If two ships both going Warp 5...

Question

The warp drive supposedly works by bending space around the ship. What if two ships passed right beside each other, both going at Warp 5 in opposite directions? What would space do then?

Answer 1

I was going to say I dont know,

since I dont read fiction,

and I dont belive in science,

and I dont know what warp 5 is; but i think i get the idea,

and i waited on this dial up to, load,

and i thought to myself;

The ships would get warped, and I decided that it is

funny.

and it could be factual in some warps.

Answer 2

maybe when they fire up that huge atom smasher we will find out lol good question in space inertia doesnt apply i dont think less friction but it would probabaly make some kind of worm hole

Answer 3

I'll tell you as soon as the warp drive is invented.

Answer 4

I picture the warp drive making a bubble that's diffusing space around the ship, where the ship is the area of high concentration and space is low concentration ("Bending" as I would imagine it could be).

So I would think that since they're passing and diffusing this space they would bounce, repel or critically damage off and each other since it's creating an area of high concentration between the two ships forcing them apart.

This is just my interpretation.

Answer 5

Depends on what the trek writers on Paramount's payroll say happens.   Warp drive is still fictional, and Star Trek canon is controlled by defined by whatever happens on screen in the official Trek releases.  So far, as the computer science sorts say, we've got "undefined behavior," because they've not shown it happening on screen in any of the official Trek shows or movies yet.  They've had ships zipping past each other really fast at sublight, and getting really close at warp, but never a head to head near miss at warp that I know of.

Some possibles:

1. They could do nothing, and just pass by each other.  The warp bubble merge trick they showed on "Enterprise" wasn't very stable and might have needed the fields to sync up.

2. The warp bubbles could kiss and destabilize, dropping both ships out of warp.

3.  The warp bubbles could kiss, releasing a lot of energy, perhaps enough to blow up both ships and s***w up that region of space.

4. The warp bubbles could interact, yanking both ships off course.   This is the closest you'll get to real world physics, as it's what would happen when two objects of large, yet equal mass fly by each other at equal but opposite (non collision) velocities.   Of course, things might work differently at trans luminal speeds.

5. The Douglas Adams option: one ship turns into a pot of petunias, and the other turns into a whale.

Answer 6

Right beside each other is a relative term.  As a former sailor, I know that there are protocols and procedures in place to reduce the chance of a collision or near collision between ships.  That being said, this futuristic society would also have similar regulations in place.

However, I would expect that more information would be needed to adequately answer this hypothetical question.  What are the mean densities (mass, volume) of each vessel.  I suspect that since we are talking about how much the effect of a warp drive would be, we would need to know how much the ship is already warping space by its mass.  Additionally, the field would have to completely encompass the volume of space the ship occupies.

Depending on these factors, if the fields generated by the two ships were to collide, something similar to Newtonian Mechanics would take effect.  The two fields would bounce off of each other in a manner depending on the stronger of the two fields.  

I for one wouldn't want to be on either ship as all of that energy from the resulting crash would have to be dumped somewhere.  Best case scenario: the energy is dumped into the drive, overloading and ultimately, destroying it.  Worst case:  bug on windshield...