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The Science of Star Trek
scode sent us the url
to an article about
The Science of Star Trek.
Some cheesy stuff, some interesting stuff- talks about
Warp Drives, Holodecks, Phasers, Tricorders, and Transporters.
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It doesn't seem to me that Star Trek has much of any real science attached to it. There is a lot of pseudo-science, and cheesy techno-babble, but is that supposed to be science?
I've always thought the 60's show was much more closer to reality than the 90's too.
Not exactly new stuff. BTW, the site was already slashdotted when there were only two comments. I wonder how webmasters react to their first slashdotting experience? Maybe we need a poll:
/. effect was:
Webmasters: Your 1st reaction to the
[ ] Zzzzzz.
[ ] Huh? Whuzzat?
[ ] Hmmm. Strange things are a foot.
[ ] Fascinating!
[ ] Oh wow! Wait'll my boss sees all these hits!
[ ] We're being cracked!
[ ] Aaarruugghh!! Rip out the ethernet cable!
This book offered an insite into the technologically complex world know as Star Trek. I found toiletry technology to far above the simple float and flush dihyrogen monoxide technology we have now. I couldn't set it down (then my legs went dumb).
What? Sci-Fi physics is "cheesy," and yet Information Unlimited, purveyors of such fine and utter B.S. as light sabers and hoverboards, and mentioned a couple days ago among the Quickies, is somehow perceived as cool and/or legitimate?
And just for good measure...
d00d! U could build a reely K-rAd B30wulf cluster from tricorders!
It's running IIS, what did you expect!
As an example, the author talks about warp drive. According to him, the theory behind it is good, but the amount of energy required would be prohibitive.
I'm not a physicist but, if you could travel beyond the speed of light, Realitivity would be wrong, very wrong, in many ways. Relative motion wouldn't work out anymore, there would be an "absolute stop". I don't think the body of evidence supports this.
Sweet jesus man you're right! I'll never look at Captain Picard in the same way again. *sniff*
Actually, what really happens is the people that are being transported are always surprised to find they've gone nowhere and then a security officer steps out and mows them down with a machine gun. Of course the duplicates are never aware of this, and never realize that their original counterparts were just offed.
If the file is on the same physical drive, mv just changes the filename. File names in unix are just names, my .bashrc filename is actually /home/anonymousbastard/.bashrc, and if I mv it to /tmp/.bashrc I've only renamed the file, and haven't moved any of the data a bit.
/tmp is on mymachine: and /home is on bongwater: then a copy is done with a remove when the task is complete.
If the
I got this reply from the server ;)
------
Error Occurred While Processing Request
Error Diagnostic Information
An error occurred while attempting to establish a connection to the service.
The most likely cause of this problem is that the service is not currently running. You can use the 'Services' Control Panel to verify that the service is running and to
restart it if necessary.
Windows NT error number 2 occurred.
-----
NT bites the dust once again...
If the file is on the same physical drive...
It should also be on the same filesystem/partition.
Greg Egon's Diaspora
Taught me lots of maths terms I really should have
known, like manifold and rieman space. And its
a novel, not a textbook!
Do they have a recipe for Cheetos Lasagna in the replicator database?
Nah. No machine guns, however, Barclay gets to have his way with Troi and then just vaporizes the original when he's through. The real Troi is long on her way and none the wiser.
This is a sticky topic for legislation. Are transporter originals still consider sentient beins with full rights once their duplicate materializes at the other end. If yes, then you *can't* vaporize (kill) them at the end of the transporter cycle. If no, then the Barclay scenario described above is perfectly legal.
The only ethical way out is to ban transporters.
Dr. Brundle wondered the same thing when he stepped out of the telepod. Course, he had much ..uh.. stickier problems to deal with.
Say! Why doesn't the occaisional cast member get genetically blended with all the E-coli and scabies and such that live on/in every human being? What materialized would be a nice drippy mound of genetic pudding! That would be great way for some Security officer to die!
This is exactly how the other Riker came into being - the transporter did the cp, but wasn't able to confirm the write, so didn't do the rm of the original, but at the same time failed to rollback the cp.
Well, not to be *too* geekly,
but tachyons *are* an "actual particle" in theoretical physics (couldn't tell if you were dismissing them as fiction or not.)
I use quotes above, because like most things in quantum physics, definitions like this get wierd. They're real in the sense that they're used mathematically to account for certain effects/processes (no I don't have any handy.) They're supposed to have "imaginary mass" (a mathematical property, NOT a physical one) and as such can theoretically travel faster than light.
It's one of the "book-keeper" particles, much like the neutrino was until it was discovered to be real.
The problem w/ way-out fields of physics like quantum physics and cosmology is you get wacko's proclaiming to understand it, and how it can heal you in five easy steps and bring you closer to god and etc. etc. etc. Even the physicists don't understand it completely....
The author of the book, L. Krause (I think he's chair of the Physics dept. at Case Western U.) came to my school(College of William and Mary) to give a seminar about the book. It was quite interesting, if a bit theoretical and speculative(esp. when he was talking about how physics possibly allows for a "warp" effect).
He seemed like a nice guy, although he claimed that people showing up in Star Trek uniforms kinda unsettled him a bit.
Respectfully,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@maila.wm.edu
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
We'll be sure to send a shuttle for you, Dr. McCoy... :)
(Oh wait, he did use one eventually... n/m.)
David
This sig left intentionally blank.
I couldn't get through to the references site because it is too busy. However, there is an excellent FAQ posted to the rec.arts.startrek.tech group on faster than light travel. You can read it at:
http://www.physics.purdue.edu/~hinson/ft l/
The author is Jason W. Hinson, a graduate student in physics at Purdue.
This FAQ can get a little dense with technical details. (The graphs can be a bit difficult to interpret in the ASCII version). But the layman can definitely get the gist of why FTL travel is essentially forbidden by relativity, as well as some thoughts on overcoming the "light speed barrier".
Posted by JerTheNerd:
:-)) but uhm... well he was fairly accurate. Insurrection wasn't exactly up to par with the quality of the last few Star Trek movies Paramount dished out. (with the exception of 'Generations' it was right up there with that one. ;-)) I think maybe they could have a Star Trek catagory, just because it would be fun. :-)
I realize this is off topic (but not much
Just my two cents, feel free to dispense change!
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
Compression of space isn't the only way that you can ( at least theoretically ) do FTL.
One other alternative is to unroll a higher dimension. The problem with this approach is that these higher dimensions are of the order of 1E-26 meters ( so you can only do it if you have a *very* small spacecraft ).
Another way is by disrupting space to create a "worm-hole". Most of the theoretical calculations on this approach indicate that a) this would violate causality and b) take us back to anhilating whole galaxies to create them.
Likewise with tachyons. As some of the other posters on this page have already noted, we arn't even sure if they even exist.
So it goes. For the moment, I'd rather concentrate on finding ways to get into outer-space and around the solar-system at an affordable price. To me, that's enough of a challenge at this point in time.
that damn site is filled w/ java and it keeps slowing my werkstation (p2/266/128MBram) to a grinding halt...that its NT doesnt help tho...but STILL...what kind of idiot puts soo much java crap on a front page? erf
As mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, there's a book entitles The Physics of Star Trek which discusses much of this stuff. The site even mentions it in several places. There's also a mailing list for people interested in discussing this stuff: The Star Trek Technologists. The discussions generally run more along the lines of "How does this work?" or "They did this; how does that relate to modern physics?" than creating Star Trek equipment today, but it's a very interesting list.
--Phil (No, I'm not a dedicated Star Trek Geek at all...)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
mv does a cp;rm only if you're going from one filesystem to another. (and it won't do this for directories) On a single filesystem, mv simply manipulates directory entries, without touching the data.
I'd jump at the chance to live in the Star Trek universe, but you'd never catch me in a transporter. What people seem to ignore is that, to use a unix filesystem analogy, transportation is not a /ship/person /planet/person /ship/person /planet/person; rm /ship/person!!
mv
it's a
cp
The difference is crucial!
What transportation does is clone you on the planet's surface, then deletes the original! You die a horrible death of disintegration, but no one's the wiser, because your new copy is telling everyone how the transport went just fine!
Star Trek is boring. I want to fly screaming
TIE fighters totin' a lightsaber!
I knew that one with the "too many users" message, which I've never seen an Apache server give. Sure, it probably can, but I've never seen it.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
That's teleportation, actually
Slightly different.. IBM has/had some web pages on this somewhere on their website...
The teleportation they were talking about basically destroys the original and a copy shows up at the other end. (in very basic terms)
*srednop the implications of that*
And The Physics of Star Trek, and The Metaphysics of Star Trek and The Biology of Star Trek, ad nausem....
BTW, Rob, any specifc reason you didn't allow <u>underline</u> in the 'Allowed HTML?'?
We have a category for Star Wars, why not Star Trek? What would a geek be without at least an affinity for Star Trek, past or (ugh) present?
...would exclaim about how much reading a book gave them a headache from the topics concerned....and still enjoy it! Anyone else have some other books in mind that gave you headaches yet you would still recommend to others?
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
Besides, standard usage indicates that book and magazine titles should be italicized when possible.
Nah, transporters tunnel your original particles to the destination. It's in the ST:TNG Tech Manual.
Personally, I don't see the "crucial difference" between "move" and "copy and delete" as long as the copy is an exact copy and as long as the delete doesn't fail (that could lead to ethical/legal difficulties). I tend to think of my personality in terms of software -- a program is the same regardless if it's running on my desktop computer or my laptop computer.
Wow, I'm amazed this page actually made it to front page on slashdot! This page was originally created as supplementary material to a special on @discovery.ca (*the* canadian science show) back in December to coincide with the release of ST9!!
Actually, the show seems to be obsessed, or at least very interested, in talking about the physics/science of star trek. They did it back in 96 when ST:FC was released. And then they did other standalone features, and at least two interviews with Lawrence Krauss.
ST isn't as good as it used to be. The last season of DS9 is the worst yet!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671009974/ qid=922812385/sr=1-2/002-3879128-0044845
/ ref=sim_books/002-3879128-0044845
ISBN: 0671009974
or http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609603299
ISBN: 0609603299
...? hmm... science books for star trek.... funny concept that.
please correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't looked at the source for these commands, but doesn't mv essentially do as you describe... first it copies the file, and then verifies that the copy was successful, then it deletes the original?
Star Trek Science: whatever we can pull out of our asses to save the failing plot! The "science" of star trek is unfortunately the worst part of an otherwise entertaining show.
Oi, I was going to say that...
Very good book it is too... Very.
Read it.
Now.
:)
----------
'We have no choice in what we are. Yet what are we,
but the sum of our choices.' --Rob Grant
----------
'We have no choice in what we are. Yet what are we,
but the sum of our choices.' --Rob Grant
But then again I was 10. I should get that book again and re-read it. Really a good read if you're a nerd.
-matt
It's the odd trek rule. Odd startrek movies suck. Look at the next gen movies. Generations: had the next gen crew, but all in all a crappy movie, and kirk's prediction of his death from startrek V I think it was (the one w/ god) didn't quite come true, he wasn't completely alone. First Contact, excelent movie, great fight scenes, wasn't watered down with that lovely star trek morality. They weren't fighting for ethics or morals or ideals, they were fighting to save earth. Insurrection: again, crappy, again, morals up the wazoo. Fortunately this means the next trek movie will be good.
-matt
Actually the way i understood it tachyons HAD to travel faster than light. At zero energy they travel at infinite speed. At infinite energy they travel at light speed. Since you can never reach infinite energy tachyons always travel faster than the speed of light. Then again I'm probally wrong. I just dig physics in situations like this when it gets so damned weird and out there.
-matt
As was stated in the article, due to the speed at which the universe is expanding, our galaxy, in relation to some other one, is actually moving at quite close to the speed of light. Basically the universe can move beyond the speed of light, we just can't.
An easy way to think of this whole thing is picture being on a train that travels at the speed of light. You stand up and walk forward to the next cart. Relative to the train you were moving maybe 1mph. Relative to the tracks you were going beyond the speed of light. But since you yourself weren't going beyond the speed of light you don't violate relativity.
(disclaimer, I'm no where near an expert in any of this, in fact I probally shouldn't be talking).
-matt
I recall spending a whole summer vacation
in florida reading that book. by the time
i was done my head hurt from trying to
comprehend it all. Deals a lot with quantum
mechanics and theoretical physics. definately
worth a read.
-Z
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
thats what i get for hitting the
submit button too quick.
i was thinking of the physics of
star trek.
CT: put a link up here to it thru
amazon?
-Z
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
Wasn't there a PBS show on this awhile ago as well? I seem to recall them mentioning one of the problems with a transporter would be Heisenburg's (sp?) uncertainty principle, and you'll actually here then talk about Heisenburg compensators as being part of the transporter's makeup.
/.'d already :)
Also, the site's been
-TF
Q: How do the Heisenberg compensators work on the transporters?
A: Quite well.
Several years ago, at a Con, Michael Okuda, STTNG's special effects guru, was asked about some Trek tech, and the person wanted to know how it worked. Okuda replied, "It works quite well." I'm always reminded of that when I see someone trying to figure out how the transporter works, etc. It works because it's in the script! Just like light sabers, darn the luck...
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
You really should read the book. After reading it, you realize that there really is some real science in Star Trek. Obviously they don't get it all right, but alot of it they did. I think I even remember reading about something they got right by accident.
As an example, the author talks about warp drive. According to him, the theory behind it is good, but the amount of energy required would be prohibitive.
Go pick up a copy of the book. It's really quite interesting.
Like I said, you have to read the book before you start bashing the theories. Warp drive could maybe work because you are not really traveling faster than light. What's really happening is that the warp engines are warping the entire space-time continuum in a manner that squishes the universe in front of you and expands it behind you. Einsteins theories about the makup of the universe (ever hear about gravity being a bending of space-time?) are wat allows warp theory to be a possibility.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Riker: Well, it looks like we are all going to be violently killed by the
Geordi: Actually we could use Tachyons to . Then we could and get away.
Then they would whip up some cool special effect and be done with it
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
According to my physics teacher last semester (head of Duke's physics department, so a pretty bright guy), faster than light "travel" is possible. I put that in quotes because you can't move faster than light, but space can stretch and contract faster than light. In the early moments of the big bang, space expanded faster than light, so that particles were farther apart than light could travel up to that point. The good news? You can expand space behind you and contract space in front of you to "travel" faster than the speed of light. The bad news? You have to annihilate entire galaxies worth of matter/antimatter to be able to do this.
Otherwise you have people trying to click on things that aren't really links and getting confused and pissed off in the process. Bad karma from users, you get my drift?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
There are general anesthetics that work along these general principles. The patient (victim?) feels EVERYTHING...but forgets about it afterwards. I learned about this while investigating pain-management techniques for use during childbirth.
You have to annihilate entire galaxies worth of matter/antimatter to be able to do this.
This sounds like a marketing line designed to sell FTL vehicles to American consumers.
"Now not only will you get to Alpha Centauri in LESS than 4.3 years, you'll get the rush of destroying an entire galaxy along the way!"
Hmmm, I think its time to start an intergalactic Tread Lightly[1] campaign...
[1] Basically "Dont screw up nature while driving off road."
The Science of Star Trek is a somewhat fascinating book. Interesting how the author figures that holodecks are the most likely technology to actually come about.. it's a good read if you've wondered how warp drive 'works'. It's in fairly simple language, with some basic introductions to quantum mechanics so that the average person doesn't get lost. It's an easy read, but interesting for a trekkie such as myself =)
Now, if I could actually read the article on exn.. it slashdotted nicely, what with all those frames. It's almost artwork.
Bitchslapped. Neat.
Oh yes, I knew the title sounded wrong. Physics of Star Trek.
Bitchslapped. Neat.
I don't mean this unkindly, but you just demonstrated that you don't understand anything about relativity at all even at the simplest level.
1) Special Relativity (which is about motion) assumes a classically flat spacetime so it doesn't take account of an expanding Universe at all. To deal with that you'd need Einstein's later General Theory of Relativity (which is about the geometry of spacetime as well and is a superset of the original theory).
2) The whole point of special relativity is that (in that flat spacetime) whenever you measure or calculate the velocity of an object relative to your own position, it can never exceed the speed of light. To achieve this it is clear that you cannot simply add velocities together as one does in Newtonian Mechanics. Moreover it implies that time and distance measurements will differ depending on how fast you are moving (moving clocks go slow).
3) The Hubble expansion of the universe makes it appear as if some very remote objects must have a velocity relative to us that exceeds 'c' (these are by definition beyond the event horizon of the visible universe). However, the observed relative motion due to expansion does not involve anything really moving through space; instead space itself is expanding between the galaxies (i.e. spacetime is not flat). Therefore any measurement of velocity is affected by geometry and you need to use formulae from General Relativity to account for it.
BTW, the original version of the General theory was 'wrong' from our current point of view because Einstein couldn't bring himself to believe the Universe was expanding. To correct for the anomaly he introduced the infamous 'cosmological constant' (i.e. he inserted a bugger factor to make his incomplete equations balance). Eventually though Hubble's observations were accepted and Einstein later referred to the cosmological constant as the greatest mistake of his career.
PS. Actually it was really his rejection of Quantum Mechanics that was the greatest mistake of his career. He wasted the last years of his life trying to think up a Grand Unified Theory that didn't take account of Quantum Physics. D'Oh!!
Your fears are based upon illogical, quasi-mystical thinking.
The mistakes which almost everybody makes in thinking about this subject, are in believing:
(1) that the 'self' is in the physical matter of your body rather than in the pattern in which it is arranged, or
(2) that the 'self' is some kind of unique thing physically separate from the brain (a soul) rather than just a complex pattern of different kinds of synapses, or
(3) that physical continuity of the medium that carries the pattern that constitutes the self is necessary for preservation of identity.
The first is patently ludicrous. The atoms in your body are being exchanged with the outside world continually. Any human body is literally not made of the same matter as it was a few years before. No-one is suggesting however that we are continually exchanging our 'self' with our inanimate surroundings. Exept Yoda, maybe.
The second is without any grounds whatever. Some philosphers have attempted to formulate some non-physical theory to support the concept of the self, mind or soul instead of just accepting it as axiomatic, as most have done. But they fail because the phenomenon we call 'self' has no observable effects not ialready explained or theoretically explicable by ordinary neurobiology, and no such theory has ever been able to make unique testable predictions. The standard response to a situation like this is to discard the theory as effectively meaningless and accept that there probably is no such thing as the 'self' in the metaphysical sense of the word. Please read Daniel C. Dennett's Consciousness Explained for a very comprehensive and readable account of the consequences of this argument.
As for the third objection: the usual reason why people equate continuity with identity is this: if there is no continuity, they argue, then where is the 'self' during the transition? How could it get from the old brain into the new one? 'You' are 'you' only inside the one head and when that head is dead your 'self' is dead with it.
Expressed in this way you can see that it is just a reformulation of the first and second objections, the belief that the self is an objectively real thing trapped within, but somehow separate from, the physical matter of the body.
Both formulations can be disproved by reductio ad absurdem arguments in the form of thought experiments.
Suppose that while you slept after a heavy night of beer drinking, a stray transporter beam snaked down and disassembled your body right down to it's constituent atoms. The transporter chief realised his mistake right away and sent the particles back, reconstructing them into a new copy right there in your bed. The new 'you' would just wake up in the morning as usual, with the appropriate hangover and sense of guilt and self-pity. It could have happened to you every night of your life and neither you nor the people you meet would ever know or be affected by it (remember we are talking about a complete and perfect copy right down to the quantum level).
Perhaps this example has insufficient force for some people as it may well be physically impossible to ever construct a perfect copy in this way. So be it; let me consider a slightly more down-to-earth analogy that doesn't contravene what are currently thought of in this century as immutable laws of physics.
It is the midwinter in the year 2099. You are trudging through the snow just outside a hospital in Inverness, Scotland during a vicious blizzard when a sudden gust blows a metal sign off its mountings and it hits you in the face. Your head is sliced neatly in half and your brain flies right out of your head in two sections to land softly in separate snowdrifts. It's so cold that the bits quickly cool to a low enough temperature to forestall cell death, and as it has stopped snowing, paramedics manage to collect the pieces before any ice crystals form within the delicate tissues.
However the senior consultant feels they can't afford to wait; while the paramedics are still outside digging up the snow looking for your brain, the helicopter arrives to fly you to a waiting team of expert neurosurgons 100 miles away in Edinburgh. They put you, minus brain, on the chopper and it takes off.
While you are en route the half of your brain they managed to find so far is cleaned and packed in one of those little cool boxes they put donor organs in. Another helicopter arrives and flies this grisly package to your new hospital.
Thirty minutes later a third helicopter is in the air; they found the rest of your brain.
Both packages arrive safely and the surgeons reassemble your brain using late 21st-century medical technology and pump you full of drugs. A few months later you emerge from coma feeling, well, pretty awful but that's only to be expected. After a year of physiotherapy and further neurological treatment you've begin to live a fairly normal life again. Thank heavens for modern medicine.
You reflect on your experiences. The accident has changed you in some ways; yourcapabilities are diminished somewhat, you feel differently about some things and you sometimes suspect a touch of amnesia. But hey, other patients in the neurology ward with much less severe injuries said the same thing about themselves. And age does those things to everybody anyway. You still have (most of) your memories and inside your own head you're still you. Yep, you say to yourself: I'm still the same person, just a little the worse for wear. As far as your wife and children are concerned it's not even an issue. They're just glad to have you back.
There's just one little thing that leaves you wondering. For a little while back there your body was in Edinburgh, the right hemisphere of your brain was ina a helicopter, and the left hemisphere was back in Inverness. So where were you? Where was your 'self' during that time?
This shows that in theory, an individual could survive with what he thinks of as his 'self' intact even if there was for a time no single location where a whole self could exist.
Anyway as I say, read Daniel Dennett. He explains this stuff much more lucidly and convincingly than I ever could.
I did witness DejaNews' server give me the heave-ho yesterday. Reloading gave no errors and no problems thereafter. It kinda surprised me.
Too many users
There are too many connected users. Please try again later.
-- To bloody go where no man has gone before.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Well not to be too factual, but saying tachyons are actual particles is overstating the case. More correctly, tachyons are *actual theoretical* particles ;) In other words, nobody knows if they exist or not. Just from the viewpoint of causality, I'd say they probably don't. (And I'm pretty loose about causality :) I always like Feynman's half-advanced/half-retarded waves explanation of electron self force)
"I went to Z'ha'dum and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt." Richard Burgess / www.rickb.com Perceptive Scientific Instr
In the "relativistic realm", you can't just add velocities. This is a property of the Lorentz transformation, which is the correct one to use in Special Relativity (SR). It is the Galliean transformation, useful at more mundane speeds, where one can just add velocities.
New Scientist has had something similar for ages. Well, I assume it's similar, I can't see the site in this posting. It's slashdotted already.
Priestess........
See here:
http://www2.shore.net/~sek/STontheBrain.html
I always wondered about transporters...
Suppose that the transporter never really transported the original; but destroyed it and synthesized an exact copy on the other end.
There would be no way to detect this. But if you were transported, "you" would die and your exact twin sister would materialize with all your memories, etc.
Like a Turing Test, there would be no way to detect from outside that the copy wasn't in fact you. How would we ever know? Only those that died would know that they didn't live, but their copies wouldn't.
So I guess I'm not getting transported anytime soon.
- K-ster
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There is a book called "The Science of Star Trek" which is pretty good if you are interested more in this type of stuff.