right. So you can move faster than light (sort of) if you change the state of space over tens of light years. It's like saying that you can make a hard-boiled egg by bombarding an egg with subnuclear particles!!
Besides, if you read the article it says that in order to make a small ship move through the galaxy you need more energy than contained in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE!!! Even they know that their solution is stupidly impractical!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

All right. So you can move faster than light (sort of) if you change the state of space over tens of light years. It's like saying that you can make a hard-boiled egg by bombarding an egg with subnuclear particles!!
Besides, if you read the article it says that in order to make a small ship move through the galaxy you need more energy than contained in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE!!! Even they know that their solution is stupidly impractical!

Yeah, it's why I used the words "at least theoretically describe the possibility," which I said right out of the gate.

 

[Ronald Held]

CQC and Phys Rev are peer reviewer journals. I have read papers in both in doing research.