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The Downside of Warp Drives: Annihilating Whole Star Systems When You Arrive
MrSeb writes "The dream of faster-than-light travel has been on the mind of humanity for generations. Until recently, though, it was restricted to the realm of pure science fiction. Theoretical mechanisms for warp drives have been posited by science, some of which actually jive quite nicely with what we know of physics. Of course, that doesn't mean they're actually going to work, though. NASA researchers recently revisited the Alcubierre warp drive and concluded that its power requirements were not as impossible as once thought. However, a new analysis from the University of Sydney claims that using a warp drive of this design comes with a drawback. Specifically, it could cause cataclysmic explosions at your destination."
If we have the technology to make a negative gravitational gradient (which all the FTL theoretical engines require, incidentally) you can do a lot of neat stuff. Make a ball of negative mass matter and let go and watch it shoot straight up just for kicks. Of course, there's absolutely no reason to expect that such a material is possible; oh sure, the math works out if you assume it can exist, but that doesn't mean that it is physically possible.
Advanced civilizations might have this drive, and prevent too much particle buildup. It might not be perfect though, so every once in a while a handful of particles come along for the ride. How else do you explain a proton with the kinetic energy of a pitched baseball?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So why not stop off the ecliptic so your 'wave of doom' flies off into intergalactic space, then warp downwards and leave on the far side of the destination system, again throwing the 'wave of doom' off into intergalactic space?
Or is the wave not directional?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Failing that, you could make a collector that ships need to aim their build-up into. All it would take is a static warp bubble at the destination, which could then be relaxed under more controlled circumstances to recover the high-energy particles.
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>All the energetic particles trapped during the journey have to go somewhere, and the researchers believe they would be blasted outward in a cone directly in front of the ship.
At that energy levels particles will be converted to gamma radiation, expelled outward in a burst. Maybe sombody already invented those ships.
So more like the Soliton wave.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/New_Ground_(episode)
is a short story by Randall Garrett. The crew of the first starship narrowly escape the supernova from their destination star by escaping back into warp. They realize that this isn't a coincidence: their warp drive blew it up on arrival. (They eventually realize that it blew up their origin star too: the Sun.)
Now that's an interesting (and also disturbing) thought.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
http://what-if.xkcd.com/
It talks about matter smacking into a planet at different energy levels.
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