No, I will be talking about cool things like warp speed and photon torpedoes. Or rather, Lawrence Krauss will. He's written two books about the science behind Star Trek and even wrote an article about The Infinite Appeal of Star Trek. (Great, short read.)
But on to The Physics of Star Trek. The article takes a look at transporters, photon torpedoes, warp drive, even "new life and new civilizations", and asks, according to the laws of physics, if these things are possible. My favorite was the question on life forms - Krauss talks about silicon-based life forms, instead of carbon-based. And it leads me to imagine what those creatures would look like and what they would need to be in order to be "living". This is, of course, what Star Trek is based on - the imagination to create a world that includes Bynars and Tribbles and a whole mess of other ideas about what the future will look like.
I was less interested in reading about Enterprise's gravitational shields, because they have no basis in reality. There's no factual science involved in bending matter away from you - it really can't be done. What can be done (and in fact, has been done) are things like quantum teleportation. Granted, it's only been done with a single atom, but hey - no one had even thought of a floppy disk as a means to transport information until Spock showed up with one.
I am, again, stepping all over the article, which really is a fantastic read, but I do want to focus on transporters for a second. Krauss is asked about "beaming someone up", and he broke down what he would do to transport something. "So I would do what I do when I surf the Internet—I'd move the bits. I'd scan you and try to get all the information, the bits, which make you a human being." And then, he'd break you into little 1s and 0s and he'd move you.
So soon we could all be living in the internet. How's that for science?
I knew all my years as a Trekkie were not in vain! Looking forward to reading the articles mention here and, of course, new posts on your blog! Good stuff, Jess - keep it up!
ReplyDeleteOK -- You're forgetting that matter and energy as one in the same (E = mC^2). As such 'bending energy' as in gravity lensing past a inrense graviational filed, proves the possibility of 'bending matter'. Exchange matter for its energy euvilent, then transform it back to matter, which has now changed state. Actually, this is the theory of transporter accident.
ReplyDeleteDaddy
Now wait a minute here -- You can bend matter. Think about this, you can bend light (energy) by using gravitational lensing -- right ? Well, let's not forget our dear freind Einstein, who gave us E = mC^2. Which allows us to transform matter into energy, then 'bend' it, and finally transform the energy back into matter, in its new configuration. Actually, this is the principle behind transporter accidents.
ReplyDeleteThink about it,
Daddy