(Warp) Speed Kills!

[Professor Moriarty]

Professor William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine explained to New Scientist that while interstellar space has just a couple of hydrogen atoms per cubic centimetre, as the crew of the Enterprise hit the gas pedal, a compression effect would greatly increase the number of atoms hitting the spacecraft.

As the spaceship reached 99.999998 per cent of the speed of light, "hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts", which for the crew "would be like standing in front of the Large Hadron Collider beam".

D'OH!

Link to article at The Register

 

[sojourner]

Deflector dish, duh.

 

[Ronald Held]

What he said.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Forcefields and Navigational Deflectors

 

[Mytran]

Regarding navigational deflectors, there's this "bootnote" at the end of the article.

Of course, Edelstein's conclusions are based on current scientific knowledge. No doubt future spacecraft designers will deploy advanced radiation-resistant alloys and magnetic shielding to protect Federation staff from instant death.

 

[The Borg Queen]

If only they could travel slightly outside of physical space at light-speeds, a sort of "superspace", if you will...

 

[Deks]

So, the guy completely ignores the fact that Human technology is much more advanced in comparison to what we have today, along with what they learned from not just other space-faring races ... but also ignores navigational deflector, inertial dampers, the warp bubble, and a whole bunch of other techs that protect the crews of Trek ships from instant death when going to warp speed?

If we managed to create an FTL drive in real-life, there is a really good possibility that we will find ways to protect organic matter (namely, ourselves) from things that might kill us in the process.

 

[Mytran]

The article explores quite well the perils of accelerating up to near the speed of light in reality. I think the author just picked the enterprise as a well known FTL ship, without stopping to consider how well the fans knew the inner workings of it!

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

I found the same article here at Popular Science website which mentions deflector shields to protect the Enterprise at Warp Speeds.
(It was posted on PopSci the same day as the article above [Feb 17, 2010].)

But hold on a second. The warp speed concept of Star Trek supposedly involves manipulating space-time, so that the actual starship travels in a bubble of normal space-time. The USS Enterprise also had deflector shields that could shrug off photon torpedoes, never mind some measly hydrogen atoms.

Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

 

[PrimeDirective]

I read the Popular Magazine article, and I'm glad that real-life science doesn't dismiss the idea of warp speed as a possibility, but rather gives us solid hope that we will have it in the future. The hydrogen atoms that could be lethal to starship crews don't cause problems, due to the deflector shileds that the starship has; but what about starships in the 22nd century? The only defense that UE Starfleet starships had was polorized hullplating, so how did crews protect themselves from the radiation caused by the stray hydrogen atoms?

 

[Mytran]

The 22nd Century starships shown in ENT appeared to have both ramscoops (to suck in stray hydrogen atoms) and deflector dishes (commonly believed to related to deflector beams, although the situation sometimes seems somewhat different in TOS).

Even if the ships can't project hull enveloping deflector fields, there's nothing to say that smaller deflector beams can't be projected, which would be used to sweep unfavourable particles out of the ship's path.

 

[Deks]

Starships in Archer's time did not have defensive shields ... however, it had the ability to generate a Warp bubble, which is the job of a main deflector dish (and is referred to as the navigational deflector).

In the 23rd and 24th centuries, ships have 2 types of shielding ...
Navigational deflector shields (generated by the big deflector dish), and defensive shields (I think which are being generated by hull grids).
The first is used for warp travel ... the latter for defence of directed energy weapons, torpedoes and whatnot.

 

[iguana_tonante]

So, the guy completely ignores the fact that Human technology is much more advanced in comparison to what we have today, along with what they learned from not just other space-faring races ... but also ignores navigational deflector, inertial dampers, the warp bubble, and a whole bunch of other techs that protect the crews of Trek ships from instant death when going to warp speed?

It's using a fictional example to explain real-world physics, not writing a fan manual.

 

[PrimeDirective]

I think I understand how a 22nd century starship could protect its crew from harmful cosmic radiation; thanks for the enlightenment I'll research this topic further.