[He's getting more fluent in Lucy-speak and is only too happy to try to distill one of the most controversial and advanced concepts of his day into a simpler form for her as they walk.]
Transwarp is a very simple idea: traveling at any speed that exceeds warp speed. Warp speed is faster-than-light travel, made possible by warp drives that create a subspace bubble around the drive and the ship that houses it. This bubble distorts local spacetime, making it possible for an object to move by moving space around it. Without this distortion, increasing speeds would require increasing power and fuel; approaching light speed would require near-infinite amounts of energy and rip a ship apart.
[Chekov is, without any doubt, enjoying himself. Talking about this kind of thing is exciting.]
Transwarp theory applies the idea of faster-than-light motion to practical problems, such as beaming--transporting, sorry--objects and people from planet to planet, ship to ship, or any combination of those, specifically when a ship is moving at warp speeds. If two ships are at warp speed, moving someone from one ship to the other may necessitate having their signature pattern--this is the information that dictates the form of a person--travel through space at speeds exceeding warp.
Planet to planet is not so difficult, theoretically. Planets move rapidly, rotating and spinning in set orbits. To transport between planets requires difficult, precise calculations, as both planets are moving. To calculate the locations of the planets relative to each other to a degree that allows successful transport is even more difficult; when beaming living things, it is important to put them on the surface of a planet and on solid ground. A slight miscalculation can result in beaming someone into the planet's crust, natural formations, bodies of water, or several miles above the surface. And so this is not easy because of the number of variables to account for, the rapid motion of planets, and the necessary precision. A kilometer is nothing in space; being beamed a kilometer above or below the crust of a planet is fatal.
Now, to transport from one ship at warp speed to another--these calculations require even more precision as well as, maybe, the acceleration of the subatomic particles that contain what must be reassembled to faster-than-light speeds. A planet moves predictably; a ship at warp speed moves predictably, also, but at a speed that complicates calculations immensely. If a person is to go from one ship to another via transwarping methods, not only is it vital to ensure that they will appear within the ship and not outside in empty space--this can be a distance of only feet--but it is also necessary to stream the particles that make up their signature pattern intact, through space, at transwarp speeds.
This is where my knowledge of the topic ends, mostly. I wrote my doctoral thesis on transwarp theory, but I am only familiar with the calculations necessary to do this, not the implementation. Mr. Scott--he is the engineer on the Enterprise and a brilliant man--actually devised a way to make this possible. He has refined the calculations to a point where they can be useful technologically by, in his equations, defining space as what is moving, not the person or object being transported. Mr. Scott was able to beam himself and my captain from the surface of a planet to the Enterprise, which was moving away at high warp. He also beamed the captain and Mr. Spock from the Enterprise, which was in orbit around Titan, onto the enemy ship, which was orbiting Earth.
There are still many uncertainties and transwarp theory is a difficult and risky thing to implement, but I hope to work with Mr. Scott on these problems, if he will accept my help. The application of this--and making it safer so that it can be widely used--will be a significant breakthrough in space travel.
[He thinks for a moment. Mr. Scott had a very simple analogy regarding transwarp theory that was only a sentence long and easily understood, but Pavel doesn't remember it and lacks the ability to make a simple analogy of his own.]
no subject
Transwarp is a very simple idea: traveling at any speed that exceeds warp speed. Warp speed is faster-than-light travel, made possible by warp drives that create a subspace bubble around the drive and the ship that houses it. This bubble distorts local spacetime, making it possible for an object to move by moving space around it. Without this distortion, increasing speeds would require increasing power and fuel; approaching light speed would require near-infinite amounts of energy and rip a ship apart.
[Chekov is, without any doubt, enjoying himself. Talking about this kind of thing is exciting.]
Transwarp theory applies the idea of faster-than-light motion to practical problems, such as beaming--transporting, sorry--objects and people from planet to planet, ship to ship, or any combination of those, specifically when a ship is moving at warp speeds. If two ships are at warp speed, moving someone from one ship to the other may necessitate having their signature pattern--this is the information that dictates the form of a person--travel through space at speeds exceeding warp.
Planet to planet is not so difficult, theoretically. Planets move rapidly, rotating and spinning in set orbits. To transport between planets requires difficult, precise calculations, as both planets are moving. To calculate the locations of the planets relative to each other to a degree that allows successful transport is even more difficult; when beaming living things, it is important to put them on the surface of a planet and on solid ground. A slight miscalculation can result in beaming someone into the planet's crust, natural formations, bodies of water, or several miles above the surface. And so this is not easy because of the number of variables to account for, the rapid motion of planets, and the necessary precision. A kilometer is nothing in space; being beamed a kilometer above or below the crust of a planet is fatal.
Now, to transport from one ship at warp speed to another--these calculations require even more precision as well as, maybe, the acceleration of the subatomic particles that contain what must be reassembled to faster-than-light speeds. A planet moves predictably; a ship at warp speed moves predictably, also, but at a speed that complicates calculations immensely. If a person is to go from one ship to another via transwarping methods, not only is it vital to ensure that they will appear within the ship and not outside in empty space--this can be a distance of only feet--but it is also necessary to stream the particles that make up their signature pattern intact, through space, at transwarp speeds.
This is where my knowledge of the topic ends, mostly. I wrote my doctoral thesis on transwarp theory, but I am only familiar with the calculations necessary to do this, not the implementation. Mr. Scott--he is the engineer on the Enterprise and a brilliant man--actually devised a way to make this possible. He has refined the calculations to a point where they can be useful technologically by, in his equations, defining space as what is moving, not the person or object being transported. Mr. Scott was able to beam himself and my captain from the surface of a planet to the Enterprise, which was moving away at high warp. He also beamed the captain and Mr. Spock from the Enterprise, which was in orbit around Titan, onto the enemy ship, which was orbiting Earth.
There are still many uncertainties and transwarp theory is a difficult and risky thing to implement, but I hope to work with Mr. Scott on these problems, if he will accept my help. The application of this--and making it safer so that it can be widely used--will be a significant breakthrough in space travel.
[He thinks for a moment. Mr. Scott had a very simple analogy regarding transwarp theory that was only a sentence long and easily understood, but Pavel doesn't remember it and lacks the ability to make a simple analogy of his own.]
I apologize if that made no sense.