Talk:Warp drive/Archive 1

Other fictions in which warp drive technology is featured
Doctor Who does feature faster-than-light technology but it's nothing as primitive as a warp drive. 2.98.242.131 (talk) 09:29, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The person who listed these series (eg: Mass Effect) as having Warp Drive maybe be confusing Warp Drive with other forms of FTL travel, because there is no Warp Drive in Mass Effect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.168.244.50 (talk) 22:03, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Dilithium crystals
How can you have a discussion of the Warp drive without mentioning dilithium once? Boardhead (talk) 16:30, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

FTL escape from black hole.

 * A black hole is noteworthy for its singularity and associated event horizon, where not even light possesses escape velocity. Being able to travel at transluminal velocity would not necessarily make it possible to escape a black hole, as the common notion that a black hole merely possesses an escape velocity greater than c is not correct. Rather, inside the event horizon of a black hole, all paths in the space-time geometry lead closer to the singularity. []

I removed this. I'm pretty sure it's wrong, and the challenge tag is a year old. Not sure but I think the author was thinking of the interior of the Schwarzchild solution, and that all timelike paths point inward. And that's true, but an FTL path is not timelike!

Another way to look at this is that up close a black hole horizon looks like a Rindler horizon, and you can escape from that using FTL (because the underlying space is just ordinary space). So unless your warp bubble is comparable in size to the black hole itself, the same thing should hold. --192.75.48.150 (talk) 20:15, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Removing table
I again removed this table. It's unnecessary in-universe trivia that doesn't do anything to advance an out-of-universe understanding of the subject. Additionally, if it is, as claimed, straight from the TNG Technical Manual, it is highly dubious to replicate verbatim and without commentary a complete table from a copyrighted source. --EEMIV (talk) 05:52, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Could you point to the policy that says you cannot represent a table of information if you cite the source? I also beg to differ that it doesn't advance understanding. The article talks about warp factor mentioning two different and vague scales. This table actually gives the data. Star Trek warp factor...to begin with...is 99% fictional and has little to do with in-universe reality so the entire section here does absolutely nothing to further out-of-universe understanding of anything. Shall we delete the whole section (or most of the article)? Or you could give us the criteria that decides which information about a fictional technology from a fictional show is trivia and what isn't. BTW, adding a reference table at the end of a section is hardly bold. --Shabidoo | Talk 16:25, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

This article has become FTL Drive in Star Trek.
Neither the FTL article nor any other article that I've found in Wikipedia discusses fictional FTL travel in normal space (as opposed to hyper[space]drive, jump drive, skip drive, jump gates, etc.) I note that Star Trek was far--very far!--from the first science fiction using normal space FTL, whether normal space is warped or not. This monopolization of "Warp Drive" by Star Trek views is unsupportable. As is, this article belongs in a Star Trek wiki, not in Wikipedia--or as it was, Warp Drive (Star Trek).

I note this is the discussion page. It's here to present opposing viewpoints, not to sing Kumbaya. Laguna CA (talk) 21:01, 6 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, based on the number of sources and references in the article, this monopolization of "Warp Drive" by Star Trek views is supportable - to paraphrase. What I think you're obliquely suggesting is that the article is renamed to Warp Drive (Star Trek) which would be acceptable, but as WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is clearly the Star Trek version of Warp Drive, I don't think it's really an essential change.  Warp Drive would probably end up as a redirect to it in any case.  Chaheel Riens (talk) 08:46, 7 March 2016 (UTC)


 * First, please read the introduction to the article, "Warp drive is a hypothetical faster-than-light (FTL) propulsion system in science fiction works...." The introduction promises a wide discussion of the topic, but the article itself is purely from a Trek POV. Numerous FTL drives were used in SF before Trek, and TOS is basically an FTL normal space drive named "warp drive"; IIRC, the details of Trek warp drive, dilithium crystals excepted, were established in TNG or later. (It's not clear to me whether the original TOS version was more about warping space or warping through space, as a boat or ship warps.) I'm less upset about the monopolization of "warp drive" by Trek than by the absence of an SF view of FTL in general, discussing (at least) E. E. "Doc" Smith, Buck Rogers, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc. as introduced by the article.
 * At a minimum, some article (which this article would link to) needs to discuss what the intro promises this article will discuss. In keeping with usual Wikipedia practice, I think this article should be the general article, with a short discussion of Trek and Main article: Warp Drive (Star Trek).
 * I note Hyperspace (science fiction). Hyperspace is not warp drive is not FTL in normal space is not a jump drive (Babylon 5 usage is somewhat atypical: B5 has hyperspace; many jump drives do not allow access to, or even use the term, hyperspace). Laguna CA (talk) 02:19, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I disagree. I have read the introduction to the article - there's no need to be  patronising - and I note that you missed out (to your own convenience) four very important words after your quote - "most notably Star Trek".  The introduction does not promise a wide discussion of the topic, given that emphasis is given to ST in the very first sentence.
 * Look - you don't like the subject of the article, fine - suggest it gets renamed to "Warp Drive (Star Trek)" and then write another article on just the generic concept of the warp drive - with appropriate sources and references, of course. I also reckon that the Star Trek Warp drive is the primary topic, given its level of popularity and perception with the general public.  I think you would be hard pressed to justify having this article called "Warp Drive (Star Trek)" and then a stub entitled "Warp Drive" - but hey - go for it.  Be Bold. Chaheel Riens (talk) 07:22, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with Laguna CA (talk. This page and a bunch of editors within a certain clique are trying very hard to make warp drive about star trek. It's ridiculous. This whole article is a mockery and should be deleted or made impartial by having only 1 mention of star trek and at least a few other mentions regarding other titles such as star wars, battle star Galactica, stargate, etc. There was a section at the top with a feww titles and it was deleted after i added Stargate sg1 to the list. Now it's consult a sham of an article with star trek written all over it. I'm going to ask for moderation cause it's ridiculous, is a star trek fan boy article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Choice777 (talk • contribs) 08:58, November 22, 2016 (UTC)
 * So all of this is because you were reverted trying to add Stargate SG-1 to a pointless list in the lead paragraph? That's ridiculous. Warp drive is so unimportant to that series that the SG1 article doesn't even back link this article. Additionally, that anon IP, or you/whoever, couldn't even be bothered to alphabetize the unneeded list. All they knew was they needed to dump a stargate link into the lead paragraph. I have no opinion on the fan boy claims you made, but the list in the WP:Lead that I removed here is not needed and does not benefit this article, the reader or advance toward a goal of NPOV. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:21, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Star Trek warp drive and Star Wars hyperdrive
Who was it that said "The ship travels at the speed of plot"?

i hope to revisit Wikipedia's various articles on fictional FTL technologies when i have time to read them more closely, and i hope to find sources acceptable to Wikipedia to back up my claims that this article has a few errors.

The opening paragraph says:
 * In contrast to other FTL technologies such as a jump drive or hyper drive, the warp drive does not permit instantaneous travel between two points but involves a measurable passage of time

but in Star Wars fiction, a hyperdrive (one word in SW stories) also "involves a measurable passage of time". Consider the original 1970s Star Wars: Obi-Wan and Luke have time for some Jedi training and Chewbacca and R2-D2 have enough time to play a board game while the Millennium Falcon is still in hyperspace.

i'm sure there are other non-SW series that also use the terms hyperdrive (or hyper drive) and hyperspace, and maybe some of them depict instantaneous travel, but the hyperdrive i know best (which i suspect is also one of the most widely known examples) does not.

On another matter, using ctrl+F to search the article, i can not find any mention of warp factor ten being infinite velocity. i remember an episode of Star Trek: Voyager defining that theoretical limit, and Voyager's helmsman attempting to break that barrier (because theoretically, at infinite velocity, you're everywhere at once, so reaching warp ten would get them home instantly). startrek.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_factor confirms warp factor ten being infinite velocity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.121.143.103 (talk) 11:08, 14 September 2017 (UTC)


 * It's debatable. One of the versions of hyperspace that I know best is that of the Elite universe, and that's an instantaneous travel.  I suppose as a stop-gap the word "some" could be inserted?

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Galactic unit

 * davidelkins

The Astronomical Unit is defined in Wikipedia as, 'a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun.' Perhaps there should be the Galactic Unit, which I would define as, 'a unit of length, roughly the distance from the Sun to the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.' Wikipedia calls the Astronomical Unit a 'convenient yardstick'. The Galactic Unit would be equally convenient. Has anyone seen hide or tail of similar proposals?

I just had this same idea myself, after reading the FTL article.

I find it interesting that warp 10 scales a trip from earth to the center of the Milky Way (26,000 light years) at around 12 years, very much the time scale of Odysseus's journey home.

He is most famous for his nostos or "homecoming", which took him ten eventful years after the decade-long Trojan War.

Very interesting how warp 10 scales our present AU onto a fantasy future GU.

Launched in 2006, New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft to ever leave Earth.

It crossed the orbit of Jupiter the next year and has been traveling nearly a million miles a day—but it still took 9.5 years for the spacecraft to reach Pluto and its moons on 13 July 2015

The first transwarp (these never run out: fantasy has pride of place in Cantor's hierarchy) really should scale us, once again, to a decade voyage across the radius of the local group (5 Mly)—transwarp 10 should thus be about 500,000× (as The One True human-centric God would have surely intended)—but this takes us even further afield from the allowable talk page discussion.

Or the first transwarp could skip straight to the scale of the Virgo Supercluster (requiring 5.5 million × for a decade-long radial voyage); VS contains more like 5000 galaxies (Wikipedia is unclear on this) rather than a mere 54 in the Podunk local group (hardly worth wasting an entire rung on a transwarp ladder of true geek rectitude, I think you'll all agree). &mdash; MaxEnt 21:16, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Visual discrepancy


In this animation, it takes about 4 s for a star at the center of the visual field to wing off the side. The closet star to the Sun is 4.37 ly away. As a very quick estimate, for a very close star to wing off the edge in 4 s from a distance of 4.37 ly your vantage point would have to be traveling close to 1 ly/s, a coefficient equivalent to the number of seconds in one year, which is around 31.5 million times c. Call it 30 Mc.

In another region of space where stars are densely congregated and average separations are best quantified in mly (millilightyears), you might only be hauling ass to the tune of 30 kc. [edit: this would be about a billion times the density of space near Sol, which presumably does not collapse because these stars are made from something much lighter than hydrogen]

Is there a way to comment on the visual hyperbole of the on-screen simulation without tumbling into an OREH due to bad console inputs from Lieutenant Sulu?

[*] original research event horizon

&mdash; MaxEnt 19:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)


 * It's not real. Suspension of belief is applicable here.  If we're prepared to believe (for the sake of the article) that FTL travel is possible, then it's no great shakes to believe that starlines streak across the viewscreen/monitor/windows.  Chaheel Riens (talk) 20:13, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Please update with: "Introducing physical warp drives"
I think it would be good to integrate some information on this study into the article. I added the text below, but User:XOR'easter reverted it:

Shortly afterwards, two researchers from the Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory showed that a class of warp drives that are slower than light, could control the rate of time within the spaceship and are sourced from positive energy could in principle possibly be constructed based on known physical principles. Furthermore, they provide a new argument "why superluminal warp drive solutions may always violate weak energy conditions" and that the concept proposed by Lentz "likely forms a new class of warp drive spacetimes".

The given rationale was "WP:TOOSOON and WP:NOTNEWS; phys.org churns press releases and does not indicate that a paper is worth attention, particularly in a big-picture overview article".

You can find most of the news outlets that reported about it here. Those are quite a few and include PhysicsWorld and Spektrum. So maybe it could be readded with the existing sources (there may also be more than the ones displayed on that page) or at least once there is more reporting about it. Alternatively, I think it would also be relevant to the article Alcubierre drive. As the text could be substantially improved, it may be better to ask here first in any case (that's why I put the there).

--Prototyperspective (talk) 16:05, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The Physics World item does not have in-depth coverage of the Bobrick and Martine paper (two short paragraphs). The Spektrum piece is only a little better. Most of that "altmetrics" page appears to be the ephemeral, "hey, some science guy said 'warp drive', shiny!" kind of talk one expects for a sensationalism-prone area. We lose absolutely nothing by waiting for further commentary and analysis in the peer-reviewed literature. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:40, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Focus and notability
This article is significanty focused on Star Trek, so it may need to be moved to Warp drive (Star Trek). But in either case, having written up the space travel in science fiction article and now working on hyperspace, I am not convinced this topic (warp drive in Star Trek) is notable, and this article may seems way too focused on Star Trek fancruft. Anyway, for now, I'll be starting a source review:
 * The Science Fiction Encyclopedia entry on warp drive is just disambiguation between FTL travel and https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/space_warp ; the latter has one sentence on Star Trek's variant: "The space warp has become such a Cliché in sf that it allows endless variants. One of the best known is the "warp factor" used in Star Trek as a measure of velocity. " Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:40, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In the German Wikipedia, I removed the Star Trek part from the article Warp drive (de) and moved it to the article Technology in Star Trek (de). I propose to create such a generic article for Star Trek technology in the English Wikipedia. Due to the many books and magazines there are enough sources for notability. --Mark McWire (talk) 16:02, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Read through the section This article has become FTL Drive in Star Trek above, as this has already been suggested at least once, and there was no good reason mooted to change it. Also see the brief discussion over at Warp drive article is not impartial... it's a star trek fanboy page - although I admit both those arguments were put forward in a somewhat zealous and antagonistic way, that was unlikely to win anybody to their side.  Chaheel Riens (talk) 19:09, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Having finished, mostly, my work on hyperspace, I'll note that a lot of RS on science fiction in general say "space warp" is just a synonym for "hyperspace", and of course topics of fictional physics and fictional engine to utilise it are one and the same. I.e. the logic is: we don't need article on hyperdrive, redirect to hyperspace will suffice. Likewise, warp drive is the same topic as space warp, which is the same topic as hyperspace. The only thing that remains is an overly undue fancrufty plot summary. This was already effectively deleted from Wikipedia once, see Articles for deletion/List of hyperspace depictions in science fiction, which was split from Hyperspace and contained a lenghty section on Star Trek's warpdrive... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 08:29, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * But I have to intervene. Star Trek's warp drive has nothing to do with hyperspace. The spaceship does not leave the normal space-time continuum in warp flight. That is precisely the specialty of this (fictitious) drive method. To summarize the two things would be theorization. --Mark McWire (talk) 17:58, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Hm, I not only agree with Mark McWire's point that warp drive (not "space warp") is distinct from hyperspace, but it's also quite a stretch to imply an article is in some way inferior or wanting because another article that made mention - whether lengthy or not - of this one's topic was previously deleted... Chaheel Riens (talk) 13:51, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * My point was that in the reference works on sci-fi I reviewed while working on hyperspace, several mentioned Star Trek's warp drive as a variant of that idea. There are many different interpretations of hyperspace, and not all of them involve entering another "space-time continuum", dimension, or whatever. Star Wars for example, is pretty similar visually - they still have star streaks, but call their drive hyperdrive. Anyway, it's all technobabble, warp drive is based on space warp concept, which is also the classic hyperspace concept, it's all about the higher dimensions - whether we cross through them through some other "space" or "fold it slowly" like "warp drive" does in our space is just the flavor of the particular universe. While I can entertain the idea that Star Trek's warp drive is famous enough to merit it's own entry, all other "warp drives" in fiction should be discussed in hyperspace article, which is where space warp should redirect, just like The Science Fiction Encyclopedia does. And as for this article here, it badly needs rewriting - there is too much fancruft here and not enough discussion of real world impact of this concept. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 22:20, 9 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree to the total revision and have already abbreviated it properly. I ask you not to remove the table with the speeds, in which a lot of work has been put into with references. --Mark McWire (talk) 22:45, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * As in the German Wikipedia, I have now outsourced the Star Trek part. --Mark McWire (talk) 23:43, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * FWIW, having not even remotely engaged in the discussion above or had substantive contributions to this article ... I totally support today's recent reduction. Hopefully it's the foundation for a more appropriately encyclopedic treatment of the subject. --EEMIV (talk) 23:55, 9 November 2021 (UTC)


 * A lot of work (and trimming) has been done here since the start of this discussion. (Thanks to those doing the work!) Most of what we have here now has in-line citations. So can we remove that tag?
 * Then about notability, we have wound up with a reasonably long article (mostly?) based on secondary sources. Doesn't that mean that the topic is notable?
 * As for the separation from hyperspace, I always had the same impression like Mark McWire, that there is a conceptual difference, just as this article explains. Of course we also have to note the fact that the two concepts have been linked by some authors (and being fictional, it's unsurprsing that the matter is somewhat fuzzy), but still differences have been noted by sources, too. Looking for an analogy, saying both are the same seems to me like saying a naturally occuring cave is the same as a constructed tunnel, and we wouldn't need separate articles for those. Saying that Star War's hyperspace is visually similar than Star Trek's warp drive, streaking stars and all, seems to be a misconception to me: Star War's streaking stars as far as I know occur just before entering hyperspace, while in Star Trek these appear throughout the faster-than-light warp travel within "normal space". Compare Hyperspace to Entering Hyperspace. That may not hold true for every depiction, but there it is. Daranios (talk) 19:22, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I concur that the conceptual difference is there, but right now that part is unreferenced. Can anyone find a RS that discusses how warp space differrs from hyperspace in most fictional works (real space vs fictional space)? I'd hate to remove this, it seems correct and helpful, but right now it is ORish. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 20:58, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I've provided an online source for that sentence, thanks to Spinningspark and our discussion about Slipstream. Daranios (talk) 11:47, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The eBook Field Propulsion System for Space Travel seems to cover our topic extensively and in an earnest way. Daranios (talk) 20:14, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @Daranios Good find, although the publisher's reliability is borderline, see Bentham Science Publishers. The authors seem reliable I guess: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Takaaki-Musha, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yoshinari-Minami although hardly high profile. I am fine accepting the source for this article, so thanks for finding it! Btw, I think there may be some interesting content to translate from de wiki? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:36, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

First warp bubble created
So I think at least "Space warp and real-world physics" needs a rewrite as it's neither "illogical" nor "rubber science". For more informations see https://epjc.epj.org/articles/epjc/abs/2021/07/10052_2021_Article_9484/10052_2021_Article_9484.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:A62:1441:8AFC:0:0:0:783 (talk) 07:43, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Time dilation and length contraction
There seems to be a very significant part of special relativity (SR) missing from the article. What is already stated is correct (can't travel faster than light), but misleading. SR also covers length contraction and time dilation. I.e. the faster you travel, the shorter the distance you need to travel is from your point of view (length contraction) / the slower time is passing for you compared to an observer at rest (time dilation). This means that you can travel 1 light year in less than a year, without going faster than light. This warping of space and time, which has actually been measured and confirmed to happen in practice seems highly relevant to this article and should be included, even if it's not the idea behind the star trek/wars drives. It's how the universe actually works. See e.g https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime_diagram 2A02:C7E:3525:0:4428:C019:8A04:ACB9 (talk) 07:26, 3 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Added some text, referencing various wiki pages on Special Relativity, including copying the diagram inset from the Lorentz Factor page. 5.68.181.235 (talk) 07:37, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

date of story
The actual date of the original publication ISLANDS IN SPACE  was in magazin at  1931 Date

Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring 1931

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?958425

Please correct at the entry., 109.64.41.174 (talk) 05:34, 14 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Might be best to list both magazine and book variants like SFE does. @TompaDompa Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The sentence in question is The general concept of warp drive was introduced by John W. Campbell in his 1957 novel Islands of Space. Clearly, the relevant date to give is the date of original publication (this is also more broadly speaking usually the case for stories like this). However, given that our article on Islands of Space says The novel originally appeared in the magazine Amazing Stories Quarterly; the text was "extensively edited" for book publication, with Campbell's approval, by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach., it might be the case that this sentence is only true of one of the versions (though that seems a bit unlikely). So I checked the cited sources to see if they specified book or magazine version, only to discover that neither the "space warp" entry of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction nor page 77 of The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction actually verify the sentence; the former only says The term (along with "hyperspace") may first have been used by John W Campbell Jr in Islands of Space (Spring 1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly; 1957). and the latter does not mention Islands of Space at all. I have not been able to access the full version of the third cited source to see if it verifies the sentence or whether it specifies a version (though the abstract seems to suggest that it does and that the magazine version is intended). TompaDompa (talk) 19:45, 14 February 2024 (UTC)