Sorry, but no. I don't consider Gene Roddenberry the authority on how to pronounce the unofficial name of his unofficial fan club, and doubly not now that he's dead. The article to which you link makes it clear that this is an unresolved issue.
Does anybody know any movie reviewers who include realism of the physics, realism of the computer scenes, or realism in general in their reviews? If I knew in advance which movies would annoy me, I'd avoid them.
This guy has some, but I don't know how often he does reviews.
Accepting a bus jumping a gap in an overpass, or bullets sparking on everything, or people jumping through glass windows without being hurt, are obviously impossible according to the most basic physics understanding.
Well, according to a more advanced physics understanding, so are the things I named. And, by your logic, one could claim that may be someday we'll make a new discovery that would allow us to jump busses from overpasses. Hey, you don't know the future, right?
My point is that if, to make sense, you have to conjecture new scientific advances that completely overturn verified principles of physics, what you're doing is not science. So:
Star Trek doesn't have a horrible record of ignoring our currently-known laws of physics like many movies
Yes, they do, unless you consider the writers' vague hypotheses to take physics into account rather than just paying lip service, and:
How exactly do you know what will and won't be possible 100 years from now?
I don't, and I am saying that this ignorance we all share is what moves FTL, time travel, and starships that handle like airplanes from the realm of "science fiction" into fantasy.
And that's not even to mention the laughable contention that bipedal primates are such a good scheme of evolution that there's a whole bunch of them in the galaxy.
Star Trek is great stuff, but it is a fantasy from the perspective of the sciences.
100 years ago, the average farmer, who used levers and pulleys, probably had a better grasp of practical physics than the average person today, who is insulated from it by machines they don't understand.
And how many people actually believe what they see in the movies is possible? Everyone knows what they do are special effects. Not a single person on this planet would state a fact and then say "of course that's possible, I saw it in Die Hard".
Your entire post is invalidated by the fact that I have met at least one such person.
Of course, that's the problem with overgeneralization.
I think it's funny how, in a discussion of the scientific realism of a much-loved show, people forget that science depends on what we currently know. To throw that out the window and start positing new technologies based on hypothetical advances in science is not good physics. It is science fiction, or even fantasy.
Star Trek is decent science fiction. It is not decent physics. Someday, perhaps these advances in understanding that you envision will be verified, and the creators of Star Trek will be seen as visionaries. Until then, it doesn't make any sense to argue that the show is grounded in science.
In several episodes of DS9, and throughout Voyager, replicators are described as energy-to-matter conversion devices. In this context, a pattern is to a replicator what a pattern is to today's looms: A program describing how something is structured.
That's nice, but does nothing to explain the massive amounts of energy required to convert energy into matter. This has nothing to do with "patterns" and everything to do with particle physics.
But why not use false-colors or sounds to bring out significant details, enhance situational awareness, in an environment that can't be easily perceived or understood directly?
It's a good idea, actually. My point is that one can explain away any gap in Star Trek's continuity with reality by creating a technological explanation regardless of plausibility. That's why fantasy is fun.
However, at speeds which are a significant fraction of c, the friction from interstellar dust and hydrogen atoms is significant, although not at the distances and speeds portrayed in the show.
The other responders here have shot down your examples.
No, they haven't, but thank you for assuming as much before I'd a chance to respond to their posts. One can only hit F5 so many times, you know.
Any more?
Time travel.
As pointed out, we already have quantum entanglement, so simultaneity of communications across interstellar distances is no longer really science fiction.
No, we don't, and yes, it is. There's a difference between one of these and one of these - a difference about which, as there's good money to be made in publishing sensationalist books that cherry-pick scientific knowledge, a lot of folks who consider themselves quite well-informed aren't aware. Science is, after all, not as broadly entertaining as Star Trek reruns.
From the wiki (and, if I recall, Brian Greene wrote about this as well in his second book):
Observations on entangled states naively appear to conflict with the property of relativity that information cannot be transferred faster than the speed of light. Although two entangled systems appear to interact across large spatial separations, no useful information can be transmitted in this way, so causality cannot be violated through entanglement.
Though they posit another medium outside what some physicists today would term our "brane".
Indeed, and without even bothering to posit a way for these to interact, which physicists would generally find impossible based on current understanding.
3D printers that don't require physical contact, and rely on an energy-to-matter conversion mechanism.
No, they use computer data to direct matter in the creation of new patterns of matter.
We can currently convert matter to energy under certain limited circumstances. Who's to say we won't figure out how to do the reverse at some point in the distant future?
What, come up with a way to perform the function of a nuclear detonation quietly, in a device about the size of a microwave? Saying we will is certainly within the bounds of science fiction, but this is a discussion of bad physics in that science fiction.
It also has a shot where a pistol, fired inches from someone's face, fails to burn the shit out of said face.
I lived in Florida when that film was released, and local newspapers were gleefully printing comments from Key West businesses who were concerned that their travel plans might be interrupted by the Seven Mile Bridge's recent destruction.
AFAIK Charles Stross is the only SF writer who has ever done much writing in a milieu where FTL is equivalent to time travel, and I don't think he's even done it consistently in all his work.
Well, technocrats share a great deal with libertarians. They are both not fond of administrators who don't have intimate knowledge of the domains they administer.
Hell, who is? I'm neither a technocrat nor a libertarian, but it does offend me when a bunch of business school C-students get to determine what is and what is not science.
How is this unrealistic? Space fleets of the future outfit their crews with situational aural feedback implants. These use a miniaturized tricorder to detect environmental cues and respond by overlaying predetermined noises, which, as everyone in the Federation surely knows, greatly increases human reflexes and situational awareness.
Hell, the directors of Star Trek are doing you a favor by reproducing that audio track in the show. Of course, I might be lying. I imagine at least one Trekker will fact-check this post.
Unless you should somehow happen to decelerate during the flight. As if, say, the power transfer surfaces of the vehicle were not in contact with a surface, or if air resistance in front of the bus countered a portion of the bus' kinetic energy.
Reminds me of a firearms instructor who'd compiled a videotape, no doubt illegal in spite of Fair Use, consisting of terrible movie moments in the context of firearms safety. "True Lies," if I recall correctly, was a particularly egregious offender.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but no. I don't consider Gene Roddenberry the authority on how to pronounce the unofficial name of his unofficial fan club, and doubly not now that he's dead. The article to which you link makes it clear that this is an unresolved issue.
It's OK. In Soviet Russia, facts check YOU!
This guy has some, but I don't know how often he does reviews.
Well, according to a more advanced physics understanding, so are the things I named. And, by your logic, one could claim that may be someday we'll make a new discovery that would allow us to jump busses from overpasses. Hey, you don't know the future, right?
My point is that if, to make sense, you have to conjecture new scientific advances that completely overturn verified principles of physics, what you're doing is not science. So:
Yes, they do, unless you consider the writers' vague hypotheses to take physics into account rather than just paying lip service, and:
I don't, and I am saying that this ignorance we all share is what moves FTL, time travel, and starships that handle like airplanes from the realm of "science fiction" into fantasy.
And that's not even to mention the laughable contention that bipedal primates are such a good scheme of evolution that there's a whole bunch of them in the galaxy.
Star Trek is great stuff, but it is a fantasy from the perspective of the sciences.
Wow: despite being so plain fucking wrong, you're quite the pompous shit.
Ah, right. Got me there.
Your entire post is invalidated by the fact that I have met at least one such person.
Of course, that's the problem with overgeneralization.
I think it's funny how, in a discussion of the scientific realism of a much-loved show, people forget that science depends on what we currently know. To throw that out the window and start positing new technologies based on hypothetical advances in science is not good physics. It is science fiction, or even fantasy.
Star Trek is decent science fiction. It is not decent physics. Someday, perhaps these advances in understanding that you envision will be verified, and the creators of Star Trek will be seen as visionaries. Until then, it doesn't make any sense to argue that the show is grounded in science.
That's nice, but does nothing to explain the massive amounts of energy required to convert energy into matter. This has nothing to do with "patterns" and everything to do with particle physics.
It's a good idea, actually. My point is that one can explain away any gap in Star Trek's continuity with reality by creating a technological explanation regardless of plausibility. That's why fantasy is fun.
Fixed.
No, we don't, and yes, it is. There's a difference between one of these and one of these - a difference about which, as there's good money to be made in publishing sensationalist books that cherry-pick scientific knowledge, a lot of folks who consider themselves quite well-informed aren't aware. Science is, after all, not as broadly entertaining as Star Trek reruns.
Indeed, and without even bothering to posit a way for these to interact, which physicists would generally find impossible based on current understanding.
No, they use computer data to direct matter in the creation of new patterns of matter.
What, come up with a way to perform the function of a nuclear detonation quietly, in a device about the size of a microwave? Saying we will is certainly within the bounds of science fiction, but this is a discussion of bad physics in that science fiction.
It also has a shot where a pistol, fired inches from someone's face, fails to burn the shit out of said face.
I lived in Florida when that film was released, and local newspapers were gleefully printing comments from Key West businesses who were concerned that their travel plans might be interrupted by the Seven Mile Bridge's recent destruction.
In short: bad movie.
Are you vaguely alluding to anything in particular, or just hoping to present your own intelligence as superior at the expense of everyone else?
Please, forgive my cynicism, but this is /., and it can be hard to tell.
Assuming it's the former, I'm dying to read the truths you grasp so firmly.
It's funnier how much some think that they don't.
Try Haldeman's The Forever War.
Hell, who is? I'm neither a technocrat nor a libertarian, but it does offend me when a bunch of business school C-students get to determine what is and what is not science.
How is this unrealistic? Space fleets of the future outfit their crews with situational aural feedback implants. These use a miniaturized tricorder to detect environmental cues and respond by overlaying predetermined noises, which, as everyone in the Federation surely knows, greatly increases human reflexes and situational awareness.
Hell, the directors of Star Trek are doing you a favor by reproducing that audio track in the show. Of course, I might be lying. I imagine at least one Trekker will fact-check this post.
Really? Judging by the comments, I thought it was the Libertarian Daily Kos.
Daily Taco, perhaps?
Unless you should somehow happen to decelerate during the flight. As if, say, the power transfer surfaces of the vehicle were not in contact with a surface, or if air resistance in front of the bus countered a portion of the bus' kinetic energy.
Simultaneity of communications across interstellar distances.
Replicators.
I'm sure others will have more examples.
Reminds me of a firearms instructor who'd compiled a videotape, no doubt illegal in spite of Fair Use, consisting of terrible movie moments in the context of firearms safety. "True Lies," if I recall correctly, was a particularly egregious offender.