warp speed for dummies

I was just thinking that I might need to smart-up my blog a little bit, you know, make it more intellectual. I wondered how many folks really understand how fast warp speed is? I mean everyone has seen an episode or two (at least) of Star Trek, even if you don't watch it regularly, where Captain Picard said "Engage" after Riker gave a command of warp 7 or something. I watched the original Star Trek (reruns) and all the series that came after but it wasn't until I started watching "Voyager" that I realized that I didn't understand warp speed at all. I'll try to explain it to where anyone can understand. I'm not going into the "warp drive, warp nacells and dilithium crystals", warp speed is all you really need to understand. I won't debate if it's actually possible or not, I'll leave that to Steven Hawking or Carl Sagan, it's above my head. If you don't give a rat's ass, don't read it.

First thing you need to understand is that if you think warp speed is fast, you're wrong. It doesn't have anything to do with speed, it's actually more like shortening the distance between the places you want to go. To make it simple, take a piece of paper and draw a dot on each side like so: the paper is "space/time" (distance if space/time confused the hell outta ya), the dots are where you are and where you're going and the line (you'll draw next) is the path of travel.




Draw a line slowly connecting the two dots. We'll consider this to be normal speed (anything less than the speed of light). If you could draw the line so fast that you could not see your hand move across the paper, that would be the speed of light. So far we're still talking about SPEED, Albert Eienstien said that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light so we got to get around that to get from one planet to another before Captain Kirk is an old man.

Now, take the paper and tear it into, something like this:

Now take one piece and move it closer to the other one, overlap the paper. Move the dots closer together, this means the line between the dots is shorter. If you drew the line again at the same speed you did the first time, you'd get from one dot to the other quicker, right? We'll say this is Warp 1, just to keep it simple. That's the trick, warp speed actually warps "space/time" to make the points closer together. I aint saying that it can be done, just explaining.

Move the dots closer and closer, you get Warp 2, Warp 3 and so on. When you get to Warp 9, they are very close. I folded the paper to be able to see the dots as I moved them closer.

If you continue to move them closer and closer, you'll get to Warp 9.999999999999999999999999999999 (buttload of 9s) right before the dots touch. In theory, Warp 10 would be when the dots touch, then you'd have to be in two places at the same time. Even Steven, Carl and Albert say that is impossible. FYI, they did go Warp 10 once in Star Trek Voyager, but it messed them up pretty good.

If you watch a lot of Star Trek, you may remember Warp 13 or 14 from a couple of early episodes but this is the way it's generally explained now. It's a TV show, they goofed a time or two. There's also Transwarp, Hyperwarp and Transwarp Conduit (Borg), I'll leave them for another blog. I also like to stick with the facts of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica uses a FTL (faster than light) Jump Drive that is pretty cool but I aint going there. If you know what to T stands for in James T. Kirk, you might have found this slightly interesting, if not, all I can say is "Live long and prosper".