The Picard Maneuver

Speaking of time, I think it is time to introduce the Picard Maneuver. Jean-Luc became famous for introducing this tactic while stationed aboard the Stargazer. Even though it involves warp travel, or super light speed, which I have argued is impossible in the context of special relativity alone, it does so for just an instant and it fits in nicely with the discussions here. In the Picard Maneuver, in order to confuse an attacking enemy vessel, one's own ship is accelerated to warp speed for an instant. It then appears to be in two places at once. This is because, traveling faster than the speed of light for a moment, it overtakes the light rays that left it the instant before the warp drive was initiated. While this is a brilliant stategyand it appears to be completely consistent as far as it goes (that is, ignoring the issue of whether it is possible to achieve warp speed)I think you can see that it opens a veritable Pandora's can of worms. In the first place, it begs a question that has been raised by many trekkers over the years: How can the Enterprise bridge crew “see” objects approaching them at warp speed? Just as surely as the Stargazer overtook its own image, so too will all objects traveling at warp speed; one shouldn't be able to see the moving image of a warp-speed object until long after it has arrived. One can only assume that when Kirk, Picard, or Janeway orders up an image on the viewscreen, the result is an image assembled by some sort of long-range “subspace” (that is, super-light-speed communication) sensors. Even ignoring this apparent oversight, the Star Trek universe would be an interesting and a barely navigable one, full of ghost images of objects that long ago arrived where they were going at warp speed.

The captain of the Enterprise has the ship travel faster than light, leaving an image of itself traveling at the speed of light from its previous location; meaning Star Trek's universe would be filled with such apparitions.