I have an illustration that might help. Imagine you had two conveyors moving in opposite directions to each other that met at their ends, and that you put a slinky out over the two. When it hit the second conveyor, that end of the slinky would stop moving while the rest of the slinky which is still on the fist conveyor would continue moving forward, compressing the slinky. The slinky represents a light wave or group of particles, and the conveyors represent the non moving background space and the moving space of the warp bubble. The light and particle groups would be compressed just like the slinky, causing blue shift effects. To simulate red shift at the back of the bubble, reverse the direction of the conveyors and the slinky will be stretched out, just as the light would be red shifted. Now I know the transition from normal space to the warp bubble is a gradient of space moving at increasing speeds, but the total difference in speed is the same no matter the gradient, just as if you had a long enough slinky, the ends would still move towards each other at the same speed, no matter the size of the compression zone. The only problem occurs when the gradient is so sharp that the distance equal to the diameter of the particle has a motion differential greater than light speed, meaning that the particle could not avoid being crushed, even if both halves of it were moving in opposite directions at light speed relative to the space they're in. This would create a huge radiation front for the ship to sail through of the light emitted from crushed particles. Even strangers, if the differential in motion is greater than light speed over one quantum unit of space (assuming space is quantum), then even point particles like photons could not enter the bubble and would be trapped in the leading edge of the warp bubble. The trapped energy may be able to slide off the bubble, otherwise it's just stuck until you decelerate to a point where it can escape, at which point your ship will be instantly vaporized. If the acceleration of the warp bubble is instantaneous and requires no energy, one trick could be to jump above and below this point to release the trapped light in small bursts. The blue shift effect from the front of the bubble is equal to the red shift from the back, so an observer behind the ship would notice no difference. (side question, if light was blue shifted entering the warp bubble, and then reflected off the ship at and angle and left the warp bubble, would it still be red shifted to normal or would the effects be lessened due to the angle of exit?)
Since this thread is very old and we prefer them not be bumped past a certain time frame, I'm going to close it. We have a couple of other threads going presently related to warp technology, so please feel free to post in them if you wish.
