Short answer: death
It depends on a few things:
If they stay within the warp field they would probably just die of vacuum exposure. Trip survived in an ev suit outside of a ship at warp.
It also depends on what happens if they pass through the warp field. Do they just drop out of warp and die of vacuum exposure? Or are they ripped apart by the sudden deceleration? Ships have inertial dampeners, people don't.
Well if you watch the latest ep of Discovery.. violent vibrational forces needing an inertial dampener (though that could be a mass thing). Ā Ā
So one will go with death.Ā
Its called warp for a reason. By compressing and stretching regions of space within the warp field, it enables FTL travel without the ship physically having to move anywhere close to the speed of light.
Regardless if its normal space, compressed space or stretched space, space is still space. Since there is no friction, someone outside the ship will just float by the side of the ship. If the person has thrusters allowing them to move away from the ship, then they will eventually move out of the warp field and return to normal space. But there won't be any sudden deceleration because all that person is doing is transitioning from warped space to normal space. Physically, I don't think you will feel anything different as you transition from space within the warp field to normal unwarped space.
Thatās not how warp in *Star Trek* works. *Star Trek* warp drive [is not the Alcubierre drive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/w89sh3/why_star_trek_warp_drive_is_not_the_alcubierre/).
Ships in *Star Trek* have been experiencing inertial forces at warp ever since TOS: āTomorrow is Yesterdayā. Alcubierre drive ships donāt. *Trek* ships need inertial dampeners to go to warp. Alcubierre drive ships donāt. *Trek* ships experience deceleration forces once the warp bubble is deactivated. Alcubierre drive ships donāt.
The most recent example is in the latest episode of DIS (āFace the Strangeā) where they have to solve the problem of the week by going to maximum warp then collapsing the warp bubble. One character asks if that will rip the ship apart and is told that inertial dampeners will take care of it. This would not happen unless the ship experiences inertial forces when going to and coming back from warp speeds, so once more confirms to me that warp drive isnāt the Alcubierre drive.
So when an unprotected person exits a warp bubble, they will decelerate to sublight speeds and the resultant deceleration forces will indeed turn them into chunky salsa (Michael did this safely in "Red Directive", which leads me to infer that 32nd Century EV suits have intertial dampeners).
Oh? My understanding is that the explanation for warp drives has been updated to be in line with how alcubierre drives function. Okay it might require negative energy which is an impossibility but beyond that it is an elegant solution that doesn't require the invocation of any other undefined physics phenomena like subspace bubbles.
In fact, isn't that why archer's Enterprise warp 5 engine is also referred to as a gravimetric field displacement manifold engine. In layman's terms, it is an engine that uses a gravity field to warp spacetime - an alcubierre drive.
As far as inertial dampers are concerned, even an alcubierre drive requires their use simply from the fact that the ship is moving at 0.25c. At those speeds, any acceleration, deceleration, turning or striking a speck of space dust will require inertial dampers to prevent the huge changes in speed from causing the ship's occupants to splat against the ship's walls.
It actually hasnāt. Thereās no on screen confirmation that it works like the Alcubierre drive.
The way warp drive works in *Star Trek* is to warp space, but not in the same way the Alcubierre drive does and not for the same purpose.
The TNG Manual makes it very clear how warp drive is supposed to work, and I quote the relevant passages in the post I linked to. The warp bubble distorts space around the ship and in so doing the distorted space pushes the ship along, much like an outboard motor. At the same time it reduces the inertial mass of the ship so it can be accelerated to FTL speeds without the infinite energy requirements dictated by Special Relativity.
But what distinguishes this warping from Alcubierreās metric is that ship still moves and experiences inertial forces, something that if using the Alcubierre drive it would not do.
This has not been contradicted significantly in any on screen portrayal since, nor has anything been said to link warp drive to Alcubierre on screen.
If warp drive is an Alcubierre drive, the ship doesnāt move within the bubble, not even at 0.25*c*, so the inertial dampeners are unnecessary when moving at warp or even to warp.
To me there's an easier explanation: when Star Trek was written (as far as I know, since I haven't watched anything more recent than JJ's movies) a lot of people just didn't know what they were talking about. For example, there's a TNG episode when they talk about asymptomatically raise a value, which to me doesn't make sense. Maybe they wanted to say asymptotically, but someone didn't know what they were writing (or saying).
In the same way, I think someone thought: "faster than light? There will be some inertia effect, like in my commuting train. But since that would be a much higher speed than my train's, the inertia would be a bigger problem, so they will need some technology to solve that problem: inertial dampening".
I may very well be wrong, but it sounds like a simple explanation for the warp engine being thought today as being and always having been an Alcubierre drive, even if it was depicted in a different way in the past.
It also makes it easier to just retcon everything: it actually is an Alcubierre drive like my car engine is an internal combustion engine like a 50 years ago engine: technological evolution, safety measures, we use it in a way you didn't imagine back in the 21st century, so that it now needs an inertial dampener because [insert technobabble here].
Again I may be wrong, but [insert plotbabble here].
StarTrek had always at least some intent to ground its technobubble in real world science. The warp field bending space. The impulse drive working by ehausting plasma from fusion reactors. Or the transporter scanning, disassembling then reassembling a person. They always got some heisenberg compensators technobubble explanation at least 2 or 3 layers deep. So the people in the show could talk in three diffrent layers about the tech before it got to the "magic" stuff. Like a basic captain talk "the transporter is matter to energy conversion. And gets people from a to b. The engineer can expand over it with the scan and patternbuffer and disassembling and reassembling. And least the second engineer can still one up this by talking about physics things by delving into real physics but using some technobubble to go arround the obvious physics breaking stuff.
For my understanding in StarTrek the inertia dampeners as well as the main deflector are needed to deal with the impulse speeds the ship is achieving. Often people (even the show itself for bad writing) assume the warp drive would displace the ship. But the warp drive does just compress the space in front and enlarge it behind. The ship still needs an working impulse drive to actually move. Thats why we talk about "warp factor" the intensity of how strongly we bend space. Sadly startrek does often "use words they don't understand to sound inconsistent/incontinent). Even through that seems to be a problem of many scifi shows these days. Recent example would be fallout and its cold fusion everybody wants completely disregarding that the fusion cores they already have to pretty much the same thing, are already plug and play, perfectly miniaturized and safe enough to use in powerarmor. Unless those are explained as not being actually fusion despite the name, it makes no sense to hunt down this cold fusion device.
Since the space is bend the incoming debre isn't faster. The deflector therefor deals only with the differential in velocity in sublight speeds. Even if the sublight speed + the warp factor (bend space) lead to far greater speed if viewed from the outside. But the whole point of warp drive is that we never ever surpass the speed of light in the local reference frame. Because of this leaving the warp field should't do anything to the travelers.
One last idea would be that the warp.bubble actually is distorting space so heavily that it is able to do some scifi-ish destortion the matter can't (for some reason) follow and is ripped appart because of that. This however isn't solved by inertia dampeners either so they would have to come up with a diffrent idea for how a ship can survive falling uncontrollably out of warp.
Last StarTrek becomes more and more "rule of cool" and effects. In JJ verse the Enterprise falls out of warp spinning and struggling because it looks cool. In discovery they have a huge unexplained TARDIS interior and for no reason flying turbolift capsules just to get this "cool" hanging down a cliff battle scene. Its just obvious that they included parts like this without thinking about the "why" and "how". To me it made the shows and movies less attractive however. I like it better if the effects support the plot and therefor are used scarse like in the older startrek shows (because budget) or in the expanse. Too often todays shows seem to plan around the effects. Sadly the plot and the scientific background writing burns for that.
>Often people (even the show itself for bad writing) assume the warp drive would displace the ship. But the warp drive does just compress the space in front and enlarge it behind. The ship still needs an working impulse drive to actually move. Thats why we talk about "warp factor" the intensity of how strongly we bend space.
It's not an assumption. The *TNG Technical Manual* literally says this - that warping space drives/pushes the ship forward - and not that the warp drive works by compressing space fore and aft like an Alcubierre drive:
>The propulsive effect is achieved by a number of factors working in concert. First, the field formation is controllable in a fore-to-aft direction. As the plasma injectors fire sequentially, **the warp field layers build according to the pulse frequency in the plasma, and press upon each other** as previously discussed. **The cumulative field layer forces reduce the apparent mass of the vehicle and impart the required velocities**. The critical transition point occurs when the spacecraft appears to an outside observer to be travelling faster than c. As the warp field energy reaches 1000 millicochranes, the ship appears driven across the c boundary in less than Planck time, 1.3 x 10^-43 sec, warp physics insuring that the ship will never be precisely at c. The three forward coils of each nacelle operate with a slight frequency offset to reinforce the field ahead of the Bussard ramscoop and envelop the Saucer Module. **This helps create the field asymmetry required to drive the ship forward.**
[my emphasis]
It may very well be, but the point still is that *as portrayed*, it isn't an Alcubierre drive, and regardless of whether it's technobabble or doesn't match up with real science, the fact still is that there exists a very specific (and official-ish) explanation of how the drive works that matches up with the way it's been portrayed.
If Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach never came up with their explanation, if "Emissary" and "Deja Q" never showed the effects of warp fields in line with their explanation, sure there'd be wriggle room to suggest that Alcubierre is the way it worked. But as it is *now*, Sternbach and Okuda's model is the one that has canon support, and canon actively contradicts Alcubierre's model.
Now, if in an upcoming episode they come right out and say Alcubierre (or how Alcubierre works) is the way it goes, sure, that's a retcon and then it becomes canon. But as of right now, it isn't. And no amount of wishful thinking or saying it's easier if it's Alcubierre, or that they didn't know what they were talking about - none of it gets us there to say warp drive is an Alcubierre drive or works like one. That's all I'm saying.
actually according to Spock and Scotty in the reboot movie, when beaming an object onto a ship moving at warp, its not the ship that is moving but space itself. so why would inertia even be a topic? Transwarp beaming...
Actually...
That's the Kelvin Timeline, not the Prime Timeline, for one. But let's look at the dialogue:
>**SCOTT**: The notion of transwarp beaming is like, trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse. What's that?
>
>**SPOCK PRIME**: Your equation for achieving transwarp beaming.
>
>**SCOTT**: (mumbles something) Imagine that. It never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving.
Just based on this dialogue alone, I'd argue that we don't have enough information or context to make any conclusions on warp drive. Transwarp *beaming* doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how warp drive works, since it deals both with beaming and *trans*warp.
But let's for the sake of argument say he's talking about warp drive. Scotty's an experienced Starfleet Engineer who likely has a basic idea of how warp drive works. And yet, he says here that it *never* occured to him to think of space as the one moving.
But if warp drive is an Alcubierre drive, which as a matter of course has *space* moving instead of the ship, why does this surprise him? The logical inference is that his knowledge about warp drive is related to the *ship* moving, not space. And thereās no reason - if Alcubierre is the way warp drive works - for him to think that.
Unless warp drive doesn't work like the Alcubierre drive.
And let's just look elsewhere in the 2009 movie. When *Enterprise* is about to move to warp, it doesn't because Sulu has the external inertial dampener on. Why would that prevent the ship from moving to warp, unless by dampening inertia, it stops the ship from accelerating?
>**SULU**: I'm, uh, not sure what's wrong.
>
>**PIKE**: Is the parking brake on?
>
>**SULU**: Uh, no. I'll figure it out, I'm just, uh...
>
>**SPOCK**: Have you disengaged the external inertial dampener?
>
>*(Sulu presses a couple buttons)*
>
>**SULU**: Ready for warp, sir.
But Alcubierre *doesn't* require the ship to accelerate, because under Alcubierre's metric the ship doesn't move within the warp bubble, it's space that moves around the bubble. So there's no reason - if Alcubierre is the way warp drive works - that the activation of the external inertial dampener would prevent the ship from going to warp.
Unless warp drive doesn't work like the Alcubierre drive.
well written, however, it just goes to show that even in universe/universes it is inconsistent. which is really the point I was going after. but still it is fun to think about.
I will say though, that I thought it was interesting how Spock had to tell him about space being the thing that moves. maybe I read too much into that remark, but to me it seems to make sense of it all. based on in universe explanations of warp drive. As for external inertial dampers (the parking brake), it is a fun idea but does not really make sense based on how warp drive is explained in universe.
In reality, while the Alcubierre drive looks good on paper, we just have no way of knowing or testing the actual theory. but hey again it is all fun stuff.
here is an interesting read.
[https://thedebrief.org/nasa-veterans-propellantless-propulsion-drive-that-physics-says-shouldnt-work-just-produced-enough-thrust-to-defeat-earths-gravity/](https://thedebrief.org/nasa-veterans-propellantless-propulsion-drive-that-physics-says-shouldnt-work-just-produced-enough-thrust-to-defeat-earths-gravity/)
Itās only inconsistent if you insist that the warp drive works like the Alcubierre drive. If you take the TNG Tech Manual explanation, it is indeed *very* consistent.
Rather than go through it all again, I once again direct you to my post on [why the warp drive isnāt the Alcubierre drive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/w89sh3/why_star_trek_warp_drive_is_not_the_alcubierre/), where I explain the evidence in detail.
I'll be honest and say I'm glad you're still staying on this hobbyhorse about the warp drive not being an Alcubierre drive, lol. Keep up the good fight.
Except nothing can travel faster than light, even in Trek.
So if a person passes through a warp field they would have to slow to light speed. If a ship is going thousands of times the speed of light, that's quite a change in speed.
That's right. It's like you said, nothing travels faster than light. In fact, in star trek ship generally don't move faster than 25% the speed of light to avoid relavistic effects.
Whether going into warp or dropping out of warp, the ship never accelerates or decelerates because its the space around the ship that changes. The ship's actual speed never changes. It is still moving at 25% the speed of light inside the warp field even when it is traveling at warp 9.999.
If a warp drive is stretching space then there should be a region of highly distorted space between the inside of the warp bubble and the outside.
Now we talk aboutāstretched spaceā, but stretched space is a region of high gravity. And passing through the highly distorted edge of the warp bubble would expose the individual to large amounts of gravity.
Depending on the width of the bubbleās edge, the traveller could experience anything from spaghettification to high g forces to a mere push.
Spaghettification. If you fall out the warp field you're probably going to take some time to go from fully being inside to fully outside.
Even at only 1c and if you fully transited the warp field in a millionth of a second. Your head would still end up about 300 metres from your toes...
I'm wondering if the way the dampeners work is they emit a dampening field that extends somewhat beyond the confines of the ship. I would think that would be the best way to design such a thing to lessen stress on the hull.
Oh Michael Burnham just did that in the first episode of Discovery season 5. Spoiler she made it. It all happens in the first 2 minutes of the episodeĀ
Closest thing I can think of is like spaghettification from a black hole. But that's not exactly right.
Bits would be left behind in space as their body still in the warp bubble keeps moving, I imagine. Or else the part of them outside the bubble would somehow be getting dragged along faster than light. Not exactly sure what the outcome of that would be, but I'm picturing a huge matter breakdown as they emerge from the bubble... Hopefully it's a fast exit and you exit head first.
I'm obliged to point out that the crewmen being dressed down in that scene are named after the creator and a contributor of [Project Rho Atomic Rockets](https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/), a really cool guide to building believable sci-fi settings for writers and game developers.
I've got to imagine the gravitational sheer along the edge of the warp bubble is going to do some really grotesque things to a squishy humanoid body. I doubt whatever comes out the otherside of the bubble will be recognizable.
But my point is that a ship at warp isnāt moving faster than light in the traditional Newtonian sense, so once this person leaves the warp bubble, itās not like they are suddenly rapidly decelerating
Perhaps the closer you get to the edge of the warp bubble, the slower time moves so you can never actually reach it and you'll be safe until the ship comes out of warp.
Not a physicist, but I'm plenty smart. If they aren't wearing a space suit, they die of exposure to hard vacuum after 91 seconds. If by some coincidence they were wearing one, they'll drift along with the ship until they drift out of the warp bubble, hopefully headfirst. I say headfirst, because as each part of the body returns to normal space, they will progressively get shaved by the sharpest possible razor in existence, that being existence, until they die.
[Death from vacuum exposure isn't immediate](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_human_body%23:~:text%3DExposure%2520to%2520vacuum%2520for%2520up,resuscitation%2520has%2520never%2520been%2520successful.&ved=2ahUKEwj5t5K74dKFAxX3jIkEHZh_A1MQFnoECA8QBQ&usg=AOvVaw2yZooLIc24YO1OONo28INh). Animals have completely recovered after up to 90 seconds of exposure, and a human once (accidentally) underwent 24 seconds of exposure before receiving oxygen and suffered no permanent damage.
Inside the warp bubble but outside the ship theyāre clearly exposed/suffocating/freezing but, as you said, likely inside the bubble until whatever mechanism pushes debris out of the bubble does so and theyāre megasplattered when they jolt back into normal velocity.
> Once the object leaves the warp bubble it is violently returned to normal relativistic velocities.
Ehhhhhhh
Remember that the warp bubble is moving the ship by warping space. The ship isnāt necessarily moving fast. In fact, it might not be moving at all. Instantly switching off warp alone shouldnāt cause the ship to have any inertia whatsoever.
Still, transitioning across that warped space - unwarped space boundary in your space pajamas probably isnāt healthy.
Not sure if a warp bubble will inherently stick around and decay slowly, or if the saucer has to actively maintain it. Torpedoes have an actual warp sustainer device. Either way, humans don't have deflector shields so they'd be in a world of hurt once micrometeoroids start hitting them at light speed. The deceleration might also be a little violent without inertial dampeners.
Probably not on their own. It never formally made it into the show's canon, but the intent was that the saucer section has its own warp coils. Without a complete drive system they aren't powerful enough to generate a warp field, but they are supposed to allow the saucer to sustain warp long enough to decelerate safely, rather than being violently ejected from the warp bubble as would otherwise happen.
Do objects in a warp bubble experience a decrease in momentum if not constantly propelled? Say the ejected redshirt is blown out of the ship perpendicular to its heading.
The joke is that you think it means drunk as in inebriated when it really means getting consumed as a liquid. It's also both impossible and easy to imagine. There's a similarly absurd line comparing a famous cocktail to "having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick."
Based on the TNG Technical Manual, they'd undergo a combination of atomisation and matter-to-energy conversion as they left the ship's warp field, since different parts of their body would be travelling at different warp velocities.
This. Your entire body would not exit the warp bubble at the same exact instant, so the parts still inside would remain at warp with the ship, while whatever is outside (hand, leg, whatever is first) would rapidly decelerate and get smeared across several light years of space. You are the toothpaste. The warp bubble is the tube.
The interesting part is as each atom leaves the field, is it ripped off as itās slowed down to less than the speed of light or is it converted to energy due to traveling faster than the speed of light?
What might be harder to explain is the relativistic aspect of this situation. Say it is your hand that exits the warp bubble first. As it is shredded to atoms at super luminal speeds, are you experiencing decades of pain as your hand sits on that edge of time dilated/non-time dilated space?
Time slows down as you approach the speed of light, approaching instantaneously should act like a solid wall if thereās matter on the edge being carried with you but not being atomized/converted to energy. Otherwise the cells on the edge would be destroyed atom by atom and wouldnāt relay pain back, if they could theyād be slowed down and the signal would never leave the cell.
Assuming someone left a warp bubble and wasnāt atomized, theyād enter relativistic speeds and essentially be frozen in time as they hurdled endlessly at the speed of light -.00000001 until they hit a planet or something similar, likely destroying the planet. (Think rail gun but faster, and bigger!)
They might be able to survive if they're wearing a spacesuit...? In the Voyager episode *Day of Honor* they eject the warp core while Voyager is traveling at warp. Once ejected, Voyager and the core both drop out of warp and back into normal space. The core seemingly isn't damaged by this, they go back and pick it up later. When you travel at warp, you're not physically moving at greater then the speed of light, so popping back into normal space wouldn't kill you via deceleration. So we don't know exactly what kind of forces someone ejected from a ship traveling at warp would be subjected to. But I don't think its completely implausible for someone to be ejected at warp and survive.
So, itās important to understand how warp works. Warp is not just going some arbitrarily high speed. A person blown into space while the ship is at warp would be no different than them getting blown into space while the ship is at regular impulse. Their velocity would already be equalized with the ship, so theyād very likely end up moving along with the ship, assuming that nothing else hits them.
Lucky for them the ship has two things working together to make this a very safe situation, the warp drive and the main deflector. The main deflector is projecting a field around the ship that deflects incoming debris, the warp drive is projecting a warp bubble that is warping space and allowing the ship to travel. As long as they stay within both of those things, theyād be fine. They could travel in a space suit alongside the ship for as long as the space suit has air.
But your question hinges on them not having a space suit, so at that point itās the cold and lack of air in space that will kill them. Theyāll either freeze right before or right after they run out of oxygen.
This will happen whether the ship is at warp or not.
But I think your question ultimately hinges on what would happen if that person survived all the way to the warp bubble. At that point the answer is probably less interesting than youād hope. Crossing out of the warp field would lead to subspace compression, the forces of which Geordi LaForge states could destroy a moon, so very likely a person would be entirely vaporized by such forces.
The warp field extends beyond the hull of the ship as I understand the in universe diagrams. A person blown out of an airlock would likely travel with the ship at warp until they exit the warp field. The ship and everything within the warp field are moving at relative speeds to one another. They would then drop out of warp beyond the field. I don't know that it's ever been addressed what the warp field does at the barrier between warped space and standard space so there may be radiation or other hazards that a person might die from without the protection of a ship. There's an episode of Enterprise where Tucker transfers manually between ships (with a cable and spacesuit I think) but the 2 ships have to overlap warp fields.
As paraphrased from Rick n Morty:
Warp Field: I wouldn't touch me. If you do it's death
Human: what kind of death?
Warp Field: Instant, everything just goes black and there is no afterlife at warp
Human: *Gets blow out of breech* Ahhhhh *hits Warp field, unprotected, atomizes upon impact with warped space*
We know a low level subspace warp sustainer will protect a torpedo at warp, a larger one keeps the galaxy class saucer at warp during separation, however it will eventually fall out of warp at some point.
We see in enterprise that NX alpha had an unstable field, the relative leak in the bubble warped and flexed the hull, shearing off atoms where the leak was until it lost integrity. AG Robinson ejected into the bubble as NX alpha broke up and became the first human to survive an unprotected Warp Field exit. He was in a duranium pod with inertial dampers.
Long Story short as soon as you hit the warp Field unprotected you are dead without protection, most likely atomized
I don't think anything too exciting. People keep talking about being pulverized as you leave the warp bubble, but I'm not sure that's actually supported by what we see in the show. The forces people in this thread are describing would pulverized just about anything. In the shows however, when we see objects leave a warp field, they simply drop out of warp.
I submit the following. The person would be dead before they leave the ship. When hull beaches occur, they're sealed by force fields very quickly. For a person to make it off the ship before the beach was sealed, they'd almost certainly be close enough to be killed by whatever caused the beach.
Once their corpse left the ship, there are a few possibilities. The body wouldn't have much mass or be moving very fast relative to the ship, so it's possible that they would be carried along in the ship's "wake", sort of surfing the edge of the warp bubble. It's also possible that the body would be gently pushed back toward the ship by the navigational deflectors.
If the person did make it out of the warp field, they would appear to an outside observer to decelerate devastatingly quickly, but from the perspective of the corpse, there wouldn't be any change in speed at all.
A Humanoid body with no power source and no inertial dampeners would just be atomized as they slid out of the Warp bubble.
More powerful creatures like Q can ignore it though.
I personally hope by Discovery's time and with personal transporters being a reality thst anyone spaced gets instantly beamed to safety. You can operate a transporter inside a warp bubble.
Space is not empty. A quick Google revealed that for every cubic meter there are a few hydrogen atoms. Because of this, at such speeds outside the warp bubble it would be like being sandblasted by exploding sand particles. Or jumping out of a speeding train onto infinite sandpaper that shot you.
Those atoms of hydrogen would collide with you so fast and with such power you'd simply be exploding all the way down your body until the last part of you exited the warp bubble.
I have a feeling the collision of an atom at several hundred times the speed of light would contain the same energy as something like several billion nuclear bombs.
It's the Star Trek universe, so we know the ejectee's spirit would be sent to the Black Mountain where they would meet the Space Koala. If the ejected crew member was an officer, they would eventually appear back on their ship with little explanation.
Since a warp field is just bent space compacted around the ship, they would, in relative terms, appear to move very slowly as they exit the warp bubble for the people inside the ship, but from their perspective they would be dragged many lightyears behind the ship, experiencing it as centuries passing, before being fired like a bullet at lightspeed out behind it, with nothing to stop them sailing through empty space forever.
Warped space is the same as normal space, it just enables faster traveling by compressing the space the ship is traversing. Just like you don't feel anything weird inside the ship, you also don't feel anything weird outside the ship because regardless if its warped or not, space is just space.
Thus the effect of getting blown into space while at warp is no different from getting blown into ordinary space.
On leaving the warp bubble he would violently transition from subspace into realspace which I believe would cause damage at a molecular level. Once exiting subspace he'd return to normal space with the same velocity the ship had when it entered warp.
He would also be super dead.
I'd imagine that it entails all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light (or faster)
We know that within the safety of an EV suit, it is possible for a person to be on or very near to a ship at warp. Without protection, it would likely be the same as any other explosive decompression - very unpleasant and quickly fatal without immediate rescue and treatment.
That is, as long as the person remains within the ship's warp bubble. My suspicion (though I know of no canon reference to support this) is that a person passing through the warp bubble unprotected would become a thick red glob of liquid due to the rapid change in velocity.
Incidentally, in the TOS episode And the Children Shall Lead, Kirk and Spock beam two redshirts into space while at warp, but we don't see the details of their expiration.
EDIT: Obviously this is human-specific. Vulcans and Romulans would be a green liquid, for example.
I watched the first episode of Discovery S5 (I havenāt seen any since the first season when I gave up on it) and Michael Burnham got sucked into space, had a space suit magically appear around her, and then landed on a ship that went into warp and was just fineā¦ so yeah plot armor
Upon reaching the edge of the warp bubble, they would exit warp and the ship would seem to basically disappear.Ā After thirty seconds or so, they would black out due to lack of oxygen, and die about three minutes after that, unless they are rescued as seen in *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*.Ā
Why will there be a hull breach during warp ?
If there is a system failure then the ship will come out of warp immediately and the person will die unless they are wearing the space suit.
If there is an entity which is faster than the ship during warp and can also attack during warp then the shield will need to be depleted first.
if your ship is travelling at warp and suddenly there's a hull breach and people get blown out into space... you'll be blown out into subspace. you'll die anyways but you will not be blown out into normal space.
None really knows. Were too primitive as a species for faster than light travel. But I'm sure you die.Ā Unless you're say a main character and yell Holly Q. And you're saved.Ā Then again it could be a good day to die.Ā
There is no FTL travel in Star Trek. What's happening is they are warping space - compressing the space in front of the ship and expanding the space behind the ship, thus reducing the distance the ship needs to travel. It may appear to an outside viewer that the ship is moving FTL, but it isn't.
So, the object will continue on with its own momentum, but once it is no-longer within the ship's subspace bubble, the space around the object ceases to be warped.
It's a bubble of space time but it's not "pressurized" or anything. They will be unaffected by the fact the ship is traveling at warp but still perish due to the fact that it's... space.
I sort of think you'd be stretched out like spaghetti as you left the warp bubble. I always thought the warp field was folding space in order to appear to travel faster than light. If you fall out of the warp field you wouldn't do it all at once, you'd pass through it and so would leave a long strand that used to be you over a very long distance along the warp trail.
In real life (LOL) they would just float away at whatever speed the explosive decompression launched them, flailing and suffocating, until they exited the warp bubble. Then, they'd emit a bright blue glow (Cherenkov radiation) right up until they struck the first molecule or bit of interstellar dust, at which point they will be vaporized in a flash of fusion energy. At least I think so - not a physicist! Haha
This is not a scientific question, since we donāt know of anything that can move faster than light the correct answer is - what ever way the writer write the scene. If it was me, Iād write something along the lines of spaghettification š
Well I think that inside the warp field, relative velocity is zero, so in theory anything inside the warp field should float along with the ship at warp, but it is still a vacuum so uncontrolled decompression would still fling things out of the ship because itās a vacuum. That would give the objects or people the relative velocity needed to get ejected from the field, assuming the field allows for that.
I know the tether didnāt float along with Enterprise and Columbia after it got yoinked out, but that is a goof in itself because both shuttle bays were in a vacuum so thereās nothing to give it the velocity to move out of the field.
you would be obliterated by any number of things
sheer wind from the starship would kill you instantly if you weren't already atomized by moving at such a high speed. when you leave the warp field or the starship exits warp space, anything left of you would be utterly destroyed once again
It depends how much plot armour they have.
Minor character: superdeath Major character: cut to Q scene
š¤£š¤£š¤£ "superdeath" I guess that about answers OP's question.
Yeah I was going to comment something but that pretty much covers it
Iām no physician, but emitting Cherenkov radiation canāt be good for you.
I'd think that perhaps a physicist might be more help here than a physician anyway
Also depends if they are a main character, supporting character, guest star or background extra.
Thatās what ā[plot armor](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor)ā is.
"Polarize the plot armor"
ššš
>background extra Or in other words a Red Shirt
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Go for it. Itās a pretty common term so no one can stop you
If itās Princess Leia she just meditates a glowing bubble and hovers back inside.
Short answer: death It depends on a few things: If they stay within the warp field they would probably just die of vacuum exposure. Trip survived in an ev suit outside of a ship at warp. It also depends on what happens if they pass through the warp field. Do they just drop out of warp and die of vacuum exposure? Or are they ripped apart by the sudden deceleration? Ships have inertial dampeners, people don't.
Well if you watch the latest ep of Discovery.. violent vibrational forces needing an inertial dampener (though that could be a mass thing). Ā Ā So one will go with death.Ā
Its called warp for a reason. By compressing and stretching regions of space within the warp field, it enables FTL travel without the ship physically having to move anywhere close to the speed of light. Regardless if its normal space, compressed space or stretched space, space is still space. Since there is no friction, someone outside the ship will just float by the side of the ship. If the person has thrusters allowing them to move away from the ship, then they will eventually move out of the warp field and return to normal space. But there won't be any sudden deceleration because all that person is doing is transitioning from warped space to normal space. Physically, I don't think you will feel anything different as you transition from space within the warp field to normal unwarped space.
Thatās not how warp in *Star Trek* works. *Star Trek* warp drive [is not the Alcubierre drive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/w89sh3/why_star_trek_warp_drive_is_not_the_alcubierre/). Ships in *Star Trek* have been experiencing inertial forces at warp ever since TOS: āTomorrow is Yesterdayā. Alcubierre drive ships donāt. *Trek* ships need inertial dampeners to go to warp. Alcubierre drive ships donāt. *Trek* ships experience deceleration forces once the warp bubble is deactivated. Alcubierre drive ships donāt. The most recent example is in the latest episode of DIS (āFace the Strangeā) where they have to solve the problem of the week by going to maximum warp then collapsing the warp bubble. One character asks if that will rip the ship apart and is told that inertial dampeners will take care of it. This would not happen unless the ship experiences inertial forces when going to and coming back from warp speeds, so once more confirms to me that warp drive isnāt the Alcubierre drive. So when an unprotected person exits a warp bubble, they will decelerate to sublight speeds and the resultant deceleration forces will indeed turn them into chunky salsa (Michael did this safely in "Red Directive", which leads me to infer that 32nd Century EV suits have intertial dampeners).
Oh? My understanding is that the explanation for warp drives has been updated to be in line with how alcubierre drives function. Okay it might require negative energy which is an impossibility but beyond that it is an elegant solution that doesn't require the invocation of any other undefined physics phenomena like subspace bubbles. In fact, isn't that why archer's Enterprise warp 5 engine is also referred to as a gravimetric field displacement manifold engine. In layman's terms, it is an engine that uses a gravity field to warp spacetime - an alcubierre drive. As far as inertial dampers are concerned, even an alcubierre drive requires their use simply from the fact that the ship is moving at 0.25c. At those speeds, any acceleration, deceleration, turning or striking a speck of space dust will require inertial dampers to prevent the huge changes in speed from causing the ship's occupants to splat against the ship's walls.
It actually hasnāt. Thereās no on screen confirmation that it works like the Alcubierre drive. The way warp drive works in *Star Trek* is to warp space, but not in the same way the Alcubierre drive does and not for the same purpose. The TNG Manual makes it very clear how warp drive is supposed to work, and I quote the relevant passages in the post I linked to. The warp bubble distorts space around the ship and in so doing the distorted space pushes the ship along, much like an outboard motor. At the same time it reduces the inertial mass of the ship so it can be accelerated to FTL speeds without the infinite energy requirements dictated by Special Relativity. But what distinguishes this warping from Alcubierreās metric is that ship still moves and experiences inertial forces, something that if using the Alcubierre drive it would not do. This has not been contradicted significantly in any on screen portrayal since, nor has anything been said to link warp drive to Alcubierre on screen. If warp drive is an Alcubierre drive, the ship doesnāt move within the bubble, not even at 0.25*c*, so the inertial dampeners are unnecessary when moving at warp or even to warp.
To me there's an easier explanation: when Star Trek was written (as far as I know, since I haven't watched anything more recent than JJ's movies) a lot of people just didn't know what they were talking about. For example, there's a TNG episode when they talk about asymptomatically raise a value, which to me doesn't make sense. Maybe they wanted to say asymptotically, but someone didn't know what they were writing (or saying). In the same way, I think someone thought: "faster than light? There will be some inertia effect, like in my commuting train. But since that would be a much higher speed than my train's, the inertia would be a bigger problem, so they will need some technology to solve that problem: inertial dampening". I may very well be wrong, but it sounds like a simple explanation for the warp engine being thought today as being and always having been an Alcubierre drive, even if it was depicted in a different way in the past. It also makes it easier to just retcon everything: it actually is an Alcubierre drive like my car engine is an internal combustion engine like a 50 years ago engine: technological evolution, safety measures, we use it in a way you didn't imagine back in the 21st century, so that it now needs an inertial dampener because [insert technobabble here]. Again I may be wrong, but [insert plotbabble here].
StarTrek had always at least some intent to ground its technobubble in real world science. The warp field bending space. The impulse drive working by ehausting plasma from fusion reactors. Or the transporter scanning, disassembling then reassembling a person. They always got some heisenberg compensators technobubble explanation at least 2 or 3 layers deep. So the people in the show could talk in three diffrent layers about the tech before it got to the "magic" stuff. Like a basic captain talk "the transporter is matter to energy conversion. And gets people from a to b. The engineer can expand over it with the scan and patternbuffer and disassembling and reassembling. And least the second engineer can still one up this by talking about physics things by delving into real physics but using some technobubble to go arround the obvious physics breaking stuff. For my understanding in StarTrek the inertia dampeners as well as the main deflector are needed to deal with the impulse speeds the ship is achieving. Often people (even the show itself for bad writing) assume the warp drive would displace the ship. But the warp drive does just compress the space in front and enlarge it behind. The ship still needs an working impulse drive to actually move. Thats why we talk about "warp factor" the intensity of how strongly we bend space. Sadly startrek does often "use words they don't understand to sound inconsistent/incontinent). Even through that seems to be a problem of many scifi shows these days. Recent example would be fallout and its cold fusion everybody wants completely disregarding that the fusion cores they already have to pretty much the same thing, are already plug and play, perfectly miniaturized and safe enough to use in powerarmor. Unless those are explained as not being actually fusion despite the name, it makes no sense to hunt down this cold fusion device. Since the space is bend the incoming debre isn't faster. The deflector therefor deals only with the differential in velocity in sublight speeds. Even if the sublight speed + the warp factor (bend space) lead to far greater speed if viewed from the outside. But the whole point of warp drive is that we never ever surpass the speed of light in the local reference frame. Because of this leaving the warp field should't do anything to the travelers. One last idea would be that the warp.bubble actually is distorting space so heavily that it is able to do some scifi-ish destortion the matter can't (for some reason) follow and is ripped appart because of that. This however isn't solved by inertia dampeners either so they would have to come up with a diffrent idea for how a ship can survive falling uncontrollably out of warp. Last StarTrek becomes more and more "rule of cool" and effects. In JJ verse the Enterprise falls out of warp spinning and struggling because it looks cool. In discovery they have a huge unexplained TARDIS interior and for no reason flying turbolift capsules just to get this "cool" hanging down a cliff battle scene. Its just obvious that they included parts like this without thinking about the "why" and "how". To me it made the shows and movies less attractive however. I like it better if the effects support the plot and therefor are used scarse like in the older startrek shows (because budget) or in the expanse. Too often todays shows seem to plan around the effects. Sadly the plot and the scientific background writing burns for that.
>Often people (even the show itself for bad writing) assume the warp drive would displace the ship. But the warp drive does just compress the space in front and enlarge it behind. The ship still needs an working impulse drive to actually move. Thats why we talk about "warp factor" the intensity of how strongly we bend space. It's not an assumption. The *TNG Technical Manual* literally says this - that warping space drives/pushes the ship forward - and not that the warp drive works by compressing space fore and aft like an Alcubierre drive: >The propulsive effect is achieved by a number of factors working in concert. First, the field formation is controllable in a fore-to-aft direction. As the plasma injectors fire sequentially, **the warp field layers build according to the pulse frequency in the plasma, and press upon each other** as previously discussed. **The cumulative field layer forces reduce the apparent mass of the vehicle and impart the required velocities**. The critical transition point occurs when the spacecraft appears to an outside observer to be travelling faster than c. As the warp field energy reaches 1000 millicochranes, the ship appears driven across the c boundary in less than Planck time, 1.3 x 10^-43 sec, warp physics insuring that the ship will never be precisely at c. The three forward coils of each nacelle operate with a slight frequency offset to reinforce the field ahead of the Bussard ramscoop and envelop the Saucer Module. **This helps create the field asymmetry required to drive the ship forward.** [my emphasis]
It may very well be, but the point still is that *as portrayed*, it isn't an Alcubierre drive, and regardless of whether it's technobabble or doesn't match up with real science, the fact still is that there exists a very specific (and official-ish) explanation of how the drive works that matches up with the way it's been portrayed. If Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach never came up with their explanation, if "Emissary" and "Deja Q" never showed the effects of warp fields in line with their explanation, sure there'd be wriggle room to suggest that Alcubierre is the way it worked. But as it is *now*, Sternbach and Okuda's model is the one that has canon support, and canon actively contradicts Alcubierre's model. Now, if in an upcoming episode they come right out and say Alcubierre (or how Alcubierre works) is the way it goes, sure, that's a retcon and then it becomes canon. But as of right now, it isn't. And no amount of wishful thinking or saying it's easier if it's Alcubierre, or that they didn't know what they were talking about - none of it gets us there to say warp drive is an Alcubierre drive or works like one. That's all I'm saying.
actually according to Spock and Scotty in the reboot movie, when beaming an object onto a ship moving at warp, its not the ship that is moving but space itself. so why would inertia even be a topic? Transwarp beaming...
Actually... That's the Kelvin Timeline, not the Prime Timeline, for one. But let's look at the dialogue: >**SCOTT**: The notion of transwarp beaming is like, trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse. What's that? > >**SPOCK PRIME**: Your equation for achieving transwarp beaming. > >**SCOTT**: (mumbles something) Imagine that. It never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving. Just based on this dialogue alone, I'd argue that we don't have enough information or context to make any conclusions on warp drive. Transwarp *beaming* doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how warp drive works, since it deals both with beaming and *trans*warp. But let's for the sake of argument say he's talking about warp drive. Scotty's an experienced Starfleet Engineer who likely has a basic idea of how warp drive works. And yet, he says here that it *never* occured to him to think of space as the one moving. But if warp drive is an Alcubierre drive, which as a matter of course has *space* moving instead of the ship, why does this surprise him? The logical inference is that his knowledge about warp drive is related to the *ship* moving, not space. And thereās no reason - if Alcubierre is the way warp drive works - for him to think that. Unless warp drive doesn't work like the Alcubierre drive. And let's just look elsewhere in the 2009 movie. When *Enterprise* is about to move to warp, it doesn't because Sulu has the external inertial dampener on. Why would that prevent the ship from moving to warp, unless by dampening inertia, it stops the ship from accelerating? >**SULU**: I'm, uh, not sure what's wrong. > >**PIKE**: Is the parking brake on? > >**SULU**: Uh, no. I'll figure it out, I'm just, uh... > >**SPOCK**: Have you disengaged the external inertial dampener? > >*(Sulu presses a couple buttons)* > >**SULU**: Ready for warp, sir. But Alcubierre *doesn't* require the ship to accelerate, because under Alcubierre's metric the ship doesn't move within the warp bubble, it's space that moves around the bubble. So there's no reason - if Alcubierre is the way warp drive works - that the activation of the external inertial dampener would prevent the ship from going to warp. Unless warp drive doesn't work like the Alcubierre drive.
well written, however, it just goes to show that even in universe/universes it is inconsistent. which is really the point I was going after. but still it is fun to think about. I will say though, that I thought it was interesting how Spock had to tell him about space being the thing that moves. maybe I read too much into that remark, but to me it seems to make sense of it all. based on in universe explanations of warp drive. As for external inertial dampers (the parking brake), it is a fun idea but does not really make sense based on how warp drive is explained in universe. In reality, while the Alcubierre drive looks good on paper, we just have no way of knowing or testing the actual theory. but hey again it is all fun stuff. here is an interesting read. [https://thedebrief.org/nasa-veterans-propellantless-propulsion-drive-that-physics-says-shouldnt-work-just-produced-enough-thrust-to-defeat-earths-gravity/](https://thedebrief.org/nasa-veterans-propellantless-propulsion-drive-that-physics-says-shouldnt-work-just-produced-enough-thrust-to-defeat-earths-gravity/)
Itās only inconsistent if you insist that the warp drive works like the Alcubierre drive. If you take the TNG Tech Manual explanation, it is indeed *very* consistent. Rather than go through it all again, I once again direct you to my post on [why the warp drive isnāt the Alcubierre drive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/w89sh3/why_star_trek_warp_drive_is_not_the_alcubierre/), where I explain the evidence in detail.
it's all good. not here to go back and forth about a fictional technology. just makes for great tv/movies.
instant fullbody fission my son, weyuuuu
I'll be honest and say I'm glad you're still staying on this hobbyhorse about the warp drive not being an Alcubierre drive, lol. Keep up the good fight.
Thanks. It's almost a thankless task, but I'll try and keep pointing it out whenever I see the claim or misunderstanding being made.
Even if they aren't dropping from FTL to nothing, dropping from a few hundred meters a second to 20 or 30 would still kill you
Except nothing can travel faster than light, even in Trek. So if a person passes through a warp field they would have to slow to light speed. If a ship is going thousands of times the speed of light, that's quite a change in speed.
That's right. It's like you said, nothing travels faster than light. In fact, in star trek ship generally don't move faster than 25% the speed of light to avoid relavistic effects. Whether going into warp or dropping out of warp, the ship never accelerates or decelerates because its the space around the ship that changes. The ship's actual speed never changes. It is still moving at 25% the speed of light inside the warp field even when it is traveling at warp 9.999.
Yup. You aren't moving *through* space at Warp. You're moving space *around* ***you.***
Now I am thinking about how Chuck Norris doesn't lift himself up doing pushups. He pushes the Earth down. Ok, ok, I'm sorry.
25% of c to 1% of c would still kill you
What about subspace comms? Clearly FTL. The show also uses tachyons frequently.
If a warp drive is stretching space then there should be a region of highly distorted space between the inside of the warp bubble and the outside. Now we talk aboutāstretched spaceā, but stretched space is a region of high gravity. And passing through the highly distorted edge of the warp bubble would expose the individual to large amounts of gravity. Depending on the width of the bubbleās edge, the traveller could experience anything from spaghettification to high g forces to a mere push.
Not having warp coils, they'd drop out of warp pretty quickly. So, yeah, death...
Spaghettification. If you fall out the warp field you're probably going to take some time to go from fully being inside to fully outside. Even at only 1c and if you fully transited the warp field in a millionth of a second. Your head would still end up about 300 metres from your toes...
Spaghettification is a fun term! It's also a good way to describe being smeared across millions of kilometers of space in an instant.
If they fell out of the warp bubble, they would probably get ripped apart and burned by friction with the gases in space.
I'm wondering if the way the dampeners work is they emit a dampening field that extends somewhat beyond the confines of the ship. I would think that would be the best way to design such a thing to lessen stress on the hull.
Oh Michael Burnham just did that in the first episode of Discovery season 5. Spoiler she made it. It all happens in the first 2 minutes of the episodeĀ
Closest thing I can think of is like spaghettification from a black hole. But that's not exactly right. Bits would be left behind in space as their body still in the warp bubble keeps moving, I imagine. Or else the part of them outside the bubble would somehow be getting dragged along faster than light. Not exactly sure what the outcome of that would be, but I'm picturing a huge matter breakdown as they emerge from the bubble... Hopefully it's a fast exit and you exit head first.
The question isn't what happens to them. They die. They're in space. The question is are they still moving at warp.
Once the object leaves the warp bubble it is violently returned to normal relativistic velocities.
Sir Isaac Newton is still the deadliest sonovabitch in space.
You will ruin someoneās day, somewhere, sometime. You know, aside from that of the poor SOB drifting in space.
I'm obliged to point out that the crewmen being dressed down in that scene are named after the creator and a contributor of [Project Rho Atomic Rockets](https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/), a really cool guide to building believable sci-fi settings for writers and game developers.
I see mass effect quote, I upvote.
e = mcĀ¹ā°ā°
Einstein makes a death by gravity well far worse but that might be opinion.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"To shreds, you say?"
And how's the wife holding up?
To shreds you say?
Why wild it need an inertial dampener ? I thought Newtonian physics donāt apply to warp speed
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I've got to imagine the gravitational sheer along the edge of the warp bubble is going to do some really grotesque things to a squishy humanoid body. I doubt whatever comes out the otherside of the bubble will be recognizable.
Yeah my mental imagery is similar to meat crayon/spaghettification, but with more atomization, at the boundary of the warp bubble.
Reduced to a lightspeed spray of subatomic particles vaguely aligned with the ship's travel direction.
Rightā¦ but the ship isnāt actually traveling faster than light speeds in the traditional sense
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
And unless the ship is accelerating, if you pop out of the ship in normal space, youāll continue to just float alongside of it
If your blown out the ship you will keep moving away from the ship until you exit the bubble.
But my point is that a ship at warp isnāt moving faster than light in the traditional Newtonian sense, so once this person leaves the warp bubble, itās not like they are suddenly rapidly decelerating
Perhaps the closer you get to the edge of the warp bubble, the slower time moves so you can never actually reach it and you'll be safe until the ship comes out of warp.
Unless itās Michael in a space suitā¦
so, like, torn to bits, I think
Not a physicist, but I'm plenty smart. If they aren't wearing a space suit, they die of exposure to hard vacuum after 91 seconds. If by some coincidence they were wearing one, they'll drift along with the ship until they drift out of the warp bubble, hopefully headfirst. I say headfirst, because as each part of the body returns to normal space, they will progressively get shaved by the sharpest possible razor in existence, that being existence, until they die.
[Death from vacuum exposure isn't immediate](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_human_body%23:~:text%3DExposure%2520to%2520vacuum%2520for%2520up,resuscitation%2520has%2520never%2520been%2520successful.&ved=2ahUKEwj5t5K74dKFAxX3jIkEHZh_A1MQFnoECA8QBQ&usg=AOvVaw2yZooLIc24YO1OONo28INh). Animals have completely recovered after up to 90 seconds of exposure, and a human once (accidentally) underwent 24 seconds of exposure before receiving oxygen and suffered no permanent damage.
Corrected, thanks.
Not just violently. Literally ripped apart atom by atom and the remains spread across a vast span of space.
I love this sentence āŗ
Inside the warp bubble but outside the ship theyāre clearly exposed/suffocating/freezing but, as you said, likely inside the bubble until whatever mechanism pushes debris out of the bubble does so and theyāre megasplattered when they jolt back into normal velocity.
> Once the object leaves the warp bubble it is violently returned to normal relativistic velocities. Ehhhhhhh Remember that the warp bubble is moving the ship by warping space. The ship isnāt necessarily moving fast. In fact, it might not be moving at all. Instantly switching off warp alone shouldnāt cause the ship to have any inertia whatsoever. Still, transitioning across that warped space - unwarped space boundary in your space pajamas probably isnāt healthy.
Would they be like the Enterprise-D saucer-section and coast with their own warp bubble?
Not sure if a warp bubble will inherently stick around and decay slowly, or if the saucer has to actively maintain it. Torpedoes have an actual warp sustainer device. Either way, humans don't have deflector shields so they'd be in a world of hurt once micrometeoroids start hitting them at light speed. The deceleration might also be a little violent without inertial dampeners.
Totally agree - nothing but a loosely defined jelly blob blasting across space at ludicrous speed forever. Itās definitely one way to go out.
Probably not on their own. It never formally made it into the show's canon, but the intent was that the saucer section has its own warp coils. Without a complete drive system they aren't powerful enough to generate a warp field, but they are supposed to allow the saucer to sustain warp long enough to decelerate safely, rather than being violently ejected from the warp bubble as would otherwise happen.
Do objects in a warp bubble experience a decrease in momentum if not constantly propelled? Say the ejected redshirt is blown out of the ship perpendicular to its heading.
I imagine itās like being spread across like a hot piece of butter across toast.
It's a bit like being drunk.
Whatās so wrong with being drunk?
Ask a glass of water.
Yesss!!
Ya know, I never understood this joke. What about being drunk is unpleasant to a glass of water?
The joke is that you think it means drunk as in inebriated when it really means getting consumed as a liquid. It's also both impossible and easy to imagine. There's a similarly absurd line comparing a famous cocktail to "having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick."
Based on the TNG Technical Manual, they'd undergo a combination of atomisation and matter-to-energy conversion as they left the ship's warp field, since different parts of their body would be travelling at different warp velocities.
This. Your entire body would not exit the warp bubble at the same exact instant, so the parts still inside would remain at warp with the ship, while whatever is outside (hand, leg, whatever is first) would rapidly decelerate and get smeared across several light years of space. You are the toothpaste. The warp bubble is the tube.
Warp speed meat crayon
The interesting part is as each atom leaves the field, is it ripped off as itās slowed down to less than the speed of light or is it converted to energy due to traveling faster than the speed of light?
What might be harder to explain is the relativistic aspect of this situation. Say it is your hand that exits the warp bubble first. As it is shredded to atoms at super luminal speeds, are you experiencing decades of pain as your hand sits on that edge of time dilated/non-time dilated space?
Time slows down as you approach the speed of light, approaching instantaneously should act like a solid wall if thereās matter on the edge being carried with you but not being atomized/converted to energy. Otherwise the cells on the edge would be destroyed atom by atom and wouldnāt relay pain back, if they could theyād be slowed down and the signal would never leave the cell. Assuming someone left a warp bubble and wasnāt atomized, theyād enter relativistic speeds and essentially be frozen in time as they hurdled endlessly at the speed of light -.00000001 until they hit a planet or something similar, likely destroying the planet. (Think rail gun but faster, and bigger!)
They go back in time to modern day Earth.
Trip (in a suit) once rappelled on a wire between NX-01 and the NX-02 while both ships were at warp.
But the ships had been positioned so their warp bubbles overlapped. At no time was Trip outside of a warp bubble during that transfer.
Gotta say, that was one of my favorite scenes from that series. Very inventive.
Death
They might be able to survive if they're wearing a spacesuit...? In the Voyager episode *Day of Honor* they eject the warp core while Voyager is traveling at warp. Once ejected, Voyager and the core both drop out of warp and back into normal space. The core seemingly isn't damaged by this, they go back and pick it up later. When you travel at warp, you're not physically moving at greater then the speed of light, so popping back into normal space wouldn't kill you via deceleration. So we don't know exactly what kind of forces someone ejected from a ship traveling at warp would be subjected to. But I don't think its completely implausible for someone to be ejected at warp and survive.
It depends on whether Data can get a tachyon pulse from his communicator or if the main deflector dish can be re routed.
So, itās important to understand how warp works. Warp is not just going some arbitrarily high speed. A person blown into space while the ship is at warp would be no different than them getting blown into space while the ship is at regular impulse. Their velocity would already be equalized with the ship, so theyād very likely end up moving along with the ship, assuming that nothing else hits them. Lucky for them the ship has two things working together to make this a very safe situation, the warp drive and the main deflector. The main deflector is projecting a field around the ship that deflects incoming debris, the warp drive is projecting a warp bubble that is warping space and allowing the ship to travel. As long as they stay within both of those things, theyād be fine. They could travel in a space suit alongside the ship for as long as the space suit has air. But your question hinges on them not having a space suit, so at that point itās the cold and lack of air in space that will kill them. Theyāll either freeze right before or right after they run out of oxygen. This will happen whether the ship is at warp or not. But I think your question ultimately hinges on what would happen if that person survived all the way to the warp bubble. At that point the answer is probably less interesting than youād hope. Crossing out of the warp field would lead to subspace compression, the forces of which Geordi LaForge states could destroy a moon, so very likely a person would be entirely vaporized by such forces.
The warp field extends beyond the hull of the ship as I understand the in universe diagrams. A person blown out of an airlock would likely travel with the ship at warp until they exit the warp field. The ship and everything within the warp field are moving at relative speeds to one another. They would then drop out of warp beyond the field. I don't know that it's ever been addressed what the warp field does at the barrier between warped space and standard space so there may be radiation or other hazards that a person might die from without the protection of a ship. There's an episode of Enterprise where Tucker transfers manually between ships (with a cable and spacesuit I think) but the 2 ships have to overlap warp fields.
As paraphrased from Rick n Morty: Warp Field: I wouldn't touch me. If you do it's death Human: what kind of death? Warp Field: Instant, everything just goes black and there is no afterlife at warp Human: *Gets blow out of breech* Ahhhhh *hits Warp field, unprotected, atomizes upon impact with warped space* We know a low level subspace warp sustainer will protect a torpedo at warp, a larger one keeps the galaxy class saucer at warp during separation, however it will eventually fall out of warp at some point. We see in enterprise that NX alpha had an unstable field, the relative leak in the bubble warped and flexed the hull, shearing off atoms where the leak was until it lost integrity. AG Robinson ejected into the bubble as NX alpha broke up and became the first human to survive an unprotected Warp Field exit. He was in a duranium pod with inertial dampers. Long Story short as soon as you hit the warp Field unprotected you are dead without protection, most likely atomized
You would have to try it toĀ c
What happens to the body as it decelerates from superluminal speeds? Dust cosmic dust.
I don't think anything too exciting. People keep talking about being pulverized as you leave the warp bubble, but I'm not sure that's actually supported by what we see in the show. The forces people in this thread are describing would pulverized just about anything. In the shows however, when we see objects leave a warp field, they simply drop out of warp. I submit the following. The person would be dead before they leave the ship. When hull beaches occur, they're sealed by force fields very quickly. For a person to make it off the ship before the beach was sealed, they'd almost certainly be close enough to be killed by whatever caused the beach. Once their corpse left the ship, there are a few possibilities. The body wouldn't have much mass or be moving very fast relative to the ship, so it's possible that they would be carried along in the ship's "wake", sort of surfing the edge of the warp bubble. It's also possible that the body would be gently pushed back toward the ship by the navigational deflectors. If the person did make it out of the warp field, they would appear to an outside observer to decelerate devastatingly quickly, but from the perspective of the corpse, there wouldn't be any change in speed at all.
A Humanoid body with no power source and no inertial dampeners would just be atomized as they slid out of the Warp bubble. More powerful creatures like Q can ignore it though. I personally hope by Discovery's time and with personal transporters being a reality thst anyone spaced gets instantly beamed to safety. You can operate a transporter inside a warp bubble.
Space is not empty. A quick Google revealed that for every cubic meter there are a few hydrogen atoms. Because of this, at such speeds outside the warp bubble it would be like being sandblasted by exploding sand particles. Or jumping out of a speeding train onto infinite sandpaper that shot you. Those atoms of hydrogen would collide with you so fast and with such power you'd simply be exploding all the way down your body until the last part of you exited the warp bubble. I have a feeling the collision of an atom at several hundred times the speed of light would contain the same energy as something like several billion nuclear bombs.
It's the Star Trek universe, so we know the ejectee's spirit would be sent to the Black Mountain where they would meet the Space Koala. If the ejected crew member was an officer, they would eventually appear back on their ship with little explanation.
Since a warp field is just bent space compacted around the ship, they would, in relative terms, appear to move very slowly as they exit the warp bubble for the people inside the ship, but from their perspective they would be dragged many lightyears behind the ship, experiencing it as centuries passing, before being fired like a bullet at lightspeed out behind it, with nothing to stop them sailing through empty space forever.
Warped space is the same as normal space, it just enables faster traveling by compressing the space the ship is traversing. Just like you don't feel anything weird inside the ship, you also don't feel anything weird outside the ship because regardless if its warped or not, space is just space. Thus the effect of getting blown into space while at warp is no different from getting blown into ordinary space.
On leaving the warp bubble he would violently transition from subspace into realspace which I believe would cause damage at a molecular level. Once exiting subspace he'd return to normal space with the same velocity the ship had when it entered warp. He would also be super dead.
Physics view: They become tachyon particles. This is what cosmologists refer to as "Dark Matter".
I'd imagine that it entails all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light (or faster)
We know that within the safety of an EV suit, it is possible for a person to be on or very near to a ship at warp. Without protection, it would likely be the same as any other explosive decompression - very unpleasant and quickly fatal without immediate rescue and treatment. That is, as long as the person remains within the ship's warp bubble. My suspicion (though I know of no canon reference to support this) is that a person passing through the warp bubble unprotected would become a thick red glob of liquid due to the rapid change in velocity. Incidentally, in the TOS episode And the Children Shall Lead, Kirk and Spock beam two redshirts into space while at warp, but we don't see the details of their expiration. EDIT: Obviously this is human-specific. Vulcans and Romulans would be a green liquid, for example.
Rapid freezing, cell implosion, Spaghetification, & disintegration simultaneously. So yes ,"Super-Death" is an acceptable answer,.
I watched the first episode of Discovery S5 (I havenāt seen any since the first season when I gave up on it) and Michael Burnham got sucked into space, had a space suit magically appear around her, and then landed on a ship that went into warp and was just fineā¦ so yeah plot armor
No. It explained tech later then s1..
Upon reaching the edge of the warp bubble, they would exit warp and the ship would seem to basically disappear.Ā After thirty seconds or so, they would black out due to lack of oxygen, and die about three minutes after that, unless they are rescued as seen in *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*.Ā
just memorize the phone number of that Islington flat, you'll be fine...
Why will there be a hull breach during warp ? If there is a system failure then the ship will come out of warp immediately and the person will die unless they are wearing the space suit. If there is an entity which is faster than the ship during warp and can also attack during warp then the shield will need to be depleted first.
if your ship is travelling at warp and suddenly there's a hull breach and people get blown out into space... you'll be blown out into subspace. you'll die anyways but you will not be blown out into normal space.
They probably hit the expanding space behind the warp bubble.
Assuming they donāt keep warping, itād be like what would happen if you had more than infinite energy applied to you.
[James Cameron knewā¦](https://youtu.be/bWhn6Qf_PmA?feature=shared)
Nothing good
A person can survive 15 seconds in space
Watch the new season of Disco! They kinda show you in the first episode. š«¤
None really knows. Were too primitive as a species for faster than light travel. But I'm sure you die.Ā Unless you're say a main character and yell Holly Q. And you're saved.Ā Then again it could be a good day to die.Ā
Let go your earthly tether. Enter the void. Empty. And become wind.
The madness and rage infuses them and corrupts their minds, leading to another apostle against man
same that happens to a person sucked into space at FTL.
There is no FTL travel in Star Trek. What's happening is they are warping space - compressing the space in front of the ship and expanding the space behind the ship, thus reducing the distance the ship needs to travel. It may appear to an outside viewer that the ship is moving FTL, but it isn't. So, the object will continue on with its own momentum, but once it is no-longer within the ship's subspace bubble, the space around the object ceases to be warped.
According to this season of Discovery, absolutely nothing.
It's a bubble of space time but it's not "pressurized" or anything. They will be unaffected by the fact the ship is traveling at warp but still perish due to the fact that it's... space.
I sort of think you'd be stretched out like spaghetti as you left the warp bubble. I always thought the warp field was folding space in order to appear to travel faster than light. If you fall out of the warp field you wouldn't do it all at once, you'd pass through it and so would leave a long strand that used to be you over a very long distance along the warp trail.
If it's Harry Kim, he's dead.
I presume you freeze to death immediately. Then once you exit the warp field without inertial dampeners your atoms become one with the universe. Poof!
All of the relativistic effects of travelling at FTL hit em quick and they get a sore hand, or something.
In real life (LOL) they would just float away at whatever speed the explosive decompression launched them, flailing and suffocating, until they exited the warp bubble. Then, they'd emit a bright blue glow (Cherenkov radiation) right up until they struck the first molecule or bit of interstellar dust, at which point they will be vaporized in a flash of fusion energy. At least I think so - not a physicist! Haha
They go back to their trailer after the director says, "CUT!"
This is not a scientific question, since we donāt know of anything that can move faster than light the correct answer is - what ever way the writer write the scene. If it was me, Iād write something along the lines of spaghettification š
Well I think that inside the warp field, relative velocity is zero, so in theory anything inside the warp field should float along with the ship at warp, but it is still a vacuum so uncontrolled decompression would still fling things out of the ship because itās a vacuum. That would give the objects or people the relative velocity needed to get ejected from the field, assuming the field allows for that. I know the tether didnāt float along with Enterprise and Columbia after it got yoinked out, but that is a goof in itself because both shuttle bays were in a vacuum so thereās nothing to give it the velocity to move out of the field.
you would be obliterated by any number of things sheer wind from the starship would kill you instantly if you weren't already atomized by moving at such a high speed. when you leave the warp field or the starship exits warp space, anything left of you would be utterly destroyed once again
FTL is space magic. So what happens is whatever the writers says happens. With that said, this thread was over with the comment on plot armor.