Stray Hydrogen Atoms Become Deadly for Starships Traveling at Light Speed

Popular Science ^ | 2/17/2010 | Jeremy Hsu

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Science fiction writers may have to rethink how their starship crews survive travel near or beyond the speed of light. Even the occasional hydrogen atom floating in the interstellar void would become a lethal radiation beam that would kill human crews in mere seconds and destroy a spacecraft's electronics, New Scientist reports.

Just a few stray wisps of hydrogen gas -- fewer than two hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter on average -- would translate into 7 teraelectron volts for a starship crew traveling at 99.999998 percent of the speed of light. That's as much fun for humans as standing in front of the proton beam created by the Large Hadron Collider, according to William Edelstein, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University.

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Tags Science, Jeremy Hsu, hydrogen, interstellar space travel, light speed, spaceships, star trek, starships, warp speedEdelstein added that the radiation dose would reach 10,000 sieverts within a second; the fatal radiation dose for humans is just 6 sieverts. He predicted that any extraterrestrials who might have created starships capable of such high speeds might have died upon their inaugural voyages, and New Scientist adds a preliminary funeral note for Kirk, Spock and the rest of Star Trek's USS Enterprise crew traveling at warp speeds.

But hold on a second. The warp speed concept of Star Trek supposedly involves manipulating space-time, so that the actual starship travels in a bubble of normal space-time.

[Spktyr]

A double-ended Orion drive starship would appear to be the appropriate answer at our current level of technology.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

I agree with you.

[Talisker]

A double-ended Orion drive starship would appear to be the appropriate answer at our current level of technology.

Deceleration, yes. But wouldn't that retard initial forward acceleration?

[Future Snake Eater]

Federation starships have navigation shields for just these kinds of things.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

[American Constitutionalist]

Hey ? as long as that stray atom can cook my eggs and bacon in 5 seconds flat, I 2’nd the agreement with you...

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

You are correct. It also mentioned it in the article

[bsf2009]

I choose the freezarinos, even if it takes longer.

[Spktyr]

Somewhat. On the other hand, nothing, and I mean NOTHING known to human science is going to be getting through the giant bow shield/pusher plate.

As Project Rho puts it, even hitting the pusher plate with a contact-fused thermonuclear fusion warhead won’t do anything.: “If you are attacking an Orion drive spacecraft with nuclear warheads, they will just point their pusher plate at the missiles and laugh at you.”

Best part - it could be built using 1960s technology.

[American Constitutionalist]

A gadgetrometer might solve the problem of the stray atom... it’s worth a try.

[HiTech RedNeck]

something to think of as you travel through the stars

[American Constitutionalist]

" something to think of as you travel through the stars "

Yeah, but, watch out for that stray atom that will flow through your mind on that warp speed, no , wait, it's quantum speed.

[BigCinBigD]

Indeed. What do they think those big dish's on the front of the engineering hulls are for. Satellite TV?

[chessplayer]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18532-starship-pilots-speed-kills-especially-warp-speed.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=space

Read the comments. Very interesting.

[Spktyr]

I’ll put my faith in the meters-thick pusher plate/shield, thanks anyway. :P

[count-your-change]

But as our traveler's speed increased to a significant percentage of light speed his mass would correspondingly increase and the the stray hydrogen atom would be little more than an insect on the windscreen.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Remember, the interstellar space is vastly composed of hydrogen. A proposal called an interstellar ramjet was to scoop this hydrogen and spit it out the back as thrust.

[maddog55]

I know hydrogen atoms floating in the interstellar void screw the grill up on my truck when I hit 85mph so I can imagine what it would do at light speed.

[mitch5501]

I remember reading about that way back.Unfortunately the scoops needed to be huge (miles across) due to the scarcity of atoms in sufficient numbers to produce thrust.

Another form of thrust I remember was along the lines of detonating a hydrogen bomb directly behind a suitably armor plated spacecraft.