What happens when your warp drive fails? Scientists have the answer

[Admin]

Scientists have "boldly gone" where no one has gone before, discovering what would happen if a faster-than-light warp drive like the one used in Star Trek were to fail.

What happens when your warp drive fails? Scientists have the answer : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I wonder what would happen inside a "warp bubble" if the warp drive fails. Seems like the occupants might get severely "warped" bent out of survivable shape in the deceleration process.

 

[Delphince]

I'm flabbergasted Robert Lea decided to reference Star Trek's technology without even knowing the basics of that technology.

"In Star Trek, exotic matter with negative mass allows the USS Enterprise to travel at faster-than-light or "warp speeds" by generating a warp bubble around the ship in which spacetime is warped, compressed ahead of the ship, and stretched out behind it."
No, and no. That's the Alcubierre drive, not a ST warp drive. "Negative mass" isn't used anywhere in the system, and nowhere in canon does it say that the warp field stretches and compresses spacetime, only that it creates a distortion with a propulsive effect due its shape.

 

[ChrisA]

I'm flabbergasted Robert Lea decided to reference Star Trek's technology without even knowing the basics of that technology.

"In Star Trek, exotic matter with negative mass allows the USS Enterprise to travel at faster-than-light or "warp speeds" by generating a warp bubble around the ship in which spacetime is warped, compressed ahead of the ship, and stretched out behind it."
No, and no. That's the Alcubierre drive, not a ST warp drive. "Negative mass" isn't used anywhere in the system, and nowhere in canon does it say that the warp field stretches and compresses spacetime, only that it creates a distortion with a propulsive effect due its shape.

You are right in that the ST canon never says anything about the shape of the wrapped space. But they do say that the shape is such that the ship is pushed in a forward direction. This implies a gradient. Even if they never speak directly about it. It is as if they said water flows down the road to the east. This implies a road that goes downhill to the east even if they never said the road was not level.

It could also be that in their time, the word "antimatter" is expanded to include more kinds of exotic matter including "anti-gravity matter".

In any case, all the science of Si Fi is "fictional science" they just make it up

 

[ChrisA]

I wonder what would happen inside a "warp bubble" if the warp drive fails. Seems like the occupants might get severely "warped" bent out of survivable shape in the deceleration process.

If the warp could have its gradient reduced to zero in a VERY short amount of time. The people inside would not feel anything because they would remain in freefall. Assuming the gradient is very large compared to the ship inside the ship see no force on it.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

What is the effect of "gravitational waves" on living tissue? The article states that they would be very high frequency gravitational waves. But, I would think they would also have extremely large amplitudes if they came from a spatial disruption that could move a space ship faster than c. So, if your head is "free falling" in the opposite direction from your "free falling" chest with sufficient amplitude to separate them by several inches, would there be any damage?

This is just another aspect of the issues that arise from assumptions about space "inflating", with arguments about whether atoms get bigger or not, and so on for larger physical entities that are in the space that is having its size changed. "Waves" would change size in different amounts in different places at the same time.