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NEWS > SCIENCE > SCIENTISTS BELIEVE THAT WARP SPEED MAY KILL
SCIENTISTS BELIEVE THAT WARP SPEED MAY KILL
March 20 2010
Washington, D.C. – Space is massive. It is more massive than people can truly comprehend. Our galaxy, as an example, is unremarkable in size and placement yet it is still 100,000 light years in diameter. One light year is a little under ten trillion 
kilometres. There are stars in the universe larger than our entire solar system. There are quasars which consume billions of stars, breaking them down into elemental pieces. Add to that the fact that the universe is still expanding, new stars and planets are forming, and you start to develop a picture of the true size of the heavens.
Because of the size it is very unlikely that human beings will ever be able to witness the many sights the Universe has created. Even travelling to our nearest neighbour, the moon, is a major trek that may or may not happen again in our lifetimes. Because of that science and science fiction have long been dreaming up ways to allow us to travel the vast distances of space to not only see the sights, but also to determine whether or not we are alone, am answer that could help us understand why we are here at all. The most famous of those travel techniques is undoubtedly warp speed, popularized in the ‘Star Trek’ series. However, like many things in that series, real science has put a damper on warp speed with many scientists stating that such travel might be too fast to be safe.
“It all has to do with Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Without getting too complicated, the faster you the faster atoms speed up. The faster they go, the more radiation they create. Because we pass through atoms that radiation would be passed on to us and any vehicle we are travelling in, killing us instantly and rendering the ships electronically dead,” said William Edelstein of Johns Hopkins University. “The radiation that would be created even travelling close to the speed of light would be the equivalent of standing in front of the LHC beam. It would instantly kill anyone standing in front of it. I hate to say this, but Star Trek was wrong. Warp speed kills.”
It should be noted that Edelstein acknowledged that he is a much bigger ‘Star Wars’ fan than ‘Star Trek’. He also very much enjoyed the re-imagined version of ‘Battlestar Galactica’.
“There is a lot of debate about how fast one can truly travel and how we could possibly traverse the vast distances of space. Speed might not be the best way to go. Folding space, causality loops, or even accessing some version of subspace are all possibilities but just going really fast is, at best, really dangerous,” said Scrape TV Science analyst Dr. Howard Poe. “Outside the deadly radiation that is created, controlling the ship would be really tough at those speeds. I mean it would impress the ladies, no doubt, but even in space speed kills so going really fast might not be the best option.”
According to ‘Star Trek’ lore, warp technology creates a subspace ‘bubble’ around the vessel allowing it slide through space isolated from deadly radiation.
“It’s in many ways like the Pope mobile. You have this giant bubble around the ship that protects whatever s inside from the external effects of universe. That could work I suppose, but you’d have to make it work in order for it to work so until somebody does that we won’t really know,” continued Poe. “Frankly, all that relativity stuff is really confusing and it gets in the way of travelling to other planets and finding really cool alien species which is what we really want. We have an obligation to get past this obstacle and go out and find the green ladies out there just waiting for us.”
It’s believed that green woman really like fast ships.
Anna Phillips, Science Correspondent
NEWS > SCIENCE > SCIENTISTS BELIEVE THAT WARP SPEED MAY KILL
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