Music & Movies

Doesn't warp speed put you in hyper space?

I think warp speed is based on the warping of the space time continum so that instead of traveling from point a to point b over a distance you just appear at point b because the space between point a and b was folded in half. Ummmm...yeah.

and hyper space?

...and isn't that like a wormhole?

Lol, this is getting complicated. As far as I can see, hyperspace is a big zoomy thing where all the stars go blurry and you go really fast and it makes a wooshing noise. Deep, eh? I really should be a rocket scientist.

I think it is more of a zipping noise.

OK, since we're on the topic of Science Fantasy, any Terry Pratchett fans in the building?

*dives for cover as Leonard's latest attempt at a coffee machine explodes*

Anyway... Warp speed treats the speed of light just like any other speed barrier, something that can be overcome with the proper acceleration. According to the theory of relativity, to accelerate anything with mass up to light speed in our universe would require an infinite amount of energy.

The idea of hyperspace is that you jump outside our universe (or into an extra dimension of our universe, depending on the formulation), travel for a while, and relative to this universe it LOOKS like you've traveled faster than light. Okay, enough physics talk.


So let's pretend our world is a big Disc, supported by four huge white elephants, standing on a gigantic turtle that swims through space.

That works for me!

I like Terry Pratchett. I have only read Small Gods (excellent!) and Reaper Man (just okay, but maybe that was because I was exposed to it endlessly before ever reading it).

Ulrike: I heard an anecdote about a teacher discussing the logical failing of the 'earth on four elephants on a giant turtle' cosmology. After describing the model (without the ocean, apparently), he posed the rhetorical question "What does the turtle stand on?" One of his students answered "Another turtle." The patient teacher then asked "What does THAT turtle stand on?", to which the student replied "Another turtle." The teacher asked again "Then what does THAT turtle stand on?", to which the slightly exasperated student replied "It's turtles all the way down!"

Ah, you're not a Pratchett fan... Pratchett solves the dilemma by having the turtle be a space-dwelling turtle that, well, swims through space! It's not standing on anything, it's just floating in space. (Now the question of how dense it has to be to avoid violent decompression in a vacuum is another matter altogether..., not to mention how long it takes signals in its brain to reach its flippers)