Physics and Star Trek
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Template:Cleanup-tone Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Star Trek will have noticed the considerable emphasis on science and technology (commonly referred to as "treknobabble") used in the various incarnations of the show. It is well known that many members of the professional scientific community are also trekkers. For many people, Star Trek constituted their first and/or only introduction to many scientific concepts. The impact of the show on the scientific world is certainly significant - NASA named the first space shuttle orbiter "Enterprise".
Star Trek has borrowed freely (but very loosely) from the scientific world to provide storylines. Episodes are replete with references to tachyon beams, baryon sweeps, quantum fluctuations and event horizons - though often the uses of scientific jargon is at best half-correct and more frequently, great artistic license is taken with real scientific concepts.
It should be noted that Star Trek is first and foremost a vehicle for entertainment, and the primary aim of the writers is to deliver drama, not science. Many of the technologies "created" for the Star Trek universe were done so out of simple economic necessity - the transporter was created because the budget of the original series in the 1960s did not allow for expensive shots of spaceships landing on planets. Moreover, the writers of the show are not scientists (its "scientific advisor" Rick Sternbach is actually an art director who has a layman's interest in science but no formal training) and frequently misunderstand basic scientific concepts like conservation of energy. Frequently, understanding why many of the technologies used in the Star Trek universe are implausible is equally interesting and educational.
Flaws in Star Trek science
There are what appear to be a number of obvious flaws in the science of Star Trek, and an equal number of explanations that attempt to explain those flaws as misunderstandings.
"In space no-one can hear you scream..."
A constant feature of almost every episode (as well as most non-Star Trek science fiction television shows and movies) is the reverberations of sound: the Enterprise blasting into warp, firing the phasers, villains' ships exploding. Simple fact - sound is the vibration of a medium. Space is a vacuum, that is the absence of matter, including any medium (e.g. air) for sound to travel through, so no sound is ever possible.
- Response: Much of the noise in Star Trek involves things that can be heard from within the ship. For example, when a phaser is fired or when a ship is being hit by a phaser, presumably there is a noise that can be heard within the ship. As far as noises for events outside a ship, these can be explained simply as background music. It is true that in a real space battle there wouldn't be the sound of phasers firing exterior to the ship, but there also wouldn't be the musical accompaniment that exists in Star Trek battles. It may also be noted that when a ship or other object in space explodes, it explodes into (usually small) pieces. When these remaining particles come into contact with another ship, including the one that fired the destroying torpedo, they set up vibrations within that ship which are generally called 'sound'. The primary issue with 'hearing explosions in space' is not that they are heard, but that they are heard too soon and would likely sound more like thunder.
- Additional: Some of these sounds could better be regarded as acoustical feedback of the sensor systems for the ship's crew. Some present radar systems especially in the military area already do that.
Getting rid of baryons
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode entitled "Starship Mine", the Enterprise docks at a space station to get those pesky baryons removed. Baryons (we are told) build up on the hull of the spaceship as a result of warp travel, and the ship needs to be "cleaned" periodically. There is a slight problem with this — the only stable baryons known to exist are protons and neutrons, which constitute the nucleus of all atoms, and hence are the core of all the visible matter in the universe. Getting rid of the baryons would unfortunately eliminate the Enterprise entirely. These baryons may be particles of dust, and the debris from micrometeorite collisions embedded in the hull of the enterprise.*
- Response: There are stray proton and neutron particles in space. As for just why these build-ups are bad, who knows. And the fact that the rest of the ship didn't get destroyed indicates the sweep is selective. Why it seems to be bad for living tissue, another question not answered. It might have to do with something similar to brushing teeth. In the episode where Riker was on a Klingon ship, there was some organic material causing damage to both the Enterprise and the Klingon ship.
In space there is neither "up" nor "down"
In the television shows, however, whenever the ship makes a tight bank or rolls over "upside down" the entire bridge crew "falls down" from the ground to the roof. Now if the ship has artificial gravity which holds everybody "down" to the deck, it is "illogical", as Mr. Spock would say, for the nonexistent gravity of space to pull people away from the deck where artificial gravity should hold them.
- Response: The standard Star Trek explanation invokes inertial damping fields. Without some sort of damping field the sudden acceleration involved in space would cause objects in the ship to be instantly flattened. To avoid this, the ship has a force field that counteracts forces due to acceleration. The strength of this force field must be constantly updated with the ship's current acceleration. However, if the ship encounters an unexpected acceleration or force, the calculations are mometarily incorrect, and this causes a shudder, as the damping fields are momentarily unbalanced. The unbalanced fields are set up so that they are well within the levels tolerated by human beings, but they can cause people to fall off of chairs.
The Damping fields of Star trek are psuedo-science technobabble. They are not allowed by the laws of physics.
Starships appear to navigate like airplanes
Starships appear to navigate like airplanes. Instead of turning instantly, they seem to need to bank, and are unable to pitch up and down.
- Response: Starships appear to navigate like airplanes because the nacelles of the starships apply forces similar to the wings of aircraft. The movement of the starships is controlled by balancing the forces on the nacelles, which requires that starships bank in order to turn.
- Addendum: Even in zero gravity, acceleration still exerts forces on moving objects. Banking the ship redistributes the forces into a presumably less stressing orientation.
Some smaller starships and the shuttles may be able to operate as rocket propelled space planes in planetary atmospheres : being propelled by antimatter energized nuclear pulse engines. of the Ican or Aimstar variety ,or propelled by solid core fission or antimatter-matter annhilation powered solid core nuclear thermal rocket motors.*
In the earlier versions of Star Trek they used lasers not "phasers".
These "lasers" were either red or blue depending on the era. Unfortunately, science dictates that without a reflective medium, photons (the particles that laser and other light beams entirely consist of) are not scattered out of their direction of travel. In other words, a laser is invisible in a vacuum.
- Response: References to lasers are incorrect and should be retconned out, especially considering that enterprise uses "Phase cannons" and "Phase pistols" (although this itself contridicts a line in Star Trek: The Next Generation that phasers didn't exist in the 22nd century). The beams in Star Trek are phaser beams and as such they emit light when going through a vacuum.
- 'Laser' stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The light is coherent and very powerful, and does not scatter; also bear in mind that there is no such thing as a true vacuum, in that all space contains particles. A very powerful laser would hit some matter and thus cause light to be emitted which would be visible to human eyes. Quantum mechanics allows black holes to emit radiation. Thus a sufficiently-powerful laser could be visible (if only barely) at the scale at which starships are presented.
A laser beam passing through space can be seen only if its light is reflected by dust particles present in space or if it heats up the gas present in space enough to create a trail of glowing plasma gas in the path of a laser beam.
The most likely explanation for phasers is that a phaser is a neutral antiproton particle beam weapon. A phaser is a beam of high energy antihydrogen atoms. Some of these antihydrogen atoms will annhilate normal atoms of dust and gas in their path through space. This will result in the emission of gamma rays and pi mesons that are produced by annhilations. The energy released by these annhilations may also create a trail of glowing plasma gas that was heated by the matter-antimatter annhilation released energy.There is 1,000,000 or more atoms of gas per cubic meter of space in most places in the galaxy.
- All Star Trek events occurs very near planets and certainly within galaxies (where matter density is quite high for a "vacuum"). Any beam weaponry usage would definitely produce visual effects perceptual to the human eye.This may be true in some cases.
Electricity is dangerous
Between now and the invention of the warp drive humanity lost all forms of the technology called the circuit breaker. The result is that regularly a power feedback or overload will fire a bolt of energy from a console and kill a bridge crew officer.
Exploding panels and circuits are usually seen only when the enterprise is attacked by an enemy.Directed energy weapons can melt or otherwise disrupt electric circuits , and also may fry many electronic systems . This can result in short circuits, and in the distruction of circuit breakers, and the distruction or disconnection of electrical grounds, and outlets. There is also at least one form of electron particle beam weapon that may create a very high energy electric discharge that goes from an anode to the metallic target, and back to a cathode. This device serves as a giant taser or stun gun to fry the electric , and electronic parts of a target.
It can also burn or electrocute people with its electric current . For example a starship may tap from 1 gigajoule to 1 terajoule or more of electrical energy from its energy sources.
Then it may use transformers to step up the electric voltage to 1 billion volts or more, with a 1000 ampere electric current in the case of a 1 terajoule discharge . Then this electric discharge may arc from an anode to a target starship and then return to the cathode on the source thus completing the circuit. The intense vacume of space provides no significant resistance to the movement of such an artifial electrical lightening bolt of electric energy, between electric conductors. Also nuclear weapons, and some kinds of antimatter weapons can create a very energy electromagnetic pulse that can induce intense electric currents in any electric conductor within range. Maser(microwave frequancy laser) beams can also do this .
Conservation of momentum considered harmful
Because of the lack of friction in space, you don't continuously expend fuel to maintain a constant speed. Much travel at sublight can be achieved by coasting, thus saving precious fuel. That being said, shutting off the engines is not enough to slow down or stop a ship. And slowing down is not just a matter of easing up on the gas pedal. You must actually expend as much fuel to decelerate because of inertia. The difference is you expend it in the opposite direction. The trick is to apply equal force both forward and backward to produce zero inertia. Therefore, a big design flaw is the fact that starships don't have impulse engines pointing foreward as well as aft.
- Response: Ships in Star Trek move because of an antigravity "trick," allowing them to move a proportionately greater mass with smaller engines than should be possible. If the power is cut to the "mass-lightening" field coils, the full mass of the ship would become apparent to the universe and its velocity would be reduced unless additional energy was imparted to the structure.
- Addendum: MOST ships have thrusters pointed forward. Also the Scimitar does have reverse engines and although not shown graphically on screen, "full reverse" has been ordered a number of times and appears to be just as fast as "full impulse".
Star Trek technology
Individual technology is discussed in separate articles:
- Cloaking device
- Holodeck
- Impulse drive
- Phasers
- Photon torpedo
- Power supply
- Replicator
- Shields
- Tractor beam
- Transporter
- Warp drive
Despite the tone of general skepticism in this article, it should be noted that some aspects of Star Trek technology that were once thought of as pure fantasy are getting closer to reality every day; the remarkable similarity between cell-phones and the communicators of the original series is one example. William Shatner's non-fiction book I'm Working on That explores the connections between Star Trek technology and the evolution of real-life science.
See also: Time travel, Worm holes
Compare with: Physics and Star Wars
External links
- The science of Star Trek (http://ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/just_for_fun/startrek.html)
- A Guide to the Physics Governing the Star Trek Series (http://www.cakes.mcmail.com/StarTrek/)
References
- Lawrence M. Krauss, The Physics of Star Trek (1996) ISBN 0-060-97710-8. Krauss's book explores modern physics, using Star Trek as an organizing pattern and source of inspiration. Along the way, he shows that some treknobabble is just nonsensical, and that certain technologies are implausible or essentially impossible.de:Star Trek und Physik