Yo Dok

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I posted this to facebook, but considering how much of a fan of Captain Kirk you are, I figured I would repost it here

Question. Going through the original series of Star Trek, I've noticed that Kirk always orders the helm to engage at warp factor 1. This is equivalent to light speed. That will get you nowhere slow. It takes a little over 4 years to get from Earth to Alpha Centauri. If they're on a 5 year mission to explore strange new worlds, they might get a couple of worlds, none of which probably have either new life or new civilizations, and considering how long the Federation has been in existence at this point, they are not boldly going where no man has gone before. How's that leisurely pace going, Kirk? /nerd

[Nephew Twiddleton]

[Drunken Monkey Cabal]

According to current relativistic theory, at the speed of light you exist everywhere at once, so wouldn't be boldly going so much, as boldly revisiting everywhere

[Nephew Twiddleton]

According to current relativistic theory, at the speed of light you exist everywhere at once, so wouldn't be boldly going so much, as boldly revisiting everywhere

Warp speed negates relativistic effects, since it moves the space around the matter, not the matter itself.


Also, could you get me the link for that? I haven't heard that before.

[Drunken Monkey Cabal]

I think its just the result of plugging velocity = c into special relativistic time dilation equation.

Where Gamma = 1/ (1-(v^2/C^2))  time dilation is given by delta t = gamma * proper time

if v= C then the denominator becomes 1-1 = 0. anything divided by zero is equal to zero/infinity (i.e with out limits).

So delta t will always be zero when travelling at speed of light.

using Speed = distance over time, rearranging gives distance equals time times speed.

so plugging in our delta t, means that distance will always equal zero/infinity which as I mentioned over means it has no limits.

therefore at the speed of light you are travelling no where and ever where at the same time.



Not sure on any links, as I just rearranged it from memory. Good start would be hyperphysics for the basics

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I thought that dividing by zero was meaningless and fallacy. The result is also a bit counterintuitive. We've observed particles going at the speed of light that clearly weren't everywhere at once.

[Drunken Monkey Cabal]

Only particle we have observed at the speed of light, as a discrete packed of photons. But it is also a wave, which means it is not bound by mass constraints.

and that equation is a bit of a mind fuck,

as 1) no physical object could travel at the speed of light as it would require infinite energy
    2) the reason you can be infinitely anywhere is that at the speed of light, time is infinite/stopped inside your reference frame (that is what is meant by delta t = zero

So imagine you could instantly accelerate to the speed of light. once there you could travel anywhere in the universe, with your clocking basically frozen. meaning you would in effect be immortal until you slowed down.

So jump to speed of light and say hit alpha centuri, that's what 4 light years away? to you, it would be instantaneous, where to the rest of the the universe (outside your reference frame) it would have taken you four years.

and dividing by zero is a fallacy as it produces no real solutions to an equation. which in this case means time stops existing.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Only particle we have observed at the speed of light, as a discrete packed of photons. But it is also a wave, which means it is not bound by mass constraints.

and that equation is a bit of a mind fuck,

as 1) no physical object could travel at the speed of light as it would require infinite energy
    2) the reason you can be infinitely anywhere is that at the speed of light, time is infinite/stopped inside your reference frame (that is what is meant by delta t = zero

So imagine you could instantly accelerate to the speed of light. once there you could travel anywhere in the universe, with your clocking basically frozen. meaning you would in effect be immortal until you slowed down.

So jump to speed of light and say hit alpha centuri, that's what 4 light years away? to you, it would be instantaneous, where to the rest of the the universe (outside your reference frame) it would have taken you four years.

and dividing by zero is a fallacy as it produces no real solutions to an equation. which in this case means time stops existing.

So it would be everywhere (at least in a straight line) from the pilot's perspective, but it still wouldn't actually be instantaneously everywhere though, right?

[Drunken Monkey Cabal]

It could be everywhere, anywhere as velocity in space is not limited to 2-Directional travel (assuming you don't slow down for corners)

and whilst, no it would not be instantaneously every where at once to people on the external reference frame, to those within the reference frame it would be. So when kirk states their 5 year mission to go boldly where no one has gone before... is probably true, as he was captain in the year whatever lets say 2XXX ? so anything that was more than than say x light years away (where x is the number of years from kirk being captain to warp travel being invented/2) would be where no one has gone before.

As the information is limited to travelling at the speed of light, this means that the only way the information could be returned would be if the vessel itself physically returned to dump the data.

So as an effect of this, the second that the enterprise entered relativistic velocities, it would be seriously obsolete to encountering a Klingon vessel which it encountered, where the Klingon vessel was closer to its homeworld than the enterprise was.

There is actually a really good sci-fi book called forever war by Joe Halderman, which details a war occurring at relativistic velocities. It definitely is worth the read and will explain it a lot better than me.

Also read up about the Chernkov radiation. its my favourite scientific concept. basically due to the speed of light in water being less than the speed of light in vacuum, it is possible to provide electrons with enough energy to travel faster than the speed of light. This causes in effect an optical shock wave, where the EM energy from the electron is shifted in the blue direction, in the same way that a sonic boom is produced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

So nuclear reactors glow blue. which is pretty pimp to see.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Huh. Ill have to check it out.

[Drunken Monkey Cabal]

The sequel forever peace by Joe Halderman is not as good. Still worth a read, as does learn to more surreal wtfness near the end of the book.

[Don Coyote]

Read reviews of the different printings of The Forever War, I have read the first and I think the second. Stuff was taken out in the first then crammed into the second in a way that jarred a bit. I think there may be at least two other versions that aren't as jacked up.

Good paired with Starship Troopers.

[Triple Zero]

if v= C then the denominator becomes 1-1 = 0. anything divided by zero is equal to zero/infinity (i.e with out limits) undefined.

But apart from that, everything you said was completely spot on mistaken.

[Pæs]

if v= C then the denominator becomes 1-1 = 0. anything divided by zero is equal to zero/infinity (i.e with out limits) undefined.

But apart from that, everything you said was completely spot on mistaken.

I wasn't going to bring it up because I didn't want to bother defending the position from my phone, but what Trip said.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

if v= C then the denominator becomes 1-1 = 0. anything divided by zero is equal to zero/infinity (i.e with out limits) undefined.

But apart from that, everything you said was completely spot on mistaken.

Thank you Trip.

I trust your judgment on mathematical issues.