star trek physics question re: warp drive and hitting something

[tommo123]

just popped up in my fraan. annpoying me eough to make me post this. sad/geeky i know.

anyways, warp is a bubble around an object so that the object itself doesnt move FTL but the space within that bubble (and the object within said space) move FTL right? space constricts at the front and expands at the back to allow the bubble to move?

if that's right, how does hitting a small object become an issue unless already moving as high speed? if a tiny speck (say a grain of sand) is moving at a few feet/second and then is hit by this warp drive, then as the ship itself isn't moving really then the grain would simply enter this new piece of space time and preserve its momentum no? therefore just bouncing off as it would a piece of paper with no threat to the ship.

unless the compression caused by the ward field on space time somehow imparts an impulse to the grain that gives it a lot of energy? but then it would do that to everything leaving a trail of particles that would be a threat to any nearby planet/ship.

or maybe the deflector shields work outside the warp bubble.

sorry for posting this btw but one of those things that popped up for no reason 1st thing in morning and had to get written down lest if nag me until the next stupid question pops in my head.

 

[Mr Evil]

The theory suggests that particles would end up stuck on or in the bubble until it decelerates.

 

[tommo123]

what about in trek physics though? in that verse it seems like random debris/material would damage the ship somehow. meh, sci-fi physics i guess.

side note re warp - in real life i've read people have researched it and in theory reduced the amount of energy (or negative energy/matter which i can't get my head around) needed to create one. now what about physically creating one? is it like splitting the atom whereas within a few decades of einsteins equation there as the manhattan project or far more difficult?

of course, that had a military application so had appropriate funding which warp wouldn't

 

[Mr Evil]

what about in trek physics though? in that verse it seems like random debris/material would damage the ship somehow. meh, sci-fi physics i guess...

They have the "navigational deflector" for that, which I'm pretty sure is just sci-fi hand-waving, as I don't see how a force-field could push something aside when you're travelling >c.

...in real life i've read people have researched it and in theory reduced the amount of energy (or negative energy/matter which i can't get my head around) needed to create one. now what about physically creating one? is it like splitting the atom whereas within a few decades of einsteins equation there as the manhattan project or far more difficult?..

At the time the atom bomb was developed, it was already pretty much 100% certain that it was physically possible with the technology available. Warp drives are still speculative at best.

If we could create enough negative energy for a warp drive, then we could probably make wormholes too. This is probably centuries beyond us now, if it's possible at all.

 

[SKORPI0]

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/22570/what-would-be-the-effects-of-warp-collisions

 

[Despoiler]

They have the "navigational deflector" for that, which I'm pretty sure is just sci-fi hand-waving, as I don't see how a force-field could push something aside when you're travelling >c.


At the time the atom bomb was developed, it was already pretty much 100% certain that it was physically possible with the technology available. Warp drives are still speculative at best.

If we could create enough negative energy for a warp drive, then we could probably make wormholes too. This is probably centuries beyond us now, if it's possible at all.

They aren't speculative at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

and the power issue isn't really an issue

http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html

 

[Mr Evil]

They aren't speculative at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

From the very first sentence of that article:

The Alcubierre drive or Alcubierre warp drive (or Alcubierre metric, referring to metric tensor) is a speculative idea

(my emphasis). The concept of the warp drive is just something that pops out of the mathematics of general relativity. No one has any idea if it actually represents a physical possibilty.

...and the power issue isn't really an issue

http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html

From that article:

the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe

The most powerful energy sources we have, nuclear weapons, produce energy equivalent to a mass measured in grams. The Voyager probe weighed hundreds of kilograms. Not only is that orders of magnitude bigger, it has to be negative energy.