Thursday, February 18, 2010

Starship pilots: speed kills, especially warp speed

http://coinapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/WarpSpeed.jpgStar 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.

The problem lies with Einstein's special theory of relativity. It transforms the thin wisp of hydrogen gas that permeates interstellar space into an intense radiation beam that would kill humans within seconds and destroy the spacecraft's electronic instruments.

Interstellar space is an empty place. For every cubic centimetre, there are fewer than two hydrogen atoms, on average, compared with 30 billion billion atoms of air here on Earth. But according to William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, that sparse interstellar gas should worry the crew of a spaceship travelling close to the speed of light even more than Romulans decloaking off the starboard bow.


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.



Death ray


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.


The spacecraft's hull would provide little protection. Edelstein calculates that a 10-centimetre-thick layer of aluminium would absorb less than 1 per cent of the energy. Because hydrogen atoms have a proton for a nucleus, this leaves the crew exposed to dangerous ionising radiation that breaks chemical bonds and damages DNA. "Hydrogen atoms are unavoidable space mines," says Edelstein.


The fatal dose of radiation for a human is 6 sieverts. Edelstein's calculations show that the crew would receive a radiation dose of more than 10,000 sieverts within a second. Intense radiation would also weaken the structure of the spacecraft and damage its electronic instruments.


Edelstein speculates this might be one reason why extraterrestrial civilisations haven't paid us a visit. Even if ET has mastered building a rocket that can travel at the speed of light, he may be lying dead inside a weakened craft whose navigation systems have short-circuited.


via Starship pilots: speed kills, especially warp speed - space - 16 February 2010 - New Scientist.

4 comments:

Sam said...

Nope. That's what the navigational deflector is for.

Xeno said...

Hey, yeah, you just bend space, including the rays around your ship.

Craig Trover said...

So, there are still some minor hurdles to warp speed.

PiaPoi said...

No Sam, Xeno is right. You bend spacetime and pass through it like a bubble passes through water. You could have a head-on collision with an asteroid and just pass through it. (The navigational deflector is for when on impulse power which is fast but not warp speed.)

You CANNOT break the light barrier. You can warp space which is an altogether different thing. Amazing how much Star Trek got right.

Meanwhile Edelstein should look up Cseti and the Disclosure Project before spouting nonsense about our not being visited. There is a 2 hour video of a press conference on YouTube which should make interesting viewing...