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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!h-sc1!samson
From: samson@h-sc1.UUCP (gregory samson)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Re: New discussion
Message-ID: <589@h-sc1.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Oct-85 16:53:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: h-sc1.589
Posted: Sat Oct 12 16:53:17 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Oct-85 04:58:10 EDT
References: <353@uw-june>
Reply-To: gts@wjh12
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
Lines: 37

In article <353@uw-june> ewan@uw-june (Ewan Tempero) writes:
>
> at some stage the Enterprize was dead as usual ( this was
>Elaan of Troyius by the way ) and a comment along the lines of
>"Klingon vessel approaching at better than warp 6" ( this isn't an
>exact quote ). About a minute later the Klingon actually arrived and
>proceed to pound poor old number 4 shield again. My friend commented
>that is must be pretty fancy sensors that can detect a ship, moving
>at that speed at that *distance*. Think about it. Warp 6 is
>somethink like 3^6 lightyears/second or some such....anyway *real*
>fast and if it took a minute to arrive, how far away was it when it
>was first detected?! Add to that some of the other neat things the
>ST-universe sensors can do...detect lifeforms, numbers and species
>of, detect minerals ( not find Kirk just about every episode :-)
>
>What could these things be doing? The only thing we have available
>these days is radar....
>-- 

Actually, Warp 6 is only 4x10^7 miles per second :-).  (That comes out to about 
1.69 days to the light-year, which is NOT fast for the Enterprise, at ALL.)

One possibility about how the sensors can see so far off could be that they
see through subspace.  I've heard the theory that subspace is "closer
together" than normal space, but still corresponds point-wise with it.  So
the sensors just look through the shorter distance through subspace
(substitute any distance that you're comfortable with for that distance)
and "see" into normal space.

I'm not sure that this subspace is the same as "warp space", as mentioned
by Diane Duane, but I wouldn't be surprised.

-----
G. T. Samson
The Evil MicroWizard
gts@wjh12.ARPA
(NOT, repeat NOT, samson%h-sc1@harvard.ARPA!!!)