Star Dash Effect On The View Scteen... Realistic Or Not?

[Spacescifi]

In both TNG and DS9 you see the stars as dashes at warp since the ships are at high warp speed.

 

I was curious if we would see any star dashes if we actually moved at lightspeed from LEO.

I have seen lightspeed visualizations of travel around the solar system, and leaving earth is a quick zoom out affair... like you shot off like a bullet. But that visualization did not bother making any star dashes because it focused on how zooming past planets at lightspeed looks (so big you can see them fly by lol).

So my question is are star dashes merely cool, or would we see them at all at lightspeed?

I honestly think we might but only a little, why?

 

Time lapse videos of the night sky show closer objects shoot accross the sky (time is sped up) but farther away objects stand still or slowly move if at all.

 

So in other words, while this below looks cool, I doubt it would look like this if you looked outside on the side or the front of your spaceship at lightspeed.

 

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by Spacescifi

[wumpus]

The chromatic bits of stars is a dead giveaway it is wrong.  Stars shift one way or the other, not spread out that way.  Since you are heading towards them, they should turn blue thanks to the "blueshift".  Presumably at (or above) light speed, everything hits you as a singularity.

[KSK]

Assuming you had some sort of rocket capable of propelling you to relativistic speeds then everything ahead of your rocket would be blue-shifted and everything behind it would be red-shifted. I don't know at which point (if any) everything gets shifted out of the visible spectrum.  I don't think star streaks are at all realistic in this scenario unless you were travelling at a high fraction of c through a very dense starfield and even then, stars are still months or even years of journey time apart so streaking seems unlikely..

That may change if your ship is powered by some kind of warp drive. I've had a quick look online to see if I could find an image of what space would look like from inside an Alcubierre warp bubble but haven't found anything conclusive. I suspect the answer is 'it's complicated'.

Probably best to assume that star streaks are a nice visual shorthand for 'we're moving really bloody fast' rather than attempting to be realistic.

[kerbiloid]

Just somebody should left it here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Slower_Speed_of_Light

http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/

Spoiler

 

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

If you've ever stood as as a fast-moving object went past you- an ambulance with the siren on, a racing car or even a plane flying over- you might have noticed that the sound starts out higher pitched, then once it goes past you the sound is lower pitched. This is Doppler shift, and it works because sound travels in waves- when the source of the sound is moving towards you, the sound waves are compressed, increasing the frequency and by extension the pitch of the sound you hear; conversely, when it's going away from you the sound waves are stretched, lowering the frequency and so lowering the pitch.

Example:

How is this relevant? Well, light also travels as waves. If the source of the light is moving towards you, the waves are compressed and the frequency gets higher, shifting visible light more towards the blue part of the spectrum (hence 'blueshift'); if the source of the light is going away from you, the frequency gets lower and visible light is shifted towards the red part of the spectrum ('redshift'). One way astronomers can tell if distant objects (stars or even galaxies) are moving towards or away from Earth is by measuring their spectra and looking for blue or red shifts- stars emit predictable wavelengths of light due to the different elements inside them so the difference can be detected.

The faster you go, the greater the frequency shift gets. As you accelerate to a noticeable fraction of light speed, visible light would get blueshifted towards ultraviolet, while UV would get blueshifted towards X-rays, X-rays to gamma rays and so on. The problem is, getting constantly bombarded by ionising radiation like that would wear away at the spacecraft's front end, not to mention the damage it would do to the crew. Go even faster and the problem gets worse, and if you happen to stumble into a naturally occurring gamma burst...

As I understand it, the Alcubierre-style bubble of bent space-time just crumples space up in front of it and smooths it out again behind it, so blueshifting is not only inevitable but incredibly extreme. I doubt very much that you'd see streaks of light flying past, mostly because you'd get obliterated by gamma rays before you even realised the drive was turned on.

 

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

If you've ever stood as as a fast-moving object went past you- an ambulance with the siren on, a racing car or even a plane flying over- you might have noticed that the sound starts out higher pitched, then once it goes past you the sound is lower pitched. This is Doppler shift, and it works because sound travels in waves- when the source of the sound is moving towards you, the sound waves are compressed, increasing the frequency and by extension the pitch of the sound you hear; conversely, when it's going away from you the sound waves are stretched, lowering the frequency and so lowering the pitch.

Example:

How is this relevant? Well, light also travels as waves. If the source of the light is moving towards you, the waves are compressed and the frequency gets higher, shifting visible light more towards the blue part of the spectrum (hence 'blueshift'); if the source of the light is going away from you, the frequency gets lower and visible light is shifted towards the red part of the spectrum ('redshift'). One way astronomers can tell if distant objects (stars or even galaxies) are moving towards or away from Earth is by measuring their spectra and looking for blue or red shifts- stars emit predictable wavelengths of light due to the different elements inside them so the difference can be detected.

The faster you go, the greater the frequency shift gets. As you accelerate to a noticeable fraction of light speed, visible light would get blueshifted towards ultraviolet, while UV would get blueshifted towards X-rays, X-rays to gamma rays and so on. The problem is, getting constantly bombarded by ionising radiation like that would wear away at the spacecraft's front end, not to mention the damage it would do to the crew. Go even faster and the problem gets worse, and if you happen to stumble into a naturally occurring gamma burst...

As I understand it, the Alcubierre-style bubble of bent space-time just crumples space up in front of it and smooths it out again behind it, so blueshifting is not only inevitable but incredibly extreme. I doubt very much that you'd see streaks of light flying past, mostly because you'd get obliterated by gamma rays before you even realised the drive was turned on.

 

Funny.... I guess the old TOS barely moving if at all starfield in TOS was closer to reality.

Not everyday where a lack of special effects is more realistic.

Also.... it seems that the universe does not care if you are warping space at lightspeed past you or actually moving at lightspeed. Either way the radiation is going to radiate you, including every stray hydrogen atom if it bypasses your magnetic fields.

 

Hyperspace or more properly called subspace (literally means space within space) seems to be more necessary to travel the galaxy than I realized previously.

 

Since the closer you get to lightspeed the more the universe sees you as an oddball that needs to be obliterated some way some how.

 

 

[Nuke]

if you are going faster than c, then you get a tunnel vision view of the universe. go fast enough and the universe becomes a big blue dot  (or a gamma ray colored dot, idk). 

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

a fast-moving object went past you- an ambulance with the siren on, a racing car or even a plane flying over

Or the road police.

[Shpaget]

What bothers me more than lack of blueshift in ST is that stars are depicted to clearly move much faster than they should.

Voyager, one of the fastest ships in ST, at its max speed of 9,975 (not counting Threshold, since that should be erased from canon), travels at about 2700 c, according to Memory Alpha, which is about 7,5 ly per day.

In Milky Way, average distance between star is about 5 ly, yet we see stars whisking by one after another. From that visualization, one would assume the ship is travelling at about 10 ly per second.

[Spacescifi]

38 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

What bothers me more than lack of blueshift in ST is that stars are depicted to clearly move much faster than they should.

Voyager, one of the fastest ships in ST, at its max speed of 9,975 (not counting Threshold, since that should be erased from canon), travels at about 2700 c, according to Memory Alpha, which is about 7,5 ly per day.

In Milky Way, average distance between star is about 5 ly, yet we see stars whisking by one after another. From that visualization, one would assume the ship is travelling at about 10 ly per second.

 

Hahaha! So Janeway could have got home in only a day at the visual speed detected.

I will blame their long voyage on taking the scenic route for my head canon.... because borg and what not.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Okay - but is 'warp' speed, hyperspace?  Like, to move at faster than relativistic 'speeds', are we assuming your craft is still in the normal universe? 

If your 'warp' technology keeps you in the normal universe, I can see the whole blueshift thing... but if you're 'folding spacetime' or doing something else exotic... what the heck then does that look like?

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Okay - but is 'warp' speed, hyperspace?  Like, to move at faster than relativistic 'speeds', are we assuming your craft is still in the normal universe? 

If your 'warp' technology keeps you in the normal universe, I can see the whole blueshift thing... but if you're 'folding spacetime' or doing something else exotic... what the heck then does that look like?

 

The others are implying the same.... and I reckon that probably close to the truth.

 

As an illustration, if I put you on a really long conveyor belt and sped it up to 50 mph, would the wind not hit you so hard you could barely hold your position if at all without lying flat on the ground?

You witness the same effect whenever you put your hand out the window at 50 mph or higher.

 

I think to the universe, it does not care if you are moving or moving it, kinetics will still have the same impact unless deflected somehow.

 

[RCgothic]

I believe the "official" explanation is that the streaks are interstellar dust interacting with the deflector and warp fields.

Warp 9.99 is roughly 10,000 times faster than light. At that speed it'd still take nearly 3.5h to reach Alpha Centauri from earth. 1 star every 3.5h does not a blizzard of warp streaks make.

Warp 9.99 is supposed to be *fast* in universe. The Enterprise D cannot acheive warp 9.9 under its own power.

[kerbiloid]

Btw does anybody remember that the object shorten in the direction of the motion? 

So, the stars should be sequins. Flat blue little sequins. Not tinsels.

[Shpaget]

4 hours ago, RCgothic said:

I believe the "official" explanation is that the streaks are interstellar dust interacting with the deflector and warp fields.

That explanation is not compatible with effects in the show where it is entirely clear that it's the stars that become elongated and whish by, unless the space is constantly full of those visible particles even when ships are sublight.

For example, this compilation of warp stuff in various movies:

Timestamp 0:23 Disregard the rainbow streaks and focus on any of the background stars that are visible before the ship jumps to warp.

Timestamp 1:07 There is clear parallax on the streaks, meaning some of the light sources are further away than others (well, it could be that outer parts of deflector field shove the particles slower, but there are no particles between camera and the ship).

Timestamp 2:08 Same as the first one.

Timestamp 2:21 There are some newly generated glowing particles at the start of the warp, but soon all the other glowy dots start moving.

Timestamp  6:40 Same effect around Klingon vessel, in case official explanation if for Federation deflector design only.

The video goes on, with newer movies, but it's all the same. The effect is messed up.

[RCgothic]

Yep. It doesn't have any internal consistency. Sci Fi writers and effects artists have no sense of scale.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

20 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Sci Fi writers and effects artists have no sense of scale.

A problem that has been around since 'Wings' - the challenge is to communicate speed to the audience, who in the main, care more about story than technical truth.

Quote

the silent film “Wings,” a World War I film about two American aviators, won the first Academy Award for Best Picture. When it was being filmed, production stopped for several days. Frustrated producers asked the director why. He replied, “All we have is blue sky. The conflict in the air will not be as visible without clouds. Clouds bring perspective.” The director was right. Only by seeing aerial combat with clouds as a backdrop could the viewer see what was really going on

(from some guy's sermon page, quoted for ease)

Edited January 18, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

A problem that has been around since 'Wings' - the challenge is to communicate speed to the audience, who in the main, care more about story than technical truth.

(from some guy's sermon page)

Pretty sure they also had to be careful about having two planes (going different speeds/directions) and the clouds on at the same time.  Computer graphics can look good at low framerates until you have multiple competing frames of reference.  The eye will "fill in" a certain amount of jerkiness for something, but the effect will be jarring on everything else.  The opening scene in Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV) was particularly bad when a tower would move into the foreground (which was really bad as otherwise the game didn't need high fps and could show what was then state of the art graphics on lesser hardware).

[KSK]

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

A problem that has been around since 'Wings' - the challenge is to communicate speed to the audience, who in the main, care more about story than technical truth.

Can't speak for everyone of course but the amount I care about technical truth really depends on what I'm watching.  2001: A Space Odyssey with star streaking (well aside from all the trippy shenanigans at the end) wouldn't work. Star Trek - meh, who the heck cares, it's all Treknobabble anyway. 

[kerbiloid]

Why wonder about the star tracks in the series called Star Track?

[StrandedonEarth]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:49 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

what the heck then does that look like?

Larry Niven likes to call it “the Blind Spot,” where the mind tends to lose itself trying to perceive it