The first question is about warp/nonwarp interaction. If a warp bubble is considered an area outside normal space, what is the nature of interaction of objects inside a warp bubble or field with objects in normal space. For example, if a ship is travelling at warp speed can it hit an object in normal space? Or will the warp bubble knock it aside? Are deflectors needed? Or let's say that the Defiant at warp 9 rams a Borg cube in normal space: what would happen?

My second question: What are the comparative energies produced by different types of weapons? For example, how does the energy produced by an object, let's say, a pellet of depleted uranium, travelling at high percentages of the speed of light compare with that of a phaser blast or a photon torpedo. (I haven't had physics for a long time and have forgotten all the relevant equations.)

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Masao: First, I refer you to the Vulcan Institute of Very Advanced Logic, Applied Science, and Various Endeavors of Generally Advanced Studies (VIVA LAS VEGAS) Report #7, "Warp Drives". (Opens in a new window.)

As far as I can determine, according to my own explanation, the "bow wave" of a warp field might tend to sweep up debris in its path. If this is the case, any debris (or other object) which penetrates the innermost part of the layered warp fields surrounding a vessel travelling at warp will tend to arrive from the "front", and will have the same motion relative to the ship as it would have if the ship was travelling at sublight speed along the same vector it was travelling before it entered warp. This will therefore create several situations that may or may not require intervention by the navigational deflector system.

1. The object's relative vector and velocity is the same as or "faster" than the "rest velocity" of the vessel.

   In this case, the object will tend to remain at the forward edge of the innermost part of the warp field. The deflector will have to "nudge" the object far enough to one side so that it will fall out of the innermost part of the warp field, and it will fall behind the vessel, still with much the same velocity and direction of travel as before.

2. The object's relative vector is opposite the vessel's "rest velocity".

   In this case, the object will continue moving in a direction opposite the vessel once it penetrates the innermost warp field limit. The navigational deflector may have to intervene to prevent a collision, but the relative closing velocity will be less than lightspeed (c). If the closing velocity is a very high percentage of c, the potential damage to the ship is still very high.

3. The object's relative vector is neither opposite nor the same as the vessel.

   In this case, the object's path will tend to cross that of the ship once it enters the innermost warp field. The navigational deflector may be required to prevent a collision with the object, but not in every case.

In actual practice, the navigational deflector system probably only has to deal with objects within a narrow cone ahead of the vessel, and does not necessarily wait until the object is within the innermost part of the warp field, depending upon whether the energies of the nav. deflector propagate at sub-c, c, or supra-c velocities (I expect that the deflectors operate beyond the innermost part of the warp field, so it's probably the latter possibility, though I could be wrong).

I suspect that attempting to ram an object at warp would be difficult unless the object was very large. In the case of a small object, the result would be a sublight collision with relative velocities that equaled the sum of the vectors of the two objects, using the sublight velocity of the warping vessel prior to it's engaging warp speed (of course, this could have been adjusted during "flight" to be very high, in any case). If the rammed object was larger than the warp field, the warp field would collapse, and the collision would still take place at sublight velocity.

As far as the relative energies of phaser weapons and high-velocity projectiles, I will have to defer to the physics majors who still remember the math. While the terms "Gigawatt" and Terawatt" are bandied about regarding phasers and such, phaser effects are supposed to shunt matter into subspace (perhaps as tachyons?) and thus the actual energy requirement may be greater or less than a conventional energy weapon would require to do much the same thing. If I used a high-powered laser to completely vaporise a human-sized being in less than a second, I'm sure there would be (to quote Marvin Martian) a tremendous "Kaboom". Since we don't get that with phasers, who knows how much energy is actually being used?

--Baloo

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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
--Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Come Hither and Yawn...