Star Trek - Warpspeed death

What do you think Scientists are busy doing? Well, apart from re-booting that Large Hadron Collider at the weekend, and then switching it off very quickly because of a "cryo intervention", somebody has delivered yet another lecture about Star Trek science and has typically generated hundreds of comments, over at The New Scientist.

It seems that, should you ever achieve warp speed in a Star ship, you will die. It is all down to an intense beam of hydrogen gas. I think. According to the NS

The fatal dose of radiation for a human is 6 sieverts. Edelstein's calculations show that the crew would receive a radiation dose of more than 10,000 sieverts within a second. Intense radiation would also weaken the structure of the spacecraft and damage its electronic instruments.

This is like standing in the LHC when it finally gets to working at full power.

Edelstein presented his results on Saturday at the American Physical Society meeting in Washington DC.
A Space Cadet

7 comments:

Jim Baxter said...

Gawd,

I knew Shatner had got fat but not fat in the head too.

That warp stuff is all tripe. As I keep saying, warp drive doesn't move the starship, it moves the space around the starship. Unless Einstein was wrong, that's the only way to appear to travel faster than light. As Alcubierre has shown - oh, please yourselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Brian said...

It's much more feasible to navigate through foldspace created by a Holtzmann Drive. However, the melange needed by navigators is extremely addictive.

more thrust Scotty said...

Didn't the experts say that it was impossible for people to travel faster than 30mph as we wouldn't be able to catch our breath so cars would need limiters fitted ? A small windshield solved the problem.
I'm sure they will find a material that will protect us from the hydrogen gas.

Spartan said...

And you can fly
High as a kite if you want to
Faster than light if you want to
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel

Moody Blues ... ln Search of the Lost Chord

Jim Baxter said...

I wish I was a spaceman
The fastest guy alive
I'd fly you round the universe
In Fireball XL5

Sure I posted about this recently -somehwere... Do you ever have de ja vu? I could check with the kitchen

OK, here's me first DID

http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=nXGGuqXB8h4

Jim Baxter said...

Apols - MTS -

One must of course not forget the 'walking ghost' phase of radiation sickness, a period of well-being following the initial symptoms of extreme bodily ejections, when it is possible to get quite a few things done while knowing all the time that death is certain withing days because your bone marrow has stopped working and the cells you have are the last you will get. 'Walking ghost' experience available to 5-20Sieverts cusomers only. Those requiring larger doses will fall to bits, fizzing, within hours as the water in their bodies will have been ionised to hydrogen peroxide. Hence the expression, 'died blond'.

Jim Baxter said...

Or 'plutonium blonde'.

I'll stop now.