"Space Warp"

[timelord1010]

This theory of the OP makes sense. This could explain why the Warp speed scale was changed for TNG era. Maybe the old style warp drive was a different type of engine. Also, in TNG it was shown that the Romulans used a artificial singularity to power their "warp drive/FTL engines".

I always wondered what Cochrane used to power his test ship's warp engines. I always assumed anti-matter was the key to the FTL power problems and he used a old Titan missile to boost the phoenix into space. I can't imagine a anti-matter manufacturing plant in the settlement he was working and living in.

 

[Anwar]

Anti-Matter is what powers FTL in TOS and beyond. Cochrane was probably using fusion power.

 

[Myasishchev]

Trek science has totally mastered gravity. They appear to be able to simulate 1G with less power than it takes to burn the fluorescent lighting. I think fusion power could plausibly create a gravitationally-induced space warp, if admittedly not a very cool one.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And I think that if you can track a ship's ion trail, it can tell you what kind of power source it's using. Scotty's an engineer; if he'd meant propulsion, he would've said propulsion. He said "their power."

Power sources don't leave ion trails. Engines do that.

 

[Christopher]

And I think that if you can track a ship's ion trail, it can tell you what kind of power source it's using. Scotty's an engineer; if he'd meant propulsion, he would've said propulsion. He said "their power."

Power sources don't leave ion trails. Engines do that.

Come on, it's not like they're unrelated systems. Engines are driven by their power sources, and their exhaust is usually an altered form of whatever provided the power. For instance, the exhaust of a car consists of the products of the combustion of gasoline or diesel fuel. I'm sure you could find out whether a car ran on gasoline or diesel, maybe even what specific type, by analyzing the molecular composition of the exhaust.

An ion trail would be one of two things. One is a trail of actual plasma exhaust, waste products from the engines. Different power sources would produce different types and proportions of waste particles, letting you distinguish one type from another. The second is a trail of particles in the interstellar medium that have been ionized by radiant emissions from the ship's engines. Studying the nature of the ionization could reveal things about the spectrum of waste energy emitted by the ship, and that spectrum would also be revealing about the type of power being used. For instance, a matter-antimatter reaction is much hotter than a fusion reaction and so the radiation it emits would be higher up the spectrum and more intense.

The specifics of the ion trail could also tell you things about the functioning of the engines. For instance, a steady trail would be produced by a different type of engine than one that oscillates in intensity or comes in pulses. A denser trail would be produced by a different engine type than a more tenuous trail. A trail with intact, unreacted fuel particles would come from a less efficient engine than one without them.


Besides, there's a more fundamental issue here: ion trails are fictional. They're a plot device for allowing the characters in a story to track a starship. They have whatever properties the story needs them to have. So if the story required those characters to be able to deduce the nature of that ship's power source from its ion trail, they would certainly be able to do so.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And I think that if you can track a ship's ion trail, it can tell you what kind of power source it's using. Scotty's an engineer; if he'd meant propulsion, he would've said propulsion. He said "their power."

Power sources don't leave ion trails. Engines do that.

Come on, it's not like they're unrelated systems. Engines are driven by their power sources, and their exhaust is usually an altered form of whatever provided the power.

Not "usually," no. That particular feature is unique to internal combustion engines and related technologies for which "fuel" and "propellant" are the same thing. Other designs like fusion engines, ion thrusters, MPD engines and nuclear thermal rockets use a power source to energize and accelerate propellant. To assume that the ion trail they detected was the result of a power source would be one hell of an assumption even if the ship they had a chance to make a visual inspection of the ship's main engines.

I'm sure here that Scotty is using "power" in the sense of "powered flight," in the same context that Riker tells Data to "Cut your engines, take her in unpowered" in BOBW. And again, as per the OP, this simply means the Romulan ship was traveling using some kind of newtonian or at the very least thrust-producing drive system. The only thing we know for sure is that the Romulan Bird of Prey is an insufferable gas guzzler, and a lack of a space-warp propulsion system might be the reason.

Besides, there's a more fundamental issue here: ion trails are fictional. They're a plot device for allowing the characters in a story to track a starship. They have whatever properties the story needs them to have. So if the story required those characters to be able to deduce the nature of that ship's power source from its ion trail, they would certainly be able to do so.

Maybe so. Except that nobody in Balance of Terror actually mentions an "ion trail," so we really have no idea how Scotty knows "their power is simple impulse."

I've always assumed he was able to figure that out just by looking at the tracks of the bird of prey as it moved through space, acceleration curves and maneuvers to determine what was driving it. For example, in the Star Control video games you could probably tell the difference between an Arilou starship and any other vessel even if you couldn't actually see what you were looking at; Arilou ships have no inertia, so they can come to a complete stop in the middle of space and then spin around and reverse directions all of a sudden, while other ships have to cut their engines, turn around, fire engines again to cancel their forward motion and then accelerate back in another direction, and so on. If warp-driven starships behave more like the Arilou ships--and I'm pretty sure they do--then a ship whose power is "simple impulse" would continue on inertial trajectories with very wide turning radiuses and very gradual acceleration curves; that would be easy to deduce just by tracking its course, without anything so complicated as an examination of an ion trail.

 

[Christopher]

^The only thing we can be "sure" of is that the concepts and terminology of Star Trek's universe were not solidly locked down when "Balance of Terror" was written and shot. So it's pointless to take its technical dialogue too literally, especially when it conflicts with what was later established. All that matters is that Scotty could not possibly have been saying the Romulans were limited to sublight. Beyond that, any interpretation is purely conjectural, and whether a given interpretation is allowed depends solely on the individual's willingness to allow it. So I don't see much point in an extended technical debate over a single line of dialogue whose only genuine explanation is that they were making stuff up as they went.

Trek tech is vague enough that it's easy to assume they had ways of detecting and analyzing the Romulans' power systems, from the ion trail or the ship's performance or whatever; there's not much point in arguing that it's impossible, because it's all BS technobabble anyway and it would be easy to make up some magic subspace gadget that makes it possible, if that's what the story calls for. You make an interesting point about analyzing the power systems from the ship's performance; that's just as valid as anything else. But it doesn't rule out other possibilities because it's all ultimately made up to serve the story anyway.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

All true, Christopher. However, as the point of the OP is to come up with a more generalized explanation of trek tech that would explain these types of events IN UNIVERSE, a way must be found to make even this early incident consistent with later events. That the Romulan ship was moving faster than light is abundantly obvious; that it was propelled by a newtonian type space drive is a possibility that would explain a great many things about different drive systems in the Trekiverse.

 

[Christopher]

I don't see any way of reconciling FTL travel with a "Newtonian" drive, unless you're in a fictional Newtonian universe where the speed of light is infinite (in which case it's technically not FTL).

As I see it, the word "impulse" is a sufficiently generalized term that it could have many meanings beyond "the type of technology used in the Starfleet propulsion system called 'impulse engines'." For all we know, the key word wasn't "impulse," but "simple" -- Scotty could've meant simple impulse as opposed to a more complex or advanced form of impulse. And since the technobabble was so ill-defined at that stage in the series (they used a freaking hardbound book to identify comets), I'm happy just to ignore Scotty's line as a creative glitch, along with the references to "Vulcanians," "points decayed to lead" in the impulse reactor (which would require it to be fission-powered), "Space Command" instead of Starfleet, etc.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

I agree with Christopher. One can't accelerate beyond the speed of light by newtonian means. This would require infinite energy because one's mass would be infinite at the speed of light. It's simply impossible.
At most, one could say that the romulans found a way to transform themselves into tachyons, but that's really overreaching, even for star trek. And it creates numerous problems: for example, the tachyons should travel backward through time.

The most coherent explanation - the romulans use a fusion (impulse power) powered warp drive.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't see any way of reconciling FTL travel with a "Newtonian" drive, unless you're in a fictional Newtonian universe where the speed of light is infinite (in which case it's technically not FTL).

Or, unless you're in a fictional universe in which Special Relativity is inapplicable and any vessel can accelerate to any speed up to and beyond the speed of light. This explanation also works to explain why things like Voyager 6, the Botany Bay and even Ben Sisko's sailboat are able to travel interstellar distances without the use of a warp drive. In fact in the latter case, it is explicitly mentioned that the lightship was traveling by building up acceleration with its solar sails; it accelerated to FTL velocities only by catching "tachyon eddies" in those same sails. By direct implication this means a conventional starship could accelerate to similar speeds by ejecting a similar amount of reactant mass at a high enough velocity.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Now special relativity doesn't apply in the trekverse, newtype alpha?
You really have a penchant for choosing the most unrealistic explanation.

 

[Christopher]

I don't see any way of reconciling FTL travel with a "Newtonian" drive, unless you're in a fictional Newtonian universe where the speed of light is infinite (in which case it's technically not FTL).

Or, unless you're in a fictional universe in which Special Relativity is inapplicable and any vessel can accelerate to any speed up to and beyond the speed of light.

That's what I said. Newtonian = non-Relativistic.

This explanation also works to explain why things like Voyager 6, the Botany Bay and even Ben Sisko's sailboat are able to travel interstellar distances without the use of a warp drive. In fact in the latter case, it is explicitly mentioned that the lightship was traveling by building up acceleration with its solar sails; it accelerated to FTL velocities only by catching "tachyon eddies" in those same sails. By direct implication this means a conventional starship could accelerate to similar speeds by ejecting a similar amount of reactant mass at a high enough velocity.

That's really reaching. Voyager 6 was explicitly stated to have fallen through a black hole at the edge of the Solar System. And the Bajoran sailship was explicitly stated to be at warp. "Warp" does not mean "faster than light." It means "distortion," specifically a distortion of spacetime. A ship "at warp" is not travelling faster than 299,792,458 m/s simply by having accelerated there, but is within a spacetime distortion that is moving relative to surrounding spacetime. Warp drive is a concept that originates in and is inseparable from General Relativity. (Not to mention that we saw "warp stars" going by the sailship, something you would not see if simply travelling faster than c by Newtonian means. It's an artifact of a warp field.)

Besides, if ST were a Newtonian universe where there were no relativistic speed limit, why the hell would they need warp drive? It's a completely bizarre notion. (And for that matter, if Relativity were wrong or nonexistent, why would they name a starship after it and have Einstein as a holodeck character?)


My interpretation of the tachyon eddy pushing the sailship to warp is that it's the only way to resolve a physical paradox. Normal matter can only go slower than light, while tachyons can only go faster than light. So what happens if tachyons strike a slower-than-light (tardyon) surface that's opaque to them? They can't be stopped by it, and it can't be pushed to their speed. The only resolution is if the energy of the collision creates a spacewarp surrounding the tachyon-opaque surface. The surface remains slower than light relative to the space it occupies, but that space is moving FTL with the tachyons.

(Okay, that's fibbing. It could be resolved by having the tachyons bounce off, instantaneously changing direction without changing speed, or by having them decay into some form of tardyons, or by having the tachyon-opaque surface get instantly vaporized. But as stated, this is all make-believe, and it's a good enough fudge to satisfy me.)

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Now special relativity doesn't apply in the trekverse, newtype alpha?

Probably not. Since much of what happens in Trek contradicts SR anyway, the theory probably isn't valid there.

You really have a penchant for choosing the most unrealistic explanation.

Fine. YOU explain how a space craft launched in 1996 managed to achieve FTL velocities without being equipped with warp drive. The most logical explanation is "Einstein was wrong [in the Trekiverse]." That fits for all other similar instances, and I don't know of a canon reference establishing special relativity being correct. Actually, it seems to be very incorrect since super-genius Barclay was arguing with him in "The Nth Degree."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't see any way of reconciling FTL travel with a "Newtonian" drive, unless you're in a fictional Newtonian universe where the speed of light is infinite (in which case it's technically not FTL).

Or, unless you're in a fictional universe in which Special Relativity is inapplicable and any vessel can accelerate to any speed up to and beyond the speed of light.

That's what I said. Newtonian = non-Relativistic.

Ah... newtonian in the context of a PHYSICS paradigm. I could live with that.

That's really reaching. Voyager 6 was explicitly stated to have fallen through a black hole at the edge of the Solar System.

Is there a black hole at the edge of the solar system? Or did it travel some distance before falling into one?

And the Bajoran sailship was explicitly stated to be at warp. "Warp" does not mean "faster than light." It means "distortion," specifically a distortion of spacetime.

A colloquialism at best, since JAKE was the one who used the term "we're at warp," having looked out the window and seen the stars shooting by. I think it's a safe bet that Jake was probably wrong, especially since the lightship didn't have a warp engine and tachyon eddies probably wouldn't create a warp field just by bouncing off the sails.

Warp drive is a concept that originates in and is inseparable from General Relativity.

Well, no. Warp drive is a concept that originates from and is inseparable from some unknown scientific work in the early to mid 21st century and finally applied for the first time by Zephram Cochrane. He probably made it work for the first time after someone DISPROVED general relativity.

Not to mention that we saw "warp stars" going by the sailship, something you would not see if simply travelling faster than c by Newtonian means.

We don't know what causes "warp stars," actually, but it doesn't seem to be an artifact of a warp field. Especially since the effect is absent in a ship using its warp engines but otherwise held in place by tractor beams or other forces.

Besides, if ST were a Newtonian universe where there were no relativistic speed limit, why the hell would they need warp drive?

If you own a pair of shoes, why would you need a bicycle? If you own a bicycle, why would you need a car? If you own a car, why would you need a plane? If you own a plane, why would you need a space ship? If you own a space ship, why would you need warp drive?

And for that matter, if Relativity were wrong or nonexistent, why would they name a starship after it and have Einstein as a holodeck character?

Why would they have Newton as a holodeck character? Or Leonardo DaVinci, for that matter?

 

[ProtoAvatar]

newtype alpha
You might find it acceptable to turn the trekverse into a high fantasy universe, where the laws of physics don't apply. You're free to interpret the star trek facts that way. But don't try to claim that your interpretation of events is the only possible interpretation. You can keep your "lord of the rings" universe.

I want the trek universe to remanin as realistic as possible. And that means the real laws of physics apply in the trekverse, too.

 

[Lieut. Arex]

Botany Bay need not have achieved FTL speeds on its own. At least three other objects from Earth ended up light-years from Earth when they shouldn't have been, Voyager 6, Pioneer 10, and Nomad. We know from TMP Voyager 6 passed through "what was called a black hole" according to Decker. Obviously there can't be a black hole relatively near the Sol system otherwise we'd detect it due to the gravitational distortion of the orbits of bodies in the outer part of the system. But if there is some mechanism which generates wormholes similar to the Barzan one, these probes and ships might be projected great distances without violating SR. Perhaps in the ST universe the appearance of such temporary wormholes is the explanation for the Pioneer anomaly.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

newtype alpha
You might find it acceptable to turn the trekverse into a high fantasy universe, where the laws of physics don't apply.

Of course the laws of physics apply. Those laws are not necessarily the laws WE know, considering the scientists of the 24th century know alot more than we do.

I want the trek universe to remanin as realistic as possible.

ROFLMA @ "remain"

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Botany Bay need not have achieved FTL speeds on its own. At least three other objects from Earth ended up light-years from Earth when they shouldn't have been, Voyager 6, Pioneer 10, and Nomad. We know from TMP Voyager 6 passed through "what was called a black hole" according to Decker. Obviously there can't be a black hole relatively near the Sol system otherwise we'd detect it due to the gravitational distortion of the orbits of bodies in the outer part of the system. But if there is some mechanism which generates wormholes similar to the Barzan one, these probes and ships might be projected great distances without violating SR. Perhaps in the ST universe the appearance of such temporary wormholes is the explanation for the Pioneer anomaly.

A little convenient, though, considering these wormholes would have to be ridiculously common to keep swallowing up all this Earth junk often enough to spread it all over the galaxy. Short of positing a galaxy infested with (shudder) graviton ellipses, I think the better explanation is that the Trekiverse either has different physical laws than ours (which makes sense considering our lack of a Eugenics War makes theirs a parallel universe to begin with), or--a distinct possibility--that OUR understanding of the laws of physics is somehow fundamentally flawed and SR doesn't really apply here either.

 

[Christopher]

Fine. YOU explain how a space craft launched in 1996 managed to achieve FTL velocities without being equipped with warp drive. The most logical explanation is "Einstein was wrong [in the Trekiverse]."

Hardly. Given that we have multiple precedents for space warps and alien abductions of all kinds, it is far more logical to conclude that this was an example of one of the same processes than it is to throw out the entire body of physical law to explain one anomalous factoid.

That fits for all other similar instances, and I don't know of a canon reference establishing special relativity being correct. Actually, it seems to be very incorrect since super-genius Barclay was arguing with him in "The Nth Degree."

That's ridiculous. Scientists can argue over the details of their work without the basic ideas being incorrect. New science doesn't erase old science that has been proven valid, it just extends its reach. Newton's laws still apply as low-velocity approximations of Einstein's laws, and Einstein's laws will still apply as special cases of M-theory, subspace theory, or whatever broader physics is developed beyond them.

Ah... newtonian in the context of a PHYSICS paradigm. I could live with that.

Newton was a physicist. What other context could "Newtonian" possibly have, unless you're talking about fruit-filled pastries sold by Nabisco?

Is there a black hole at the edge of the solar system? Or did it travel some distance before falling into one?

A small enough black hole in the Oort Cloud could go undetected, and could even be responsible for perturbing long-period comets into the system, as we know something must. After all, contrary to their fanciful portrayals in fiction, a black hole's gravity is no more intense at a distance than that of any other body of the same mass. A black hole with the mass of a planet or brown dwarf could thus remain undetected for now.

A colloquialism at best, since JAKE was the one who used the term "we're at warp," having looked out the window and seen the stars shooting by. I think it's a safe bet that Jake was probably wrong, especially since the lightship didn't have a warp engine and tachyon eddies probably wouldn't create a warp field just by bouncing off the sails.

Dude... it's fiction. All of this is imaginary. Of course tachyon eddies wouldn't create a warp field, because tachyon eddies don't exist. But in the imaginary context of this made-up story we're talking about, they do, so there's no reason they couldn't create a warpfield as well. And as I said, we saw the warp effect in the stars.

Well, no. Warp drive is a concept that originates from and is inseparable from some unknown scientific work in the early to mid 21st century and finally applied for the first time by Zephram Cochrane. He probably made it work for the first time after someone DISPROVED general relativity.

Oh, come on. Star Trek did not invent the concept of warp drive. The very idea of space as something that can be warped, i.e. distorted, altered in its geometry, is from General Relativity in the first place. The term "space warp" originated in that context. The concept of a space-warping drive for a spacecraft has been around in fiction since at least 1930. Fifteen years ago, Dr. Miguel Alcubierre posited a very Trek-like form of warp drive, which is a specific solution to the equations of General Relativity. Numerous other physicists have built on his work, and every one of them has used the GR equations as their basis. If we accept the conceit that Trek is in our future, then it's inevitable that Cochrane's warp drive would be based on some variant of Alcubierre's model.

Besides, if ST were a Newtonian universe where there were no relativistic speed limit, why the hell would they need warp drive?

If you own a pair of shoes, why would you need a bicycle? If you own a bicycle, why would you need a car? If you own a car, why would you need a plane? If you own a plane, why would you need a space ship? If you own a space ship, why would you need warp drive?

That doesn't answer the question.

And for that matter, if Relativity were wrong or nonexistent, why would they name a starship after it and have Einstein as a holodeck character?

Why would they have Newton as a holodeck character? Or Leonardo DaVinci, for that matter?

[/QUOTE]

Because neither of them was wrong. Newton's physics still work in the conditions for which they were defined. It's just their extrapolations beyond those conditions that were in error. And Leonardo wasn't a physicist, so that's irrelevant here.

Of course the laws of physics apply. Those laws are not necessarily the laws WE know, considering the scientists of the 24th century know alot more than we do.

That is not how science works. New discoveries don't erase old knowledge that's been proven to be true. Both Special and General Relativity have been observationally and experimentally verified thousands of times over. Every day, we accelerate subatomic particles near the speed of light in particle accelerators. The fact that it's impossible to accelerate to c or beyond isn't just abstract guesswork, it's something that's directly observed on a daily basis. We know for a fact that the lightspeed limit exists. More scientific knowledge isn't going to erase what's already proven to be true.

A little convenient, though, considering these wormholes would have to be ridiculously common to keep swallowing up all this Earth junk often enough to spread it all over the galaxy.

Why not? We have plenty of onscreen evidence that wormholes and other spatial anomalies are ridiculously common in the Trek galaxy. Voyager ran into their first wormhole within seven episodes, and numerous other anomalies thereafter. Not to mention the alien abductions. It took them six months to run into Amelia Earhart.