Revealed: What warp speed would really look like

If faster than light travel is somehow possible, it seems unlikely to involve accelerating up to, or very close to, the speed of light (like an aircraft approaching, and then breaking the sound barrier, as the article seems to assume). We understand the physics of things travelling up to 0.999999999 c very well (routinely studied in controlled experiments), and there are *serious* problems with accelerating a macroscopic object anywhere close to that speed.

First, it is horribly inefficient. The energy required to accelerate something from 0.99 c to 0.999 c is more than twice the energy required to accelerate it from 0 to 0.99 c. And even to get to 0.99 c requires over six times the rest energy of the object. To accelerate even a tiny spaceship (1000 kg, roughly the mass of an automobile) to even 0.99 c would require several times more energy than the world currently consumes in total every year.

Second, the acceleration required to approach the speed of light in a Hollywood-friendly amount of time would vaporize any known materials, and obviously be lethal to any passengers (in Star Trek, “inertial dampeners” are what prevent the crew from being turned into jelly every time the ship goes to warp…). To reach to even the unimpressive speed of 0.8 c at a comfortable and safe acceleration of 1g would take almost a year.

Third, there is the problem of time dilation (the twins “paradox”). Assuming the normal rules of physics still hold during the sublight part of the trip, anyone who leaves earth, accelerates close to the speed of light, and returns, will find that centuries or millenia have passed on earth while they were gone.

Fourth, there is the radiation problem, which is even worse than alluded to in the article. At relative speeds close enough to speed of light, collision with even a single Hydrogen atom would transfer enough energy to the spacecraft to vaporize it.

LagunaDave on January 17, 2013 at 12:42 AM