"What if the Enterprise or Falcon hit a planet at FTL?" Topic

Besides the ship being destroyed, what would happen to the planet? Say Earth?

Or what if you loaded missiles with warp drives or hyperspeed engines ( which in Star Wars is conceivable) and launched them at a planet.

Was talking rules designs etc with friends and this topic came up as a possible strategy.

( Years ago in a Warhammer 40K tournament the objective was to occupy a building in each table corner. I was running a tank company. I grabbed mine, and proceeded to destroy the other 3. Nothing in the rules stopped me from doing that. I did not lose points for destroying them just gained them for holding a building. I denied my opponent the chance to gain points. Similar theme in terms of scenario building lol)

Besides the ship being destroyed, what would happen to the planet? Say Earth?

Or what if you loaded missiles with warp drives or hyperspeed engines ( which in Star Wars is conceivable) and launched them at a planet.

Was talking rules designs etc with friends and this topic came up as a possible strategy.

( Years ago in a Warhammer 40K tournament the objective was to occupy a building in each table corner. I was running a tank company. I grabbed mine, and proceeded to destroy the other 3. Nothing in the rules stopped me from doing that. I did not lose points for destroying them just gained them for holding a building. I denied my opponent the chance to gain points. Similar theme in terms of scenario building lol)

Besides the ship being destroyed, what would happen to the planet? Say Earth?

Or what if you loaded missiles with warp drives or hyperspeed engines ( which in Star Wars is conceivable) and launched them at a planet.

Was talking rules designs etc with friends and this topic came up as a possible strategy.

( Years ago in a Warhammer 40K tournament the objective was to occupy a building in each table corner. I was running a tank company. I grabbed mine, and proceeded to destroy the other 3. Nothing in the rules stopped me from doing that. I did not lose points for destroying them just gained them for holding a building. I denied my opponent the chance to gain points. Similar theme in terms of scenario building lol)

If we assume FTL is just more velocity and it's moving faster than light speed, then the kinetic energy of the ship destroys the planet. No calculations needed, ship atomized and the planet doesn't come off much better.

The interesting calculations come from deciding if you made a new mini black hole and what its veolcity is. Then what is the lifespan of the black hole and when it comes apart what damage does that do, as I suspect it's really short and you rerelease the energy. Sorry, astrophysics minor coming out.

In Sci Fi, when ships drop out of Hyperspace/Warp space etc, they aren't going much faster than normal space ships, so they must be in a parallel 'universe, so why do they hit the planet anyway? – never understood it at all! I think its just a narrative vehicle to solve travel problems/ create an artefactual hazard?!!

You can make up what you want, since FTL in this, probably the only, space-time continuum, means bigger than infinite kinetic energy on impact.
Personally, I'm hoping for a rip in space-time and the invasion of hordes of hot naked female demons out of the warp, riding black unicorns and handing out Pina Colada and chocolate ice with whipped cream.
Whipped with their own tails not those of the unicorns.

For slower than the speed of light, look for 'universesandbox impact' videos.
Since I can't be bothered to do the math look for 'relativistic kinetic energy calculator'.
As a rule of thumb, the Falcon at 99,99% the speed of light would probably eradicate Moscow, which wouldn't be that bad.
The Enterprise-E would level North America, which would be a pity from my perspective.
From preferably high orbit, you could observe a really nice ring of fire, though it would not cleanse the whole planet.
Don't know, the mass of a borg cube should do the job for the last 30 seconds of These Final Hours

Can something traveling FTL actually hit anything? I don't understand the math or the science behind something like that.

Can something traveling FTL actually hit anything?

Simple answer?
No, but just because nothing can move faster than light, because everything in space-time moves always at only one speed, the speed of light.
One cannot separate space and time from each other.
If you go faster in space, you go slower in time and vice versa.

Or as Lewis Caroll Epstein so ingeniously put it:

‌

But just to handwave us out of the amber we're trapped in for eternity, why shouldn't something hypothetically traveling faster than light cannot hit something?
Already Einstein was aware of the problems of FTL, see here:

Tachyonic Antitelephone – On Wikipedia

But they were problems of causality, not of kinetics or trajectory.
And the lack of observation of phenomena since 1907, which would have resulted if FTL existed, gives the indication, FTL does not exist.
Except in the illusionary dream machine of our wonderful mind.
Lighthouse paradox – On Wikipedia

Quick answer: Earth is struck and civilization ends. Humans and microbes are a memory. Game over. Hit START.

Why not just chuck some meteors at the planet? Cheaper and doesn't rely on fantasies of FTL. That's why the Death Star is so silly, but Star Wars is not hard sci-fi, which is why I love A New Hope and Empire so much. The 3 sequels don't exist and were wasted opportunities.

Since the whole point of an FTL drive is that our present physics are wrong, and the story-teller does not describe the new physics, the result of a starship colliding with a planet is whatever the script-writer says it is. He should probably be consistent, but that's about it.

Points of order:

Neither ship moves faster than light.

The Enterprise creates a "warp field" or "warp bubble" of spacetime around the ship. It is this bubble of spacetime which travels faster than light, which physics allows. The matter of the ship does not accelerate, but is carried by the moving spacetime bubble, or warp, to arrive at a new location in spacetime relevant to the rest of the universe.

The Falcon operates by entering "hyperspace" a theoretical hyperdimensional space which allows travel from one point in the universe to another point in the universe without passing through the universe itself. Think of it as a hallway with doors that can open anywhere, but whose length always appears the same and takes the same amount of time to traverse. You don't traverse the hallway at light speed or over, and the hallway doesn't move either. You just enter by one door and exit by another, but the Universe does not restrict the distance or impact the apparent time involved.

As such, the question cannot be applied to either ship, as the ships themselves do not ever exceed the speed of light in a referential frame that matters for relativity.

Now, can these concepts actually work? The warp concept is a real one in theoretical physics, and does not violate relativity. Whether such a drive system is practically possible is another question.

Hyperspace, on the other hand, is a bit more nebulous. While extra-dimensional spaces are theorized to exist under certain models of the Universe, these are minutely small, and not certainly not any pathway to anywhere, as far as we can tell (even if the models are correct).

Yes, for sure you have to find out first the right amount of the more expensive Phlebotium needed for your intended audience.
Educational level, naivety, motivation to consume your yarn, and so on.
Then you can switch to the much cheaper Handwavium.

Applied Phlebotium

Suspension of Disbelief

I know some argue that Handwavium and Phlebotium are the same but my decades of intensive study on the subject tell me this is unscientific nonsense.
The number of gluons is clearly higher in Phlebotium.
And you need a lot of gluons to glue a strong and exciting sailor's yarn.
Everything else is 'Quark' as we say in Germany.

:)

I was going to leave some very insightful comments on the Death Star, DS9, and other relevant thoughts. But there are too many people on this thread that know what they're talking about. :-)

Did you know that there is an apocrypha about Richard Feynmann, which says that in 1987, while on a cancer cure on an island off Germany called Wangerooge, where he was also attending a conference on variational methods in quantum field theory, he is said to have been delighted in a supermarket shopping aisle when he spotted a package of quark, a sour milk product little known in the U.S., in a refrigerated section?
He is reported to have said something like: "Look, the Germans are at least three years ahead of the physics world."

It's apocryphal and nowhere to be found in English, apparently.
I have only German-language sources.
But even if it should be fictitious, it has a damn high content of gluons.
Fortunately the invention of midi-chlorians was years ahead at that time.

I have an answer regarding at the least the Falcon. It is totally logical in regards to the Star Wars setting, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Nothing much happens besides the ship explodes in the upper atmosphere.

My logic? If anything else occurred, there would be no reason for the Empire to build the Death Star. Just send suicide FTL fighters out. a LOT cheaper.

Neither drunk nor stoned: link

Seconded, Mister Tibbles.

As an old space opera fan, Militia Mike, I always wince a little when someone includes Star Wars, or uses the term as a pejorative. Leigh Brackett called space opera "character-driven SF" and after the first three movies, there's hardly a character left. You couldn't have sold the plots of the subsequent six movies to Amazing, let along Planet Stories.

Doc Smith is space opera. Andre Norton is space opera. Poul Anderson is space opera some of the time. Subsequent to 1983, Star Wars is what happens, not when your ship exceeds light speed, but when your special effects budget exceeds your creativity.

I think the science has already been worked out and a documentary was made:

youtu.be/tb1fwG9MPA0

Neither drunk nor stoned

The referenced paper is quite interesting, you may download it here Introducing Physical Warp Drives by Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire – On arxiv.org

The problem is that the solution is for subluminal warp drives, not superluminal ones.
So far it looks good, as far as I can tell, and I'm pretty sure I lack the specialized knowledge to do it.
All superluminal "warp drive" hypotheses assume something whose existence is not given but desired so that it solves the equations to fit, such as Alcubierre's negative matter density.
All of these so-called solutions have the structure if A exists, we could B.
You could call it the just-assumed-proof.
The trick is to infer the existence of B from the lack of evidence that A does not exist, wrapped in heavy mathematics.
This can certainly take science further, such as Einstein's Cosmological Constant.
Because, well, it fits the model and may exist, so let's have a look if it is really there and not just in our model.
If it's there, our model is onto something.
If not, well, that's fine, we've learned a lot.
Let's think about and make a better model.
One day, we will know.
That's science.
But in any case, it secures one another scientific paper on one's CV.
Nonetheless, it's not FTL.

Never mind the fact that the "something whose existence is…desired" is the definition of wishful thinking.

Personally, I wouldn't be that harsh a judge, if it's done right.
See that Einstein reference.
But, well, it is a valid point of view.
See the attempt to save the Ptolemaic system with epicycles.
On the other hand, in essence, science is just that, testing ideas. And of course, you don't want to give up your ideas too soon.
The problems start when ideas become beliefs that become untouchable, or when they become wishful thinking, I agree.
Then there is the compulsion in the current academic system to produce as many papers as possible.

As an author of SF/Fantasy, it all boils down to the question, who is the audience you want to entertain with your yarn?
And what gives them that certain sense of wonder they crave?

Never mind the fact that the "something whose existence is…desired" is the definition of wishful thinking.

No it isn't. It's simply speculation, which engenders thought to examine whether the desired something can or cannot exist. And that is the essence of science— to consider a hypothesis and then through observation and experimentation determine if that hypothesis is valid.

"Wishful thinking" is when one desires something which one knows can't exist or is supremely unlikely. (Even then wishful thinking is not necessarily the same as something being impossible— it is, in fact, the origin of invention— "I wish this to be the case, and I work to make it the case.")

But shutting down speculation, especially in areas where the current models allow for a thing, is the opposite of science. Science is not about rigidity or declared facts. It is about discovery and open mindedness— not to just embrace things willy-nilly, but rather to examine ideas and put them to the test. If these ideas then turn out to be flawed or even false, that's the process of science. But it's not enough to just declare it as so.

Further, I think the analogy to Ptolemaic science and epicycles is flawed. In fact, the Ptolemaic system was not really science, as such. It was an assumption handed down as a dictate, and the epicycles were conceived to try and uphold that dictate— we "knew" something to be the case so we conceived of systems that made it be the case. It's not an example of a foolish desire to follow wishful thinking, but actually a case of rigidity of thinking refusing to let go of assumed certainty of knowledge that was actually false.

It is not true that nothing can move faster than light; we already know that something can— spacetime itself did just that following the creation of the Universe, expanding itself at a rate faster than the speed of light. Does that mean we can replicate this, even on a minute scale? No. But it means we can't say FTL is in all cases impossible, because it once wasn't— and it is an area that we need to study closely, and yes, speculate about.

Further, we know that information can be transmitted at FTL speeds via quantum entanglement— though that information may not be possible to convey any other information other than the fact of the entanglement itself. But we do not know how or why this happens— and so hard and fast statements about it are not valid as firm declarations.

Yes, I am hopeful, and yes, I wish engineered FTL systems were possible. And thus I am likely to interpret things in a favorable light. But there are times when a favorable light is better than a negative one, for the favorable light embraces possibilities, while the negative one attempts to deny them all to little constructive end.

In any case, this is a discussion about two fictional ships using fictional drive systems to fly "at the speed of plot"— one can answer based on the concepts behind the fiction, but saying "that can't happen anyway" is irrelevant, even if it were to be true. Yes, it can provoke an interesting discussion.

In any case, neither Star Trek nor Star Wars claim to be true, and both are space fantasy. But one can say the same thing of many works of fiction.
James Bond is spy fantasy.
The Sharpe's novels are historical fantasy.
All of Shakespeare is fantasy of some sort.
The Time Machine is science fantasy.
The Martian Chronicles are science fantasy.
The Foundation series is science fantasy.
The Godfather is mafia fantasy.
Lawrence of Arabia is military history fantasy.
So is Spartacus.
None of it is real; all of it is thus "fantastic."

So don't be a snob. Your favorite stuff is somebody else's nonsense, too.
Heck, what does the rest of the world think of tabletop miniatures gaming? Would they not sneer and say it's all just silly fantasy?
In which case, maybe sneering at others' interests isn't something any of us should be doing.

spacetime itself did just that following the creation of the Universe, expanding itself at a rate faster than the speed of light

The expansion of spacetime has no speed, but a rate of about 73km +/-1km per megaparsec distance from the observer for now.
It's a change of metrics.
The density of energy and matter drops continuously on a universal scale.
You can see that at scales with weak gravitational bounding.
You dont see the effect locally, where there is a strong gravitational bounding, like a galaxy and even clusters.
You may look that up yourself.

I think the analogy to Ptolemaic science and epicycles is flawed

Well, okay then, take the lumniferous aether theory of light up until the Michelson-Morley-Experiment, instead of epicycles.
It is often used as a basic fact for Victorian science fiction/Steampunk settings and probably fits this discussion better anyway.

Personally I don't think I sneered about anything beside some academic oddities, but if it seems that way, I apologize for the impression it may have caused.

@ Arjuna

I was engaging multiple comments in my reply— indeed yours was secondary, and my response in that case was only in reference to the Ptolemaic analogy. You have not sneered at all, and I appreciate your input— helpful, educational and interesting. The reference to sneering was in reply to others, not to you, and it was also in reference to throwing shade upon people's interest in fiction (and, presumably, gaming— that happens a *lot* here), and not the actual scientific discussion which has coincided. Essentially, some of the posters have belittled the OP for reasons I can't fathom. He asked a question that was in context with two fictional sources and their in context rationales; any consideration of physics was secondary.
The actual answer is IF it were possible for a ship to travel FTL, what would be the result of an impact with a massive object. One has to accept that IF in order to answer the question, AND one has to address that IF within the context of its setting and source as well.

Thus, the short answer is:
IF it were possible to travel FTL, then the impact would destroy the planet and quite possibly a heck of a lot more, infinite energy being required to travel at light speed, and presumably at FTL, IF that were possible.

BUT neither setting actually have spaceships physically travel at FTL in a relativistic sense, but rather use "workarounds" that allow the ships to "arrive" at destinations at rates that appear to exceed the speed of light.

And that is ancillary to the discussion of whether these concepts work or not. Which is a fine discussion to have, and I've been enjoying it.

BUT the decisions by some to assert their own superiority in tastes over the tastes of others has soured the discussion unnecessarily. Poor social graces, I expect— a hazard among highly intelligent and hyper-focused individuals; this hobby has an overload of Sheldons, possessing a great deal of information and very little tact. Geek against geek is lousy and embarrassing behavior. The hobby is small enough as it is for condescending attitudes from equally imperfect people.

And I've said my piece on that front.

Thanks for the comments on the possibilities (or lack thereof) for real world FTL! I am not a cosmological physicist (though I have a high interest), so insightful and informed responses are always welcome.

Everything's fine.

And don't give up your search for the Grail, Parzival.
There is always hope.
Look for Andrzej Dragan's superluminal observer.
I think it may be of interest to you.

Humorous gif didn't work, so deleted. Ah well.

Welcome to TMP!

@Arjuna Thanks for the tidbit— found an excellent article: link

Very interesting— I'll be curious to see how this develops.

(Who was it who observed that advancements in physics occur "one death at a time", referring to a propensity for rigidly accepted ideas among older scientists?)

Max Planck, one funeral at a time.
But it was quite different times back then.

"The last remaining question is whether superluminal objects are only a mathematical possibility, or they actually exist in reality,"
"We believe the latter to be that case, and that is the purpose of our further research."
Andrzej Draga

It's what I meant when I said, that the strange variable you used to solve an equation that supports a hypothesis may be something really out there or not.
You never know until you look for it.
And even if it's there it may still be out of reach forever.

By Meddling With Spacetime Dimensions, We Could Finally Reach Warp Speed – On Popular Mechanics

I'll have to hunt for that article at the library or on a magazine rack; it's behind a subscription paywall at the link. But I will indeed track it down!

Sorry.
Try this:
archive.ph/O02IU

I don't think your premise supports your argument.

Why would we have detected parallel universes? If they do not interact, it would be impossible to detect either universe from the other, as, by definition of "do not interact", neither universe would have any impact upon the other which could be measured from within either. It would be like sitting in a room and trying to know whether anyone was sitting in another similar room in another building across town. Without any interaction between the two, you could not determine even the existence of the other room, much less whether or not someone was in it.
So then, how would we have detected "them" (presumably you mean the parallel universe), if your premise is true? We would not have because we could not do so at all.

However, the article doesn't support your premise, either. The article merely indicates that within the Universe, it is entirely mathematically and scientifically valid to posit that superluminal states can exist, and that such a state serves as an explanation of why and possibly how quantum mechanics works as it does while seeming to violate relativity from our subliminal point of view— yet both the subluminal and superluminal are essentially part of the Universe, which means they interact and influence each other in some way… and indeed, the mere observation of quantum mechanics from our subluminal state might quite simply be the detection of the superluminal aspect of the Universe. Basically, we're like a creature which lives underground trying to define a tree solely by looking at its roots as they extend into a cavern roof— we need another perspective to understand what a tree is. (Not a perfect analogy by any means, but hopefully a word image which conveys the idea.)

Now, we can state then, that either FTL processes do not impact subluminal matter to a significant degree (and thus an FTL spaceship would not ever "crash" into any subluminal matter when at superluminal speeds), or that nothing significant has happened to cause such interactions in a massive way (no FTL spaceship has crashed into a planet which we can detect), or even that certain phenomena of physics are indeed the result of the superluminal portion of the Universe interacting with the subluminal portion, but have not been identified as such.

This is not outside the realm of possibility— after all, we already know of subluminal and light speed phenomena that do not readily interact with matter as we know it— neutrinos, for example, or more theoretically, dark matter and dark energy.

And yes, a superluminal state which can influence subluminal states would indeed constitute time travel. But so what? As far as we are concerned, time travel is irrelevant to our experience of the Universe, as we move only linearly through time in one direction. If what we perceive as "the Past" is altered by time travel, we will never know it because the altered Past will simply become our Past.

(On a side note, the "grandfather paradox" is thus a logical myth. No one can travel back in time to alter the Past because to that individual the altered Past will become their new Past, and never engender the impulse to go back in time to change it. You can't go back and kill your grandfather because your grandfather was never killed by you. You could go back intending to kill your grandfather, but you won't pull it off, because you didn't pull it off— else you wouldn't be able to make the decision to do it. So even if a time traveller accidentally alters their own past, they won't know it either, as the alteration will become the past they know.

Of course, a superluminal observer could possibly see a past from a position outside of spacetime and act to alter that past while potentially "remembering" the state before the alteration; an interesting premise to consider.

A tautology is not logic.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; the failure to detect a thing does not mean the thing does not exist. It could simply mean that we haven't looked in the right place, or don't have the technology or ability to detect a thing.

Furthermore, you brought up tachyons— they're not in this discussion, nor in either article being discussed. I suppose if you use tachyons as a general term for superluminal things, but I don't think that's the usage around which the term was coined. (I haven't encountered the term outside of science fiction for over two decades, but as I said, I'm not a physicist nor do I run in circles where physicists operate.)

You were also the person who brought up a parallel universe. The articles suggested no such thing, nor has this discussion. So you either aren't paying attention or are just trying to create straw men to tear down and then think you have made a relevant point.

In any case there are two discussions here— what the fictional ships might or might not cause in a fictional setting using fictional physics. That discussion (which is BS, but fun BS) has ended; we have moved on to something entirely different— a new concept in physics put forth by serious researchers exploring serious ideas. It is tangentially related in terms of possibly allowing FTL as a method of travel, but it isn't about that at all. It is about a way of reconciling quantum mechanics with both general and specific relativity (or vice versa). As such I find it brilliant and fascinating. At this stage it is a thought experiment (as made up as any of these are), but it is one with potential to produce a viable theory and a fundamental change in how we understand the Universe. It is actual, real science. Yes, it can and should be questioned— as all scientific claims should be. But dismissed out of hand with unrelated and irrelevant nonsense— no.

I need to correct myself.
I said "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
That was not intended as an absolute, which is how it reads.
What I mean is that "absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence." I would agree that much of the time it is (as in the search for Bigfoot and things like that); but sometimes the inability to detect a thing, or the failure to look in the right place or in the right manner, prevents one from finding evidence. One has to know when that might be the case. (With Bigfoot, it's probably not the case.)

But in actuality, I dispute the lack of evidence argument in any case— I don't believe this is a case of having no evidence. We actually have great deal of evidence— all the observations and experiments which validate quantum theory! They are the evidence— if only the evidence that something is going on which we cannot yet explain and cannot yet reconcile with the equally valid evidence and observations which confirm General and Special Relativity!

Thus, Draga's thought experiment of a superluminal observer is extremely valid, as it explains the evidence we have. Does that mean it's correct? No. In order for it to be correct, there needs to be an observational and experimental way to confirm it… and I have no clue what that would be. But that doesn't mean such processes and confirmation are impossible.

So, for now, it is an explanation which needs consideration, both for its positives and its flaws.

Fascinating time to be following physics.

<Points of order:

Neither ship moves faster than light.

The Enterprise creates a "warp field" or "warp bubble" of spacetime around the ship. It is this bubble of spacetime which travels faster than light, which physics allows. The matter of the ship does not accelerate, but is carried by the moving spacetime bubble, or warp, to arrive at a new location in spacetime relevant to the rest of the universe.

The Falcon operates by entering "hyperspace" a theoretical hyperdimensional space which allows travel from one point in the universe to another point in the universe without passing through the universe itself. Think of it as a hallway with doors that can open anywhere, but whose length always appears the same and takes the same amount of time to traverse. You don't traverse the hallway at light speed or over, and the hallway doesn't move either. You just enter by one door and exit by another, but the Universe does not restrict the distance or impact the apparent time involved.

As such, the question cannot be applied to either ship, as the ships themselves do not ever exceed the speed of light in a referential frame that matters for relativity.

Now, can these concepts actually work? The warp concept is a real one in theoretical physics, and does not violate relativity. Whether such a drive system is practically possible is another question.

Hyperspace, on the other hand, is a bit more nebulous. While extra-dimensional spaces are theorized to exist under certain models of the Universe, these are minutely small, and not certainly not any pathway to anywhere, as far as we can tell (even if the models are correct).>

A. Are you saying that if The Enterprise is moving from Point A to Point B via Warp, and a rock is directly in its path, it will not hit the rock due to the warp bubble?

B. Re: Hyperspace. You need to watch the ending of Last Jedi.

You need to ask yourself how the warp drive is working. If its using something like an Alcubierre Warp drive than you basically have something which resembles a black hole in front of your ship. This means it would just go right through earth. It may get destroyed at some point before it exits, but apart from a hole the earth not be affected.

On the other hand its unlikely the enterprise uses an Alcubierre drive, it must use a McGuffin(sic) drive which somehow deflates space in front of it and inflates it behind, with minimal energy expenditure. In this case it would probably vaporise and make a big crater in the earth. The weapons loads may have an impact(sic), but I suggest the anti-matter drive would give you a bigger bang. However I suspect the kinetic effect would be even greater than the anti-matter explosion.

I created my ideas on what warp and impulse drive may look like in this video;
youtu.be/yY0XzYV_1Qc