How would a physicist explain this starship engine?

In my world, interstellar vessels use a drive whose design mankind learned from an extinct elder civilization. While construction of the drives is possible, the physical principles making them work are beyond mankind understanding. The drives have a number of curious properties, which I need them to have in order to prevent too many secondary applications of the technology. Additionally, there are a number of properties I gave them because since handwavium based technology is essentially magic, I might as well apply Brandon Sanderson´s Laws of Magic to it in order to keep stuff interesting. These limitations are beginning with the first category:

• no real exhaust plume This does not mean there is no exhaust plume, but that it consists of particles that either decay quickly after leaving the engine or won´t normally interact with matter. (I´m still somewhat undecided here, so any particle fitting this description can be chosen to explain the drive.) This condition exists in order to avoid relativistic matter beams or death ray photon rockets capable of punching holes through gas giants.

• the faster the vessel, the higher the power output The drives need to be supplied with energy in order to work, but unless they move faster than $0.15 c$ relative to their point of production no thrust will be produced. The trust increases with the speed roughly following $F = 1\,000\,000\,000 \times (23.81 \times v - 3.571)$ with $F$ thrust in newton and $v$ being velocity given as a fraction of lightspeed, meaning the maximum thrust that can be gained is about $2\times10^{10}\ \mathrm N$. So an average interstellar vessel of $1\times10^6\ \mathrm t$ moving near the speed of light can achieve an acceleration of about $20\ \mathrm{m/s^2}$. Vessels get up to a speed where the drive works using laser pushed sails. This is meant to prevent the drives from making other types of energy production obsolete and to be used in systems for energy production.

• the alignment of the drive to the vector of motion matters If the drive structure is aligned to the vector the vessel moves along orthogonally the energy output is at its maximum if it is aligned parallel to the movement vector it reaches zero. This is meant to show that a specific volume of space is harvested for energy and to limit the maneuverability of interstellar vessels. The idea of harvesting a specific volume of space is also related to the point mentioned before, as the velocity the vessel moves at would increase the volume the machinery can cover per second. However, the harvesting aspect isn´t essential and can be swapped out for a more plausible explanation of these features.

These three are crucial and must be considered in the answer. The second category contains limitations based on

The limitations of a magic system are more interesting than its capabilities. What the magic can't do is more interesting than what it can.

These limitations fix minor issues the technology could create and should create interesting plot points.

• drives hate being active near (meaning ca. 100 AU) objects above Jovian mass or close to each other Hate means that they tend to get unstable in these situations and can explode.

• while drives are active movement near the drive should be avoided There is no fixed distance, just the guideline of the further away the better. This is the second reason why interstellar vessels are very long and arrowlike and why crews tend to dwell as high up in the vessel as possible. Bonus points if there is a reason why gas and fluid movement in pipes are fine but a human or a machine moving through a corridor is not. Additionally, a very slow movement of about a millimeter per second is fine.

• weird accidents and failure modes The drive blowing up and vaporizing the vessel isn´t the worst thing that can happen. At least if one is willing to trust blurry telescope observations and spacers yarn. People merging with bulkheads, teleportation, visions, the works. I mostly will mostly explain this with the arcane nature of the technology, but if there is any physical explanation for these effects mentioning them would be appreciated.

Assume you are a physicist who is tasked with explaining this alien piece of technology within the realms of known physics. Known physics means you can use any theory currently proposed or accepted. The first three points must be explained and the last three would just be a bonus.

Any remarks about his being impossible to answer are not relevant since even within the setting the question has not been answered. I´m just interested in how one would attempt to explain the stardrive.

EDIT1: I created this question to solve the rest frame issue.

posted over 5 years ago

TheDyingOfLight‭

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