I chalk it up to magnetic fields from various natural effects like stars, planets, magnetic storms and from artificial sources like civilization-built magnetic space corridors between advanced star systems. As I posted on other threads:
From WNMHGB and The Galileo Seven, magnetic potentials geometrically multiply the speed of warp drive ships. For both the SS Valiant and the shuttlecraft Galileo, it resulted in multiplying theirs speeds by 1000's to 100,000's times the speed of light.
Natural Effects: Strong magnetic storms periodically radiate from the galactic center of galaxy following the arcing shape of the galactic arms. These magnetic storms are very long, even some extending from the center of the galaxy and reaching past the galactic rim. Additionally, these magnetic storms are thin, wave-like ribbons or strings that are wiggling/drifting/moving away from the galactic center. At the origin region of these magnetic storms is a vast energy field around the galactic core called the Great Barrier, and at the terminus point, these storms dissipate at the rim of the galaxy, there interacting with some unknown energy/matter to form a negative energy field called the Galactic Barrier. Diving into one of these magnetic storms at warp draws the ship to the centerline of the ribbon and accelerates a ship geometrically along its length, either toward the galactic center or toward the galactic rim depending which direction the ship was generally moving. Once in the magnetic storm, ships can leave it at any point along its length if its impulse drive system is powerful enough to overcome the storm's magnetic potential. Finding and charting these magnetic storm ribbons is extremely important for space faring civilizations.
For both the SS Valiant and the shuttlecraft Galileo, their impulse drives weren't powerful enough to pull themselves out of those very strong magnetic storms. The SS Valiant was spit out a half lightyear outside of the galaxy by an exceptional long magnetic storm ribbon, while the Galileo was pulled into the center of a local magnetic storm and probably dislodged out of the storm by the near pass to the planet's magnetic field they crashed on. Earth's early warp ships were not knowledgable of these magnetic storms which accounts for the mysterious loss of many ships. Finding and charting these moving magnetic storm ribbons allows warp ships with powerful enough impulse drives to transverse vast distances along a galactic arm. Most storm ribbons are fragmented (only a very few light years in length) while a rare few are vast in length (10,000's light years). In WNMHGB, the Enterprise was able to get to the galactic rim possibly by riding the same magnetic storm ribbon that captured the SS Valiant, but the Enterprise got off before they exited the galaxy. This could explain how the Enterprise could be in the vicinity to find the Valiant's ship recorder, plus explain why they were near a planet set up for cracking lithium so far out on the rim; the initial explorers/developers set up the planet operations, then subsequent automated ore freighters were all using the same ribbon, too. In ST:V TFF, the Enterprise was able to travel to the galactic center in hours; using this theory, they used a charted ribbon that extended to the galactic center.
Additionally, encountering the magnetic field(s) of stars, solar flares, solar mass ejections and planets can create a "head wind" to warp speed and possibly affect the time-space continuum of ships at very high warp speed. Some of these effects can be found in various episodes such as The Naked Time, Tomorrow is Yesterday, Operation: Annihilate!, Assignment: Earth, and The Paradise Syndrome.
Artificial Effects: Advanced space civilizations, such as the Federation and the Romulan and Klingon Empires, can laboriously build magnetic corridors between important star systems using space buoys that allows warp ships to traverse the corridor in hours or days. Low warp ships even with weak impulse drives are able to use the man-made, magnetic corridor network to safely get on and get off.
This reminds me of the space period of the
Dick Tracy comic strip from from about 1963 to 1969. Inventor Diet Smith invented a space coupe with magnetic propulsion, leading to moon flights and contact with Moon people.
https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/Moon_Period#:~:text=The Moon Period (also referred,Moon Valley on the Moon.
It is true that magnetism can be stronger than gravity - a magnet can lift iron or steel against the force of gravity.
There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. They work over different ranges and have different strengths. Gravity is the weakest but it has an infinite range. The electromagnetic force also has infinite range but it is many times stronger than gravity. The weak and strong forces are effective only over a very short range and dominate only at the level of subatomic particles. Despite its name, the weak force is much stronger than gravity but it is indeed the weakest of the other three. The strong force, as the name suggests, is the strongest of all four fundamental interactions.
https://home.cern/science/physics/standard-model#:~:text=There are four fundamental forces,it has an infinite range.
But it seems just as difficult to create a magnetic drive spaceship as a gravity drive spaceship. Maybe more diffcult, since only some matter is magnetically charged. A magnetic drive can only attract or repel othe rcharged matter, while all matter should be gravitating.
I note that there are magneticallcy charged regions of space which accelerate tiny charged particles to vast speeds, almost to the speed of lgiht. But an entire spaceship would be accerated to a tiny fractino of those speeds by the forces in those regions of space, since it will be vastly more massive than a subatomic particle. And not all of manned spaceship could have strong magnetic charge - changing the magnetic charges of humans in major way would probably kill them. In any case there is way for those electromagnetic charged regions of space to accelerate particles or objects to the speed of light or to almost the speed of light.
So I find it hard to believe that any sort of magnetic storm could accelerate spaceship like the SS
Valiant in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" to many times the speed of light and keep them at that velocity while they travel hundreds, or thousnds, or tens of thousands, of light years from Earth to the edge of the galaxy.
There is very little information about the voyage of the SS
Valiant in "Where No Man Has Gone Before". In the opening narraton Kirk never says why he considers the distress signal "impossible"
Captain's log, Star date 1312.4. The impossible has happened. From directly ahead, we're picking up a recorded distress signal, the call letters of a vessel which has been missing for over two centuries. Did another Earth ship once probe out of the galaxy as we intend to do? What happened to it out there? Is this some warning they've left behind?
Since doesn't explain why he thinks the impossible has happened, we learn nothing about the voyage of the older ship from his worls. We can only speculate.
When Spock reports what the recorder says:
SPOCK: Decoding memory banks. I'll try to interpolate. The Valiant had encountered a magnetic space storm and was being swept in this direction.
KIRK: The old impulse engines weren't strong enough.
SPOCK: Swept past this point, about a half light year out of the galaxy, they were thrown clear, turned, and headed back into the galaxy here. I'm not getting it all. The tapes are pretty badly burned. Sounds like the ship had encountered some unknown force. Now, orders,
So apparently the magnetic storm struck the SS
Valiant where the
Enterprise was then, or possibly farther back into the galaxy,and swept it half a light year out of the galaxy. And when the storm calmed or the SS
Valiant was thrown out of the storm, it headed back into the galaxy.
I would like to propose an alternative interpretation of those words. Possibly the hull of the SS
Valiant had less insulation against magnetic effects and the magnetism in the magnetic storm affected the electrical controls of the SS
Valiant , somewhat similar to, but inot identical to, their effect on the nstruments and controls of the
Enterprise. Possibly the SS
Valiant got to the edge of the galaxy using warp drive and then was struck by the magnetic storm which got the ship's warmp engines stuck at full speed until they could be shut off, and so took the SS
Valiant half a light year out of the galaxy.
Kirk's statement about the "old impulse engines" could mean that the various generations of warp engines had complex official designatinos, but werre usually called just "warp drive" or "warp engines " for short. KIrk might have thought that the date of the voyage of the SS
Valiant indicated it should have had "impulse warp drive engines" instead of "original warp drive engines" or "first generation warp drive engines", or "generation three warp drive engines", or whatever.
Or possibly the SS
Valiant travelled to the edge of the galaxy using actual impulse engines and was struck by the magnetic strom there. Maybe some generatons of impulse engines had faster than light capability, even though they wre depicted being used only for slower than light travel in various movies and tv shows.
I note that some time ago I decided tha the stardates in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" indicate that less than a full stardate unit passed aboard the
Enterprise while the
Enterprise made a voyage of several light days to Delta Vega, while a stardate unit seems to lake less than one day in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" Thus the
Enterprise seems to travel several light days while using impulse power which should be slower than light.
There are several solutions to this paradox.
One) That Delta Vega was several light days away, but the starship happened to be near the mouth of a space tunnel which let to the Delta Vega system, and thus the
Enterprise could travel through much less than the full several light days to the Delta Vega system. Post number 1 above suggests the possible existence of such a system in
Star Trek. And if that ws the case, maybe the SS
Valiant found a route to the edge of the galaxy thorugh that system of space tunnels, and so could reach a place hundreds or thousands of light years from Earth while actually traveling though only a few light days or light months of space with a slower than light impulse drive.
Two) Or maybe the energy supply to the warp drive engines was damaged, but the actual warp drive engines were not. Thus the
Enterprise could travel severa light days to Delta Vega in less than a day using the faster than light warp engines powered by the power supply for the impulse engines. If the impulse power supply had much less power,
Enterprise would be travelling at faster than light warp drive but still at only a tiny faction of her normal speed.
So when Kirk says:
Captain's log, Star date 1312.9. Ship's condition, heading back on impulse power only. Main engines burned out. The ship's space warp ability gone. Earth bases which were only days away are now years in the distance. Our overriding question now is what destroyed the Valiant? They lived through the barrier, just as we have. What happened to them after that?
Maye the
Enterprise can still travel faster than light, but much slower than when the power supply to the warp engines was functional.
Three) Or maybe the
Enterprise has dual mode time warp (as in "The Menagerie") and space warp warp engines, and uses them with both space warp and time warp running when it travels at the upper warp factors. And maybe the Galactic Barrier knocked out the spacee warp mode of the warp engines but left the time warp mode functioning.
So when Kirk says:
Captain's log, Star date 1312.9. Ship's condition, heading back on impulse power only. Main engines burned out. The ship's space warp ability gone. Earth bases which were only days away are now years in the distance. Our overriding question now is what destroyed the Valiant? They lived through the barrier, just as we have. What happened to them after that?
Maybe the
Enterprise can still travel faster than light to Delta Vega, but much slower than when both the space warp and the time warp are running.
Four) The mention of "our time warp, factor seven" in "The Menagerie" indicates that time warps can be generated. So even if tthe
Enterprise in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" doesn't use time warps in its warp drive, it might be able to generate time warps using some other devices, for some purposes. So possibly the the
Enterprise took days or weeks to travel to Delta Vega using the slower than light impulse engines, but used a time warp to slow down time within the saucer section and the sick way where Mitchell was so that only a few hours passed instead of the days or weeks that passed outside the aea in the time warp.
SPOCK: We'll never reach an Earth base with him aboard, Jim. You heard the mathematics of it. In a month he'll have as much in common with us as we'd have with a ship full of white mice.
MItchell almost became too powerful while developing his powers for only a few hours after that meeting according to the stardates. So if it took days, weeks, or months to reach Delta Vega they would have had to slow down the passage of time about the ship using some sort of time warp so that only a few hours passed aboard.
Five) Or as I suggested above, maybe the
Valiant used old "impulses warp drive engines" for faster than light travel. And maybe the
Enterprise has has a much more recent generation of warp drive engines to power the warp drive, and some backp old "impulse warp drive engnes" which are usually called just impulse engines, and which are usually used for slower than light travel but can be used for faster than travel, even if much slower than the later generation main warp engines.
Six) Or, as I suggested above, maybe both the
Valiant and the
Enterprise have faster-than-light capable impulse engines totally different from warp drive engines. The has only impusle engiens, and so has to use the impulse engines for faster than light travel. But the
Enterprise has both impulse engines and warp engines, and so usually uses the warp engines for faster than light travel, since they are superoor for that, and ususally uses the impulse engines for slower than light travel because they are better for that. But the impulse engines of the
Enterprise can be used for faster than light travel in an emergency, and the
Enterprise uses them to travel faster than light to ge to Delta Vega before Mitchell becomes too powerful.
Seven) Maybe the voyage to Delta vega took days or weeks,and Mitchell's powers developed greatly during those days or weeks. And only a fraction of a stardate unit changed during those days of weeks, since at that time there were many days in a stardate unit for some reason. And then as they reached Delta Vega, for some reason the ratio of stardate units to days changed, and there would be a few stardate units in a day aboard the
Enterprise and on Delta Vega. I note that my pos tnumber 9 above discusses thepossilitity of the ratio between stardate units and units of time changing,and suggested a reason for such a stardate unit, reason which could have helped the SS
Valiant get to delta Vega without being pushed all the way by a magnetic storm.
And I note that possibilites one, five, six, and seven are consistent with the
Valiant reaching the edge of the Galaxy hundreds or thousands of light years from Earth under its own power without being swept from the Solar system to edge of the galaxy by a highly implausible magnetic storm.. The miniumum magnetic storm I suggested is implausible enough.
As I said there are some spsce phenomena which can accelerate charged particles to almost the speed of light. But there is a big difference between accelerating many tiny chargde particles to almost the speed of light and accelerating a massive starship to speeds many times the speed of light.
I think that powrful magnetic storms would highly detectable if they existed in our galaxy. Phenenomena which accelerate charged particles are lot like hypothetical charged particle weapons. If someone fired a powerful charged particle ray gun in Earth's atmosphere the charged particles will strike gas molecules in the air and would excite them to emitt radiation at various frequencies from radio to visible to X-Rays to Gamma rays. The cylinder of air struck by the charged particle ray would glow in many frequencies and would look a lot like a phaser beam.
But there aren't any gas molecules in interstellar space for a charged particle beam to strike. Thus nobody could see a charged particle beam in outer space from the side, because the cylindrical space occupied by the beam wouldn't be glowing in infra-rad, uLtraviolet, or visible light, but would be totally invisible from the side. Right?
Actually there is extremely rarified gas and dust in interstellar space, which will glow in many frequencies if struck by a strong enough beam of light or of charged particles.
And contempory enthusiasts for the concept of particle beam weapons would probably go crazy with frustration if they knew that somewhere in the universe there was an incredibley, unbelieveably, powerful particle beam that makes any built on Earth seem infinitely weak by comparison..
Here is a link to images of the jet of M87.
https://www.astrobin.com/244741/
Notice that it is viewed from the side and is visible. If it was pointed straight at us it would look like a point of light.
The German-American astronomer
Walter Baade found that light from the jet was
plane polarized, which suggests that the energy is generated by the acceleration of electrons moving at
relativistic velocities in a
magnetic field. The total energy of these electrons is estimated at 5.1 × 1056
ergs[92] (5.1 × 1049
joules or 3.2 × 1068
eV). This is roughly 1013 times the energy produced in the entire Milky Way in one second, which is estimated at 5 × 1036 joules.
[93]
So charged particles accelerated to almost the speed of light and colliding with the intersellar medium do emit visible light, as well as X-Rays and radio waves.
The interaction of relativistic jets of plasma emanating from the core with the surrounding medium gives rise to
radio lobes in active galaxies. The lobes occur in pairs and are often symmetrical.
[106] The two radio lobes of M87 together span about 80 kiloparsecs; the inner parts, extending up to 2 kiloparsecs, emit strongly at radio wavelengths. Two flows of material emerge from this region, one aligned with the jet itself and the other in the opposite direction. The flows are asymmetrical and deformed, implying that they encounter a dense intra-cluster medium. At greater distances, both flows diffuse into two lobes. The lobes are surrounded by a fainter halo of radio-emitting gas.
[107][108]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_87#Jet
In 1947 M87 was discovered to be one of the strongest sources of astronomical radio waves, after the Sun. M87 is a giant galaaxy about 52 to 55 million light years from Earth.
No physicist would think that the jet of M87 could be strong enough to accelerate a starship like
Valiant to many times the speed of light.
If a magnetic storm was in our galaxy 53,000 light years away, it would be as strong a radio source as seen from Earth as M87 even if it emitted only 1 millioneth as much radio energy as M87.
If a magnetic storm was in our galxy 5.3 light years away, it would be as strong a radio source as seen from Earth as M87 even if it emitted only 1 hundred trillioneth as much radio energy as M87.
So the idea that magnetic storms capable of pushing starships faster than the speed of light for hundreds or thousands of light years from the Solar System to the edge of the galaxy would not have been detected already if they existed in our galaxy is not rational or plausible.
To say nothing of what would have happened to Earth if such a powerful magnetic storm came close enough to carry the
Valiant all the way from the solar system to the edge of the galaxy.
