Dan Gilleland posted on December 18, 2006 14:29
Note: Originally published on December 18, 2006, these are a few of my musings on Warp Speed. This article was moved to my Knowledge Base website in 2009 (with fixes for minor spelling mistakes).
I have just been reading an article on Warp Speed calculations for Star Trek, and I thought I would add this creation of my own into the fray:
One of the interesting, and often overlooked, things about Warp Speed is that this velocity is occurring within a context, namely "Space". It is important to note that "space" is, itself, "warped". With that in mind, it is conceivable that warp speed calculations in our galaxy are subject to some slight variations due to "where" the warp speed is occurring. Thus, warp speeds are "contextual" and have slight variations in different areas of space (particularly nearer the center of our galaxy - the full extent of this area on "warp speeds" is not known at this time).
Furthermore, the effect of "location" on warp speed calculations also implies that the location or route of travel will affect the calculated speed.
Warp speeds are related to the speed of light, but also to the location within the galaxy and the direction of travel, meaning that no static formula is universally available in all places. The best that can be done is the creation of "fudge" formulas - formulas that are, for all practical purposes, true across the scale, but which are not technically correct.