Rebuttal To New Scientist Article On Impossibility of Star Trek Warp Travel

Yesterday New Scientist posted an article titled "Starship pilots: Speed kills: especially warp speed." This article is getting a lot of play across the web on other sci-fi sites. Debating the science of science fiction may be dubious, but TrekMovie would at least like to point out how Star Trek has already addressed the issues presented by New Scientist, and that there is some back-up from real science. 

Star Trek fans prepare to be disappointed?

The New Scientist article starts off with the following statement:

Star Trek fans, prepare to be disappointed. Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew would die within a second of the USS Enterprise approaching the speed of light.

Really? Oh no! What is the problem? Well the conclusion from William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is that space will kill you. Specifically:

Special relativity describes how space and time are distorted for observers travelling at different speeds. For the crew of a spacecraft ramping up to light speed, interstellar space would appear highly compressed, thereby increasing the number of hydrogen atoms hitting the craft.

Worse is that the atoms’ kinetic energy also increases. For a crew to make the 50,000-light-year journey to the centre of the Milky Way within 10 years, they would have to travel at 99.999998 per cent the speed of light. At these speeds, hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts – the same energy that protons will eventually reach in the Large Hadron Collider when it runs at full throttle. "For the crew, it would be like standing in front of the LHC beam," says Edelstein. [more at New Scientist]

The argument is sound, in that it is true that space is chock full of hydrogen and it would be nasty to be running into all of that while approaching (and exceeding) the speed of light. However, throughout its history Star Trek writers have worked hard to develop solutions to the scientific challenges of warp travel (and more). The hydrogen issue is only one of many things that makes routine faster than light travel on Star Trek an issue. Another is the relativistic effects of time and space. However, Star Trek does provide answers and even though they were created by TV and movie writers, many physicists agree that there may be loopholes to some of the apparent barriers to faster than light travel.

Montage of Trek ships going to warp — is this lethal?

Science to the rescue?

The best place to learn about this is in the book "The Physics of Star Trek" by Professor Lawrence Krauss, which includes a forward by Stephen Hawking. Below are some excerpts from the book that talk about three specific plausible ‘Treknologies’ that solve the issues brought up in the New Scientist article .

Warp Drive

The article in New Scientist seems predicated on the notion that a Starship would be using conventional means to propel itself to light-speed and beyond. However, in the world of Star Trek, impulse drives only move the ship at sub-light speeds, and it is the warp drive that breaks you through the light barrier. And warp drive may not be such a crazy idea. Here is what Steven Hawking says about Star Trek’s warp drive:

Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows the possibility for a way around this difficulty: one might be able to warp spacetime and create a shortcut between the places one wanted to visit. Although there are problems of negative energy, it seems that such warping might be within our capabilities in the future. There has not been much serious scientific research along these lines, however, partly, I think, because it sounds too much like science fiction.

– Stephen Hawking, forward to "The Physics of Star Trek"

Part of the solution to the lethal hydrogen atom problem lies in the term ‘warp’ itself, as explained by Krauss:

If spacetime can locally be warped so that it expands behind a starship and contracts in front of it, then the craft will be propelled along with the space it is in, like a surfboard on a wave. The craft will never travel locally faster than the speed of light, because the light, too, will be carried along with the expanding wave of space

– Lawrence Krauss, "The Physics of Star Trek"

Two NX class ships inside their safe ‘warp field’…as space moves around them

Deflector Shields

And so if space is moving around the ship, then the problem of all those hydrogen atoms goes away. And again it is a piece of treknology that helps, again as noted by Krauss:

Warping space has other advantages as well. Clearly, if spacetime becomes strongly curved in front of the Enterprise, then any light ray—or phaser beam, for that matter—will be deflected away from the ship. This is doubtless the principle behind deflector shields. Indeed, we are told that the deflector shields operate by "coherent graviton emission." Since gravitons are by definition particles that transmit the force of gravity, then "coherent graviton emission" is nothing other than the creation of a coherent gravitational field. A coherent gravitational field is, in modern parlance, precisely what curves space! So once again the Star Trek writers have at least settled upon the right language.

– Lawrence Krauss, "The Physics of Star Trek"

And the deflector would be protecting your ship both at warp speed, and even at high sub-light speeds while on impulse drive. No wonder Star Trek ships usually keep real clean.

The Deflector Dish on the USS Enterprise D – every Enterprise in Star Trek has had one since the show began in the 60s

Bussard Collectors

There is also another key piece of treknology that comes into place, and that is the Bussard Collectors which are the glowy things on the front of the nacelles on the Enterprise and other standard Starfleet ship designs. These collectors are specifically made to scoop up all that hydrogen to use as fuel.  Hydrogen deuterium is the matter used in combination with anti-matter to create the matter-antimatter reaction that provides Starships with their warp power. In fact, the problem may not be that there is too much of this hydrogen out there, but too little.

…hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Can you not sweep it up as you move through the galaxy? Well, the average density of matter in our galaxy is about one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter. To sweep up just one gram of hydrogen per second, even moving at a good fraction of the speed of light, would require you to deploy collection panels with a diameter of over 25 miles. And even turning all this matter into energy for propulsion would provide only about a hundred-millionth of the needed propulsion power!

– Lawrence Krauss, "The Physics of Star Trek"

And then of course there is the issue of Starships being able to store enough matter and antimatter to fuel the ship for the astounding amount of energy a real warp drive would require. This may or may not be plausible, but running into hydrogen atoms appears to be the least of Starfleet’s worries.

The Bussard Collectors on the USS Enterprise E scooping up fuel in a nebula

So should Trek fans be "disappointed." Um, well first of all, it is just a TV show. We know (or most of us at least know) that Star Trek is not a documentary, and as Scotty liked to say, he "canna change the laws of physics". However, Star Trek can come up with the technology to make the dream of light-speed travel possible. And many physicists today think that this technology is at least possible. And isn’t that what Star Trek is all about? Inspiring people by showing them a future full of possibilities?

What do you think?

So do you buy into the Treknobabble, or do you say that it is all just sci-fi and that mankind is never going to break that light-speed barrier? Vote in the latest poll

[poll=549]

Further reading

If you enjoy this kind of thing, then you should probably pick up a copy of Krauss’ "The Physics of Star Trek" (which has recently been revised and updated). Krauss also wrote a follow-up book "Beyond Star Trek: From Alien Invasions to the End of Time." Many of the issues of Star Trek physics (including warp) are also discussed in Michio Kaku’s "Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel."

All of these are available at Amazon.