The Science of Star Trek 71
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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The Science of Star Trek
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The magic of tachyons! (Score:1)
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....
Physics of Star Trek (Score:1)
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
Star Trek category? (Score:1)
Eric
--
Transporters are EVIL! (Score:1)
(Oh wait, he did use one eventually... n/m.)
David
Faster Than Light Travel FAQ (Score:1)
http://www.physics.purdue.edu/~hinson/ft l/ [purdue.edu]
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".
Star Trek category? (Score:1)
I realize this is off topic (but not much
Just my two cents, feel free to dispense change!
Various theories of FTL... (Score:1)
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.
java applets..gag (Score:1)
For the Star Trek Technology Connoisseur (Score:1)
--Phil (No, I'm not a dedicated Star Trek Geek at all...)
Transporters are EVIL! (Score:1)
Transporters are EVIL! (Score:2)
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!
The physics of Star Wars. (Score:1)
TIE fighters totin' a lightsaber!
NT box, even. (Score:1)
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.
TV Show? (Score:1)
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*
Star Trek category? (Score:1)
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?
ah..only a geek... (Score:1)
Why no underline (Score:1)
Transporters don't (usually) clone you (Score:1)
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.
Boy this page is old!!! (Score:1)
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!
did you mean this book? (Score:1)
ISBN: 0671009974
or http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609603299
ISBN: 0609603299
...? hmm... science books for star trek.... funny concept that.
Transporters are EVIL! (Score:1)
Exploding Plasma Conduit (Score:1)
Greg Egan, Diaspora (Score:1)
Very good book it is too... Very.
Read it.
Now.
:)
Nearest Star? (Score:1)
----------
'We have no choice in what we are. Yet what are we,
but the sum of our choices.' --Rob Grant
----------
A brief history of time. (Score:1)
Star Trek category? (Score:1)
The magic of tachyons! (Score:1)
I haven't read the book but.. (Score:1)
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).
that is a kick ass book (Score:1)
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 was thinking of physics of s.t. (Score:1)
submit button too quick.
i was thinking of the physics of
star trek.
CT: put a link up here to it thru
amazon?
-Z
TV Show? (Score:1)
Also, the site's been
-TF
Quoting the book... (Score:1)
Q: How do the Heisenberg compensators work on the transporters?
A: Quite well.
Michael Okuda sez... (Score:1)
I haven't read the book but.. (Score:1)
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.
I haven't read the book but.. (Score:1)
/.'ed already! (Score:1)
---
The magic of tachyons! (Score:1)
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
---
Faster than light travel (Score:1)
Why no underline (Score:1)
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?
Transporters are EVIL! (Score:1)
Faster than light travel (Score:1)
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 Book (Score:1)
Now, if I could actually read the article on exn.. it slashdotted nicely, what with all those frames. It's almost artwork.
Actual Title (Score:1)
I haven't read the book but.. (Score:1)
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!!
Tranporting a soul? (Score:1)
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.
DJNews (Score:1)
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The Physics fo Star Trek, the Book (Score:1)
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
The magic of tachyons! (Score:1)
Coordinate Transformations (Score:1)
Physics of Star Trek (Score:1)
Priestess........
also, 'Star Trek on the Brain' (Score:1)
http://www2.shore.net/~sek/STontheBrain.html
Tranporting a soul? (Score:1)
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
Book, too! (Score:1)