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From: boyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: re: Warp Drive
Message-ID: <2813@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Jul-84 09:18:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.2813
Posted: Tue Jul 24 09:18:00 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 07:44:17 EDT
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> For instance, what is warp drive? How does it work? Does it
> attempt to defy Einstein's Theory of Relativity, or does it
> implore subwarps in spacetime?  
> The latter seems to be the most logical assumption, to my eyes,
> but how? In the TV show, no explanation was given.  It was just
> some neat way to get from one sector to another.  And, if it does 
> indeed implore subwarps, WHY DO DIFFERENT WARP SPEEDS EXIST???
>
> (Roger Espinosa)

If any of us knew how the warp drive worked, we'd be up for Nobel Physics Prizes
instead of sitting here typing away, and reading netnews.

Why do you feel that a detailed scientific explanation is necessary? Look at it
this way: When you're driving in your car, do you all of a sudden stop what you
are doing, look out into a hypothetical audience and explain how an internal
combustion engine works? The warp drive *is* nothing more than a convenient de-
vice for getting the *Enterprise* from one place to another very quickly, and as
Roddenberry and company are not physicists, it's unreasonable to expect them to
explain how the warp drive works with anything more than pseudo-scientific lip
service. Isaac Asimov once wrote (I'm paraphrasing him) that most sf authors
realize that superluminal travel is probably impossible (Asimov himself believes
it is), but they also recognize that it is a necessary convention for dealing
with stories involving interstellar societies, if you need to get your charac-
ters from one place to another quickly. Very few authors try to give more than
a cursory idea of how their ftl drives work.
	As far as pseudo-scientific lip service goes, I think that warp drive
warps local spacetime, so that the distance between points A and B are shorter
than they would be in normal space. Presumably, warping spacetime takes a *lot*
of energy, so controlled matter/anti-matter annihilation is necessary to provide
sufficient power.
	As to why there are different warp speeds, think of them as quantized
energy states. In energy state (warp factor) 1, the spacetime warp is sufficient
to give the ship an effective velocity of c (the speed of light in a vacuum).
At energy state (warp factor) 2, the effective velocity beomes (2^3)c, at state
n, the effective velocity is (n^3)c. The fact that warp factors are always given
in whole numbers (I don't recall ever hearing of Warp 5.3, for example) does
suggest a quantum nature for warp drive.

	My advice is to tell yourself, "It's magic" and let it go at that.

--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA)

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