• ramble81@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      Didn’t they also say the same thing about the speed of light? Frankly it’s whatever the writers decide meets their plot points.

      • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Probably. I’m just going by the officially published technical manuals that go over the in-universe physics in detail.

        Warp 10 represents going infinitely fast. It’s not a speed limit in the usual sense, as you can always keep going faster than you were before. It’s an exponential scale. The jump from 9.9 to 9.99 is a bigger difference in speed than the jump from 9.8 to 9.9. while the change in warp factor gets smaller with higher numbers, it actually represents a larger difference in speed. Always chasing, but never reaching, warp 10.

        It’s a hard thing to convey to the audience watching the show, so I think they sometimes abandon it in favor of linear speed when they want to stress high speeds without confusing people.