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In an article published on arXiv.org [Full article available] California-based Raytheon engineers Ulvi Yurtsever and Steven Wilkinson say that any interstellar spacecraft traveling at near-light speed would leave distinct light signatures in its wake.
While special relativity imposes an absolute speed limit at the speed of light, our Universe is not empty Minkowski spacetime. The constituents that fill the interstellar/intergalactic vacuum, including the cosmic microwave background photons, impose a lower speed limit on any object traveling at relativistic velocities. Scattering of cosmic microwave photons from an ultra-relativistic object may create radiation with a characteristic signature allowing the detection of such objects at large distances.
(Score: 2) by boristhespider on Saturday April 11 2015, @10:14PM
To be honest a wormhole would look like a black hole. I'd like to take volunteers to throw themselves into a black hole in the hope it's a wormhole inside.
Warp would be a lot more interesting. Assuming we're talking about warp solutions in relativity, if a warping spaceship were coming towards you I'd guess you'd get a high blueshifting of matter lying between you and the ship, and a corresponding redshifting behind which would be extreme closer to the ship and increasingly mild further away. (Warp solutions typically have a tight bunching of space and a long tail.) These effects would obviously be affecting different objects lying between you and the ship and would then die away - it would be extremely characteristic. There are two timescales involved (from the observer's perspective) - the time between the start and end of the effect, and the rate at which intermediate objects start to blueshift, blueshift strongly, move back towards neutral, start to redshift, redshift strongly, and then move slowly back towards neutral. The latter would give you an idea of what we may as well for want of a better word dub the "velocity" of the ship, while the former would then allow you to determine where the ship was when it kicked its drive in. If the drive were hard enough, those blueshifted photons could be whacked into the X ray or gamma ray range, at which point we'd want to make sure we weren't in it's path. The Enterprise blasting towards you at Warp 9 could be a lethal weapon...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 11 2015, @10:21PM
So if we find electromagnetically shifted trails across the sky.. *hmm!!*
(Score: 2) by boristhespider on Saturday April 11 2015, @10:42PM
It would be a good day :)