Star Trel warp speed jumps

[Gilderoy]

HI

There are plenty of questions on here about whether warp speed is possible, but i have a question on faster than light travel in general.

In star trek, when they activate the warp drive the ship streches. I believe this is called spagettication and as an actual process involved in rapid acceleration. They ship then travels to the point at which it disppears from view. As it reaches this point there is a flash of light.

If faster than light travel was possible would this flash of light actually occur?

[jake-the-peg]

Well breaking the speed of light in a vacuum is not possible so it's a bit like asking "If you had a man with a dog's head would he talk or bark?"

It's not really a meaningful question.

However subatomic particles can move so fast that they break the speed of light in the medium in which they are travelling ( the speed of light is lower in water ) when they do that there is a glow given off called Cherenkov radiation.

Google it for some pretty pictures of glowing fuel rods

[heathfield]

Jake...You might be interested in this. ;-)

[jake-the-peg]

Yes this is actually a bit of a rehashing of an old idea of Tachyons.

As I recall there was a brief fluffy of interest in the possibility that there might exist particles travelling faster than light.

Special relativity does not forbit this only travelling at the speed of light - above it the calculations come out with negative square roots which could be meaningful.

Unfortunately (perhaps) no evidence of such things was ever found and they were consigned to a dustbin marked "Nice Ideas".

It's important to distinguish between ideas that have supporting evidence or from those that get dreamed up by theoretical physicists on a night out in Amsterdam.

Alas there are more of the latter than the former

[Bazile]

Hang on - Tachyon particles dont exist ?

Will someone tell that to Commander Data and
Geordi La Forge

[zig.zag]

depends on the eye of the beholder
if you were actualy in vortexed space then the likelyhood would be greatly increased

[zig.zag]

i'll beam you up Bazile
dont forget to bring the lithium crystals

[Bazile]

make it so

[weggiewabbit]

Bazile, �make it so� lmao!

Tachyon particles can exist after I�ve visited the khazi