Transwarp & Computers

[Cmdr_Blop]

Okay, I was discussing this with a friend, and I wanted your opinion on it. To it...

I was thinking about transwarp today... the transwarp as described in the TNG Technical Manual, or Warp 10... that says if you go that speed or beyond, that a ship will occupy all points in the universe simultaneously. Well...

If that be that case, I was thinking... if a ship were truly literally occupying every speck of space in all of creation, wouldn't the trip be instantly terminated, by the ship's computers crashing due to a total overflow of incoming information?

I mean we're talking about a single Starfleet ship that is quite literally occupying every speck of space in the whole of the universe... all that space is being scanned, the ship's computer is performing routine ship functions, and the navigational computers working... wouldn't that overwhelming inflow of new and sudden sensor data simply crash the computers, because again, in essence the ENTIRETY of the universe is being scanned.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this... do you think a single ship's computer core can handle that much raw data?

 

[Timo]

I don't see why the data input would increase at all. It's not related to ship speed in any conditions anyway. The sensor doesn't care if it sees empty space or solid lead - it will simply report "empty space" or "solid lead". And if the sensor for example counts particles, and for some strange reason crashes when it sees too many, it won't see infinitely many particles at any particular place: wherever its "eye" is (and that's everywhere), it will only see as many particles as fall within its field of vision. And that will never be a supernaturally high number.

Also, if a computer gets too much data, it just deals with what it can deal with, and ignores the rest. It's unlikely to crash; it will just spend an infinitely long time processing all the input, but a finite time processing some of it.

What would crash the voyage would be the fact that the ship can't really be everywhere at once without being where something else already is. By pushing through vacuum at ten quadrillion times lightspeed, the ship is already crowding space, but it can theoretically be argued that it might be operating some sort of a system that pushes other matter away from its path, and the rest of the universe simply becomes denser as the result of this clearing of the flightpath. But at infinite speed, there would be nowhere for the other matter to go, and the ship would exist in the same place as other matter, which would mean destruction.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

That warp 10 retcon is the most ridiculous thing in Trek history. There is no making sense of it. At all. Have you seen "Threshold"??

And the Enterprise-D went past warp 10 with no ill or universe-spanning effects in "Where No One Has Gone Before". The tech manual wasn't even consistant with the show on which it was based.

 

[Timo]

Both the "Threshold" and "Time Squared" takes on faster-than-infinitely-fast movement are perfectly understandable as such (in a Newtonian-non-Euclidean universe at least).

If you go from A to B finitely fast, you arrive at B later than you left. If you do it infinitely fast, you arrive when you leave. If you do it faster still, you obviously arrive before you left, hence the (flippant) time travel remark by Riker in "Time Squared".

OTOH, if you do move infinitely fast, all points between A and B will be occupied by you at the same moment. It then depends on the shape of space whether those all points will represent something else than a straight line. And of course, if you spend a finite time at infinite speed, you will go past B soon enough, and cover all possible points beyond B.

Nothing wrong with those ideas as such. It's just the technological side of doing it that's a bit iffy.

But breaking through infinity is not particularly implausible or aphysical, at least not for Star Trek. Those ships already go faster than light, which means they are breaking several infinites there (one way to represent those would be to say they somehow exceed infinite mass, or perhaps infinite force). It just takes a bit of "new physics" to get such things done.

If a warp drive is already an infinity-breaking machine, "infinite warp speed" doesn't appear particularly objectionable, either. Either it's already part of the deal where the infinites of lightspeed were broken, or then some sort of "warping of warp" will achieve the goal.

And the Enterprise-D went past warp 10 with no ill or universe-spanning effects in "Where No One Has Gone Before".

Perhaps. Or then the tachometer broke. The episode itself remains quite ambiguous on the issue.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cmdr_Blop]

That warp 10 retcon is the most ridiculous thing in Trek history. There is no making sense of it. At all. Have you seen "Threshold"??

And the Enterprise-D went past warp 10 with no ill or universe-spanning effects in "Where No One Has Gone Before". The tech manual wasn't even consistant with the show on which it was based.

Unfortunately, I have seen "Threshold"... and I can never un-see it.

As for WNOHGB, it was never really stated just what type of "warp" or whatever the 1701-D was traveling at, but it had to be lower than warp 10, possibly something like warp 9.9999999999999999999 or something, lol.

Geordi says something about the speed being like 20 times faster than their maximum warp, but then again, they had nothing on the scale beyond their maximum warp, so who knows if it would have been warp 10 per se or not... they might have just had to use an all-new warp scale, which was even hinted in that episode... the "Kosinski Scale".

 

[F. King Daniel]

Direct quote from Geordi in "Where No One...": "Captain, we're passing warp 10!"

Ships also travlled as fast as warp 13 in the alternate future of "All Good Things"

I think it's best to ignore the technical manuals' ideas about how fast warp speeds are. Even the first ones printed in The Making of Star Trek and The Star Trek Technical Manual bore no resemblence to the speeds depicted in the show. In "That Which Survives" the Enterprise explicitly covers 1000 light years in 11.5 hours at warp 8.4 - which would have made Voyager's journey home a four week one(!), and broken that whole series. And then the NX-01 got to Rigel and then Kronos in days at warp 5.... and then there's "Threshold" again....

I'm babbling. Back on topic: The computers will cope as well as the writers want them to.

 

[TheGrandTrekMaster]

I seem to recall someone discussing this, and postulating the following theory as to why ships can move at the speeds they do.

Space "folds" arounds the ship. Essentially, the ship itself isn't moving, thus doesn't violate Einstein's E=MC2 equation, because the ship isn't travelling faster than light.

As for computers, I think I see what the OP was on about. Take the Astrometrics lab on Voyager. It directly used all visible stars within the galaxy to extrapolate a map, the galaxy itself consisting of billions of such stars.

Now, assuming Warp 10 does mean you occupy all points in the Universe simultaneously, the ship would be in direct scanning range of every planet, star, indeed every speck of space dust. How would a computer react to billions upon billions upon trillions of input points? How do we know the computers of Star Trek could keep up with those numbers?

 

[Mr Silver]

The problem is solved by removing the episode "Threshold" from Star Trek continunity. It makes absolutely no sense and they could have easily made the trip back to Earth and had the Doctor treat everyone with the same treatment he devised for Paris and Janeway.

Transwarp is also a relative term. It can be applied to any method that allows faster than conventional warp speeds. Transwarp was originally applied to the Excelsior's new warp systems that allowed it to "break the Enterprise speed records". Some people speculate that the project was a failure, whilst others see it as a success and from there on out this new method of propulsion became the standard in the Federation.

Warp Drive is defined by a simplified set of factors from 1-9.975 (I think that is the fastest warp factor available by default to any of the fastest Starfleet ships, like Prometheus and Voyager). Obviously they could go higher with modifications and eventually the warp drive counter would go more and more into the decimals, because Warp 10 is regarded as infinite velocity. Therefore the highest possible speed before Warp 10 would be Warp 9.99 (and as many 9's as it takes until you are one away from being at all points in the universe at once).

I guess the higher warp factors seen in episodes like "All Good Things" are as a result of them being able to regulary travel at higher speeds than 9.975 and the impracticality of having to say the speed in however many decimals.

Traditionally methods of measuring travel (Kph, Mph and even Kps) are rendered redundant by speeds that are far in excess (up to thousands of times) of the speed of light. Therefore distance traveled is measured in light years. Warp 9.975 equates to 6069 times the speed of light. At that speed it would take less than two hours to travel a light year.

As far as the original question goes, I'd assume that the computer wouldn't be able to collect anything at that speed. I say this because the computer will have a processing limit that it cannot go beyond. If you programmed the computer to scan whilst travelling at infinite velocity, it would only be able to pick up one area at a time. The ship might be at all points at once, but the person on board and the computer aren't. This is of course theoretical, but I don't think anything with sensory ability would be able to comprehend the situation of being at all points in the universe at one. They (or it) would simply see it as being one place but with the ability of going anywhere it chooses instantly (like a transporter but without any delay). I guess what I'm saying is that infinite velocity would exist outside of normal space (perhaps inside subspace) and from there the ship can be programmed to choose a destination. How that works with no point of reference is another thing though!

 

[blssdwlf]

Well, if a ship was moving that fast, the sensors probably wouldn't even update fast enough with anything useful for the trip. The readings would be "off the charts" and not even decipherable. We've seen in "Where No One Has Gone Before" this happen and the computer never shut down or crash so more than likely nothing will happen.

Okay, I was discussing this with a friend, and I wanted your opinion on it. To it...

I was thinking about transwarp today... the transwarp as described in the TNG Technical Manual, or Warp 10... that says if you go that speed or beyond, that a ship will occupy all points in the universe simultaneously. Well...

If that be that case, I was thinking... if a ship were truly literally occupying every speck of space in all of creation, wouldn't the trip be instantly terminated, by the ship's computers crashing due to a total overflow of incoming information?

I mean we're talking about a single Starfleet ship that is quite literally occupying every speck of space in the whole of the universe... all that space is being scanned, the ship's computer is performing routine ship functions, and the navigational computers working... wouldn't that overwhelming inflow of new and sudden sensor data simply crash the computers, because again, in essence the ENTIRETY of the universe is being scanned.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this... do you think a single ship's computer core can handle that much raw data?

 

[Timo]

Why should we assume that the "computer" would have problems with this type of travel? It isn't any different from "Tom Paris" in any fundamental way, after all!

Tom Paris' eyes were looking at every part of the universe simultaneously. Why should they "overload" from this? They can only get that many photons into them at a time, and there isn't a significantly greater than usual amount of light coming into his eyes because a significantly greater than usual amount of light cannot penetrate the shuttle's windows.

Probably all Paris saw at infinite speed (or indeed past, oh, a hundred thousand times lightspeed) was a flash of white... We already almost get that when our heroes do a few hundred or thousand times lightspeed anyway. There's a lot of darkness to be seen when you cover that much ground fast, but we don't see darkness. There's a lot of light to be seen, too, and that accumulates until it saturates our eyes, or cameras, or whatnot. An eye is quickly saturated. A good 24th century camera might see a bit more, tho.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

if you occupy every speck of space at the same time you've also bumped into yourself infinitely, would have been crashing into every sun, planet, planetoid, fallen into every black hole and so on, I assume the writer of trash hold was about as sharp as a bowling ball when he/she wrote that drizzle..

 

[Timo]

Well, you do collide with everything even if you merely go finitely superfast, there's no avoiding that. But here we play with multiple nested infinites: is the universe big enough for everything there is plus you? The Pauli exclusion rule says no, but Pauli never met Zephram Cochrane...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

One thing to note is that Voyager's computers weren't able to calculate fast enough the phase variance in the Quantum Slipstream as it was forming.

A reason for this could be that QS technology (while similar to TW) still has properties that makes it inherently different and thus affect Federation sensors/computers differently than other means of faster than warp.

Then again... it was noted that the Delta Flyer's sensors were more advanced than Voyager (only makes sense since the shuttle was built way after Voyager launched, featuring improvements that came afterwards along with Borg technology to boot).
It's probably why it survived the whole trip through the QS in the first place... and maybe by extension TW (but, Voyager used the TW coil as well later on, and it crossed 30 sectors of space without too much effort)

 

[Mr Silver]

From the new Warp table...

Warp 1: 1x C or the speed of light (1 year to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 2: 10x C (876 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 3: 39x C (225 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 4: 102x C (86 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 5: 214x C (41 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 6: 392x C (22.5 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 7: 656x C (13.5 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 8: 1024x C (8.5 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 9: 1516x C (6 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 9.975: 6069x C (1.5 hours to travel 1 lightyear)

Now the computer can detect subspace speed because it picks up communications. For a subspace message to travel 1 LY takes around 2 minutes and 30 seconds. So that puts the speed of subspace at around Warp 9.9999 (or 199516x C). So from that it's safe to assume that the computer can only recognise up to that velocity.

 

[El Capitan]

Lets put all the theories aside because i can give you very simple explanation. In Einsteins relativity theory in normal space nothing can travel faster than speed of light. If you are to travel at infinite speeds from your point of reference everything else is motionless, therefore contain no information, therefore computers wont have anything to process, therefore they wont crash.

 

[Timo]

Why would "motionless" things contain no information?

Really, it should make very little difference to the computer whether what it sees outside the window is at a standstill, or moving at infinite speed, or consists of marshmallows, or makes funny faces. The computer doesn't care. It simply records and analyzes.

The "amount of information" it receives is not dependent on what it looks at. It's solely dependent on what its viewing system is designed to receive. If it receives 47 fantasmabytes per second, then that's what it receives, quite regardless of whether it's staring at a blank wall or at a fascinating "Where's Waldo" graphic blurring past it at six times infinite speed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[El Capitan]

Because motion is information down on the quantum level(interactions) and probably on sub quantum level (Strings). Without motion there is no physics and its laws, its cease to exist. Systems are designed to receive information based on known physics and in this case there isn't any... Infinity is so much abstract term.

 

[Starlock]

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that warp field that somehow bends infinity down around a single (shuttlecraft sized) point in space should ultimately result in the implosion of the universe...

Your actual mileage may vary.

Wouldn't the computer achieve Transwarp speeds before the ship?

 

[Mr Silver]

Wouldn't the computer achieve Transwarp speeds before the ship?

I don't think so. Remember that only the ship is moving at "Transwarp Speed" and everything internal (such as the crew, the furniture and the computer) is moving (or not moving in the case of fixtures) at normal speed. Otherwise, even at regular warp speeds everything internal would be flying about at extreme speeds (atomising biological matter).

I hypothesised earlier that the computer is only capable of processing speeds to the speed of subspace (Warp 9.999). Therefore, when the ship reaches speeds past that, the computer will fail to function normally. Perhaps it will be able to recognise the speed of the ship, but not able to scan, etc at those speeds.

 

[MacLeod]

Re: Transwarp & Computerscruise

From the new Warp table...

Warp 1: 1x C or the speed of light (1 year to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 2: 10x C (876 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 3: 39x C (225 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 4: 102x C (86 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 5: 214x C (41 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 6: 392x C (22.5 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 7: 656x C (13.5 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 8: 1024x C (8.5 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 9: 1516x C (6 hours to travel 1 lightyear)
Warp 9.975: 6069x C (1.5 hours to travel 1 lightyear)

Now the computer can detect subspace speed because it picks up communications. For a subspace message to travel 1 LY takes around 2 minutes and 30 seconds. So that puts the speed of subspace at around Warp 9.9999 (or 199516x C). So from that it's safe to assume that the computer can only recognise up to that velocity.

Well at Voyagers SUSTAIANBLE cruise velocity of Warp 9.975 it would have been what a 15 year trip home.

Last I checked the word sustainable means able to main for an indefinite period of time

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sustainable