Everything I learned about Computers, Math, Science, and...

Post Reply New Topic

Technology, I learned from watching Star Trek.

Can anyone relate?

I hope you realise that shows such as 'Star Trek' often get their facts hopelessly wrong, and so I hope that you are not serious about this.

A (short) list of factual errors that I have found in various episodes of the various incarnations of the show 'Star Trek'.
1. When an enemy vessel explodes in space, not only do we hear the explosion (sound waves don't travel through a vacuum, so this is impossible) but we hear the explosion at the very same instant that we see it, which is also impossible because sound waves don't travel as fast as EM waves. There should be a delay proportional to the distance that the waves have to travel; the greater the distance, the longer the delay.
2. When an 'away team' is beamed down to the surface of a planet, the orbiting star-ship should, for the sake of a quick beam-up in case of an emergency, remain in geosynchronous orbit. However, we always see the star-ship, when viewed from a distance, moving against the background of the planet that it is orbiting.
3. In 'Star Trek: Voyager' there is an episode where the crew of the eponymous star-ship pass the event horizon of a black hole and escape by phasering (is that a word? it is now) a 'hole' in the event horizon!
Once an object passes the event horizon of a black hole, there is no chance in hell that it can go back the way it entered; it is simply impossible, for the reason that in order to do so the object thus trapped would have to accelerate beyond the speed of light. Black holes are black because even light isn't fast enough to escape them. The event horizon is nothing more than the point of no return, analogous to the edge of a cliff; it does not have a physical substance that one can 'cut' through.
4. All of the aliens are humanoid. The odds against even one other alien species within our universe having developed along such closely parallel lines as to give such a species a humanoid form is... well, it's practically impossible to believe that it could happen. Yet... on a weekly basis the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise encounter such creatures.
5. The aliens not only speak English, but they do so with an American accent! Yes, I know about the existence of 'universal translators', but the original series, to my knowledge, did not have those devices.
6. The explosions that one sees in the empty space of 'Star Trek' produce a two-dimensional 'ripple', like the ripples in a pond when a stone is thrown into one. Space is three-dimensional (and empty), so any explosion would produce effects that spread out in all directions simultaneously; i.e. one would see a sphere of light, not a ring, move out from the centre of the explosion.
7. Human-alien hybrids (ex. B'elanna Torres in 'Voyager'). Again, this is impossible. Any aliens that we may encounter at some point in the future will be more different from us than we are from carrots, so any 'cross-breeding' will be out of the question.
8. The number of Earth-like planets that are encountered, in almost every episode, defy the odds to such an extent as to render this show, in all its incarnations, impossible to accept, and therefore it fails on the level of being pure escapism.
9. Did I mention that these shows are fiction?

Tribbles don't like Klingons. Anything else is irrelevant.

No. There is no plausible technology on Star Trek. However it is good entertainment. The Star Trek material is comparable to old Arabic tall tales which include Flying Carpets and caves that open to a voiced command. What a minute!! ! I have a garage door that opens when I push a button.

ruveyn

Do you have to say "Open Sesame" ?

The idea for cellphones was inspired by the communicators in Star Trek though.

That is just one. Teleporting and Faster Than LIght motions of massive ponderable bodies are just too far out to be taken serious. Take them as entertainment. If someone finds a way of propelling an object with rest mass greater than 0, then I will revise my judgement.]

ruveyn

A throwaway soundbite made by Marty Cooper, probably in order to popularize the device. It doesn't hold water I'm afraid: the idea of portable communication devices has been around since the days of pulp, and the walkie-talkie was already well established by that point. Moreover, the technology of the cell phone bears no relationship to that of the communicator. Arguably we could say that the flip panel on a few cell phone models was inspired by the Star Trek communicator, but that's as far as she goes.

The idea of portable, digital, multimedia data storage was predicted by Star Trek as well...

not me.
i always think from my own perspective and decide what i believe or not.

and the mathematics of the warp field are true enough, by any description alcubierres field equations are what is in star trek.

in reality though we need negative energy to make it feasible, i dont know if that is possible in any practical sense.

By which I take that you mean the mathematics is correct, consistent and without error.

None of which guarantees that the theory is true. The theory must first jump over empirical hurdles before it can be accepted provisionally.

ruveyn

There is some actually, just not very much, and most of what is plausible is fairly basic.

One example my friend likes to cite is the containment on anti-matter reactors being magnetic. As far as I am aware, strong magnetic fields are actualy used to contain anti-matter (for the very short period of time it exists).

Plus that the Alcubierre drive is inconsistent with visual imagery on the show, and with the whole "mass-lightening" thing they've got going on there. Trek energy weapons are also bizarre in that they apparently don't operate as you'd expect of a directed energy weapon, but instead appear to "eat away" at the target by some kind of funky chain reaction. Then again, most Treknology seems to be based on "subspace," something that has no real analogue in science.

Overall, it's tough to make a Sci-Fi series that is both (techno)logically consistent and dramatically interesting. Often, when people try, they just end up making less sense, such as with Babylon 5 and the Starfury fighter (which looks cool and sensible until you realize that the bulkiness of the engines would actually hurt the vessel's ability to maneuver, contrary to the point of the design).

http://www.webpronews.com/real-tricorder-created-by-canadian-inventor-2012-03

There was one sci fi movie that accurately depicted what one would hear in the vacuum of space ---- nothing. That is -2001: A Space Odessy-. Ever since we have been treated to bangs, booms, blasts, sizzle and crashes in the vacuum of space. Let us face it: silent space is as boring as watching paint dry.

ruveyn