The USS FTL0476
The USS FTL0476 flew out to 100 million miles beyond the orbit of Jupiter, making sure to remain well away from Jupiter and its moons and Lagrange points.
After going through the final checklist, the captain of FTL0476 broadcast signals in all directions. "T-60 seconds" ding -- "T-50 seconds" ding -- "T-40 seconds" ding -- "T-30 seconds" ding -- "T-20 seconds" ding -- "T-10 seconds -- 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Go!" The final word was cut off as the spaceship instantly shot to Warp 2 -- twice the speed of light.
Space Traffic Control centers throughout the solar system -- the moon, orbiting Callisto, on Ceres, etc. -- received the countdown at different times. Except for different time lags due to different distances, they all received the countdown signals from FTL0476. The departure appeared abruptly as a visible star that died out within five minutes.
Three minutes after departure, Callisto STC received a faint signal. "FTL 1st at Warp 2, and all is well." Three minutes later, Callisto received, "FTL 2nd at Warp 2, and all is well." Three minutes later still, Callisto received the final signal. "FTL 3rd at Warp 2, and farewell for the next decade."
The EtaCass Fnuxell
The Eta-Cassiopeia-registered sub-luminous freighter transport EtaCass Fnuxell had the unprecedented fortune of flying through the solar system between Jupiter and Saturn, in the same direction as FTL0476, at Warp 0.8, 4/5ths the speed of light, in its circuit through space regions 237, 892, 1895, and 3487. Except for routine chatter automatically decoded, recorded, and ignored, the Fnuxell and its crew had no indication of FTL0476's faster-than-light departure.
Not until a green alert signaled in the transportation control center, indicating something possibly interesting, probably harmless.
"I'm onto it, Captain," said 2nd Lieutenant Squiglant at his workstation, as the alert changed from green to yellow. He moved and tapped his pointing device, and typed into the workstation. "Sir, systems detected a gamma-ray burst of intensity 48 kW/m^2, followed by a burst of near-warp interstellar matter of intensity 107 kW/m^2. Source appears to be azimuth -1.32, 0.78 from fore. Radar detects nothing in that direction. Star charts show plenty of stars in that direction."
"Captain?" said 2nd Lieutenant Gnorthst.
"Go ahead, Lieutenant."
"No stars are capable of producing both gamma-ray bursts and particle bursts that would reach us with that kind of intensity. Anything of any reasonable distance would have to be directed specifically at us."
"We could send a request-for-information to the local STC. A response wouldn't come for hours, though," said Lt. Squiglant.
"I'll send the request," answered the Captain. "They should know about it, even if it's too late to do anything about it."
The Fnuxell remained at yellow-alert, but nothing further happened until 65 minutes later.
"Captain," said Lt. Squiglant. "We've detected a faint communication from directly aft. It's from a locally registered ship. `FTL 3rd at Warp 2, and farewell for the next decade.'"
"Any connection with the previous events?" asked the Captain.
"Quite possibly, if the ship is what it claims to be," answered Lt. Gnorthst. "I'm working through the calculations now."
Three minutes later, a second communication came: "FTL 2nd at Warp 2, and all is well." This was followed by another, three minutes later. "FTL 1st at Warp 2, and all is well."
A strong communication appeared beginning eighty seconds later. "It's the same voice, the captain of that ship." The systems voice said, "T-60 seconds" ding -- "T-50 seconds" ding -- "T-40 seconds" ding -- "T-30 seconds" ding -- "T-20 seconds" ding -- "T-10 seconds -- 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Go!"
"A new star has appear directly aft," said Lt. Squiglant.
"I believe that I've figured out what has happened," said Lt. Gnorthst.
"Yes?" returned the captain.
"If my calculations are correct, their ship, the USS FTL0476, has apparently crashed into itself at twice the speed of light."
Comments
Still Too Close?
If it ever happens and we can actually do the calculations and we have a power plant that can displace that much mass, perhaps we'll decide that we have to be beyond the Oort cloud to try?
Impossible
It's impossible to get that far away from oneself.
Now that I think about it further, in the freighter's frame, the moving FTL is antimatter, which annihilates the stationary FTL. And when the FTL finishes its journey and goes subluminal, you have matter-antimatter pair production, producing the subluminal FLT and the superluminal FLT, that goes to the Solar System to collide with and annihilate itself.
Let's see, a million kilograms annihilating into energy: about 10^23 Joules. That's less than one thousandth the sun's radiation every second.
-- Daphne Xu
umm
I still dont get it
Emotion, yet peace.
Ignorance, yet knowledge.
Passion, yet serenity.
Chaos, yet harmony.
Contemplation, yet duty
Death, yet the Force.
Light with dark, I remain Balanced.
Twist Ending
One needs a certain mastery of special relativity. And I limited myself to frames of the solar system and the sub-luminous freighter, where special relativity is known to be accurate. In the solar-system frame, the spacecraft departs at twice the speed of light for its destination. Upon arrival, it will promptly go subluminous.
In the frame of the freighter, the spacecraft pair-produces at the destination. The superluminous antimatter version travels at 2c to the solar system, whereupon it annihilates itself and the stationary spacecraft.
I'm thinking of posting a blog post discussing the elementary-particle version of this story. Such things occur all the time with elementary particles.
Oh, and I was hoping that readers would appreciate the twist ending.
-- Daphne Xu
Re: Impossible
Daphne dear, I've never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, I am perfectly happy to cede you that honor. Your comments after the story were all over my head. That's not to say I don't believe them, au contraire, I accept them at full face value. And what I also accept is that the story with its little joke at the end was the whole point, to make us laugh. And laugh I did without knowing anything about physics. It was a cute fun story that did its job of entertainment. Thank you.
>>> Kay
Thank you
Thanks for your comment. Glad you appreciate it. I do seem to be getting appreciation in the form of kudos, even if the readers are not commenting. It's been a stable 10%.
I also wanted to give some sense of what faster-than-light travel really entails. Consequently, I tried hard to get everything right that I could think of. I kept calculating, blundering, recalculating, etc. Initially, 2c in the opposite direction was a lucky consequence of a choice of numbers. Then I made sure to stick with it.
So KayD, do you think you're up to learning some physics? ;-)
-- Daphne Xu
Okay...huh?
Yeah, okay, clear as mud. Guess I've watched too much Star Trek to understand how the freighter, leaving at warp 2, met itself and was destroyed.
Physics and I were never introduced in a meaningful way, so knowing about matter and antimatter is a Star Trek thing.
Still, despite my ignorance, this is a nice story.
Others have feelings too.
Re: Okay...huh?
I'm glad that you liked the story.
It seems to me that, despite all the advanced technological talk, Star Trek and Star Wars producers still think three-dimensionally -- not thinking four-dimensionally, as Doc puts it in "Back to the Future, Part II". They're still caught up in Newtonian (Galilean? Aristotelian? Layman?) 3+1 thinking -- maybe.
Having FTL's speed of "Warp 2" in both frames (but opposite directions) might have been a mistake. I chose FTL's departure from the Solar System at Warp 2 deliberately. I also chose the "Warp 0.8" (4/5 c) as a routinely-used frame's speed. FTL going at Warp 2 in the opposite direction in the freighter's frame was an unexpected consequence of my choice of numbers.
Maybe I should have used different numbers.
-- Daphne Xu