The Orion's Arm Universe Project Forums





Well. This could be a game changer. New Warp Drive theory
#23
With regard to debris, and running into it with a ship in warp drive.

Would a ship at warp be the same size as in normal space? I have the impression that one of two things would be. Either the ship would wrap space around it, and only the mouth of the distortion would move, in much the manner that Void Ships are described. A moving basement universe. Or, it would stretch out, becoming thousands of times "longer", from the perspective of an outside observer, traveling within its compressed space-time volume at a speed that could be far lower than c, while achieving an apparent velocity that was much higher. Possibly enough so that, as things landed in the compression field, they might have a lower relative velocity to that of the ship, since the ship wouldn't be traveling all that fast, within its compression field, and now that the debris is sharing the field, the ship is only traveling a little faster than it. (if that debris moved an inch, in an hour, in the direction the ship was traveling, then fell out of the field, it might find itself several AU from where it entered the field).

I wonder if a ship at warp might not have a lower apparent density, due to the mass of it being smeared over a fair length, and that maybe that lower density might partially counteract the higher apparent density from traveling at a significant fraction of c. That perhaps a ship stretched to 10,000 times its normal length, might be effected by, at least some, elements of relativity, as if it was traveling at .001c, when it's managed to get its speed up to .1c within its bubble.

It also seems to me that such a stretched-out ship might be harder to interact with from normal-space, and most things wouldn't be in Just The Wrong spot to land in the compression zone, and would therefore be missed, with an inch being quite literally as good as a mile.

I'm spitballing here. I know nothing about this level of physics, and know it. I also understand that, at this level, instinct is Wrong. Very Very Wrong.
My instinct is to treat relativity like sound echoes, and I haven't wrapped my head around why they're different.
And I still wonder if we can use the moment of the "Big Bang" as a, literally, universal reference point, sidestepping causality. Which was my original point. Nothing about stargates.
Reply


Messages In This Thread
RE: Well. This could be a game changer. New Warp Drive theory - by SeanR - 03-08-2021, 03:34 PM

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 2 Guest(s)