What is possible in Star Trek scientifically.

(Had a few drinks at Quarks tonight. It was cool until I tried to lay on a bench, and was chased out by that Jello skinned Shape Shifter. )


I ran into a website several years ago that talked about what is possible in theory scientifically. If there is another website, I would love to see it.

The only thing I clearly remember from the reading that the only thing that is truly impossible, forget it, can't happen, was the transporter. I accept that. But I believe that matter can be sent and rematerialized in a data stream. We in 2o1o have no freaking idea how to do this.

In Star Trek (or Star trek 11) old Spock explains to young Scotty that it is not the ship moving, but the space moving around the ship. This was the view of the scientists on that website.

One complaint that I have with Star Trek is when a ship is blown up and there is a huge "fireball bang effect". A ship which was destroyed would have that kind of pyrotechnics we have seen in all the shows.

Phaser or "deathray" weapons. Yes, in 2o1o there are lasers and they can kill you, but we don't know how to put that power inside of a revolver to kill or stun people with. It is theoretically possible, but we don't know how to do it yet.

By the late 19th Century, sone scientists in the field of radio stated that it is theoretically possible to transmit picture images over the air. Impossible. I would of laughed my ass of this in a bar in 1890. But it happened about 30 years later.

The universe is so vast that travelling at the rate of speed per second is simply not good enough and that space is still too huge to go to the nearest M Class Planet (using reality that in real life we have already found "M" class planets out there but it would, but our technology would never take us there.)

Even in the series, it was because of an alien race (Vulcans) who came to Earth because some alcoholic shot a missle into space that went warp speed. Would have been a better story if humanity could of found the way to warp speed space and have the Vulcans find them somewhere in space.

What's possible in Star trek and what isn't?

 

Almost everything is possible in Trek if it serves the plot.

 

There are books written on this subject. "The Physics of Star Trek" is one. There's another edition that followed it up, called "Beyond Star Trek: Physics From Alien Invasions To The End Of Time". There's also a book called "Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel".

Most of what we see in Star Trek is debunked. The biggest problem comes down to energy. Based on what we know in physics today, the energy required to travel at warp speed (as well as coming to a stop from warp speed) would be enormous. There are all kinds of factors along side this, like running into particles. As it is right now, a pea sized piece of asteroid traveling at 200,000 mph in orbit would cut right through the hull of one of the international space station. So on top of the energy required to go at warp speed, you need some kind of protective field active on the hull of the ship to deflect particles away. I think that might be the intent of the "deflector array" on the ship. Another big energy drain. Warping space around you to create a wormhole gateway would eliminate the deflector problem, but that still takes a huge amount of energy. Perhaps gateway stations near stars that can siphon the star energy might be possible... but then, you'd have to deal with the heat and radiation...

Anyway, one could go on and on. The main issue is energy. And at this fragile state in human existence, we still don't have a clue on highly optimal energy sources. We're still burning fossil fuels.

Transportation is possible in terms of energy, but matter? Perhaps a single element. But to reconstruct an organism? Ah, I think not. How do you "suspend" the creature until it is fully constructed? You're essentially killing and then reanimating the life form.

Imagination is fun... but reality is not.

 

Communicators.

 

Here's the thing: we're already living in a science fiction world from the perspective of our parents and grandparents and ancestors. Much of the science and technology today would have been considered sheer fantasy even fifty years ago. It's also a matter of definition and recognition---the things we see in SF are the final polished product. What we don't see is the early development and early forms of the product. Imagine showing someone from the late 19th century a 21st century car and tell them one day their descendants will see and operate these things everywhere...yet the first things they can get their hands on is a Model T Ford. It could be something of a disillusionment. Or compare an F22 Raptor or modern airliner with a Sopwith Camel biplane.

Part of the issue is perspective. Often some developments can't happen or theory fully exploited until other developments happen first. For example many of the things we take for granted today are the direct result of the development of the computer chip. If that hadn't happened then our world could look quite different today.

Communicators - It's a matter of miniaturization of components and power source to transmit/receive over great distances
Replicator - Probably not like it's shown on Trek, but if nanotech can be made to work than some form of materials and objects replication may be possible.
Forcefields - Again perhaps not the way shown onscreen, but there are already such things called plasma windows which are a form of forcefield. If this can be expanded then maybe you've got something.
Medical Scanners - We are developing more and more ways of seeing into the body unintrusively. First there was X-rays then we have CAT scans and MRI's and sonographs. Question is it's again a matter of miniaturization of components into smaller devices, possibly handheld and working in conjunction with larger devices.
Tricorder - We already have all kinds of sensors available to us (temperature, radiation, motion, pressure, etc) and so it's a matter of enhancing their capabilities and combining them into a portable device. Of course we will have to define what "life signs" really means. What exactly is it you're scanning for to detect life? And so some manner of medical and science tricorders can happen.
Interactive Computers - This is already well on the way in development as ever improving software and programming will allows us improving voice recognition and interaction with computers. A.I is, of course, an integral component. Make no mistake, though, that rudimentary A.I. is already all around us as computers become evermore sophisticated. No, we haven't yet reached the Data or M5 or Enterprise computer level yet, but it's likely not impossible. Read Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near and Michio Kaku's The Science Of The Impossible.
Androids - An android is essential an autonomous Robot with highly sophisticated A.I. With true A.I. and the perfection of a humanoid form robotic body then you can have an android. Read Wil McCarthy's Beyond Human.
Nanites - Nanotech is continually being developed and there are already some rudimentary nanotech products on the market if I'm not mistaken. Another excellent book is Wil McCarthy's Hacking Matter.
Flatscreen Viewers - The introduction almost a decade ago of flatscreen LCD and Plasma TVs had me thinking, "Wow, it's the bridge of the Enterprise." We've already got these things and it's simply a matter of refinement.
Disruptors - The idea of using sound waves as a weapon or deterrent isn't new. It's more a matter of what form this could take and how it could be employed.
"Phasers on stun" - A taser is an early form of stun weapon. Yet another form would be a device that can ionize the air in front of the weapon and allow an electrical charge to pass through the ionized tunnel to the target. Presto: wireless taser or stun device. I've heard of this being worked on several years ago, but I don't know if it's ever been developed. Again it's a matter of definition: what exactly happens when you stun someone? The more important issue is how to recreate the result rather than how it's depicted on TV.
Ship's Phasers - Powerful lasers already exist and some can be employed aboard aircraft. With sufficient power you could have some form of energy weapon aboard a spacecraft.

I'm sure there are other examples I'm overlooking at the moment.

 

PADDs - I can see this as a possibility. We already have tablet PCs, which in essence are a primitive form of a PADD. All that is required is for ICT technology to reach a level where a high degree of processing power, memory storage, and inputs (via a pen or even via spoken word) could be housed in such a device. Some kind of Star Trek PADD-esque device could be the standard/basic personal computer in the world, away from desktops or laptops, if ever invented.

Photon/Quantum torpedoes - I think this is some way off yet. It would require being able to convert matter to energy, which is beyond current physics thinking.

I also think communicators are a distinct possibility. We already have the telecommunications knowledge to contact anywhere in the world in an instant. As has been said, it's simply a matter of miniaturisation of the components.

 

I'd forgotten about this. I think the Apple iPod Touch and recent Apple iPad is the forerunner of what is to come. It can only get more powerful, more sophisticated and lighter.

 

Go to Bernd Schneider's site (ex astra scienta). He has a PhD in electrical engineering and discusses a lot of this, though he likes Trek.

I'm not as accomplished (just an MS in EE), but I'm quite educated in science and technology. I don't think a lot of Trek is more than technobabble (which I actually love). But who knows? I think most of it is plot-driven, for even if you consider everything to be possible in Trek, there are *many* inconsistencies.

I suggest you read Bernd's essay about "realism in science fiction." It is in his "inconsistencies" section.

 

iPADDs.

 

I think women in very short skirts and tall boots are scientifically plausible in the future. The odds of this may actually be quite good...

As for the rest...eh. Some stuff may happen long before or long after the 23rd-Century. Some stuff may never happen at all, even if we think it might be scientifically plausible today.

 

everything is impossible. at least until its possible.

 

Indeed. When it's time to railroad, you railroad.

 

If Einstein is right, there is no possible FTL railroad.

 

that's unpossible!

 

Perhaps the biggest "downer" with regard to thinking about sci-fi is the realization of how vast interstellar distances really are and how slim the prospects are for covering those distances.

Realistic sci-fi would really be centered around interplanetary travel in our own solar system and/or a generational trip to Alpha Centauri.

Science fantasy is a lot easier than science fiction.

 

Today I think we can still be prone to scientific hubris in terms of thinking we understand so much that we can automatically rule out certain things as impossible. A little more than a hundred years ago there were scientists who "proved" that physical manned flight would be impossible or that man couldn't survive going a hundred mils an hour or faster or survive going into space. Yet all of these things happened.

It's entirely possible that certain revelations in physics could occur down the road that will allow (in some form) some of the things we see in SF to be realized.

Suspended animation, or stasis, as it's shown may never happen, but perhaps some form of human hibernation will. The beginnings of this research is already happening. Some form of FTL might not be totally ruled out. And perhaps developments might arise that allow for fast relativistic travel (better than 50% light) and can take advantage of time dilation.

And it should also be noted that there are a number of SF authors who write plausible SF where their only real "gimme" is FTL of some form.

Not to stray too far off topic, but some "gimmes" in SF are necessary for the stories you want to tell. You don't really need FTL to do space war type stories, but you do need it if you want to have galactic governments with relatively immediate actions and consequences. Essentially if you want international scenarios like we see on Earth today played out on an interstellar or intergalactic scale then you need some form of FTL. Otherwise you have to do what some SF authors have done and have very long lived races with events spanning hundreds to thousands of years. That works in SF literature, but could be a hard sell for television audiences.

I think it is possible to do far future space adventure with a more credible air to it scientifically, but you'd have to be clever about how you do it.

Candidly I find most near future space adventure stuck in the solar system usually boring. There simply isn't enough novelty in it, and much of "sci-fi's" appeal is in seeing unfamiliar things.

Regarding wormholes it would seem there are different ways of approaching the subject. In Trek wormholes are depicted as something you can physically pass through intact and possibly even pause inside enroute to your destination. In Stargate you pass through though the wormhole as a matter/energy stream which is reformed upon exiting. In literature I've heard of wormholes used simply to transmit data, which is closer to the Stargate version. Whatever the version this may be a somewhat more credible way of depicting FTL travel.

 

^^^

I don't think manned flight was "proven" to be impossible based on a first principles understanding of the then-known Newtonian physics. It seemed unlikely and was predicted by many laypeople to be "unnatural" (and hence not possible). But it's different from modern physics' discounting FTL travel. As far as we know, it *is* not possible.

But science has changed rapidly over the past 150 years. Chemistry, for instance, was practically invented in the 19th century. And of course Relativity Theory and quantum mechanics are only about 70--90 years old. And no one that I know of predicted the revolutionary invention of the transistor, which has allowed physicists far better tools with which to evaluate their theories.

If the next 100 years progress as rapidly and radically as the last 100, with not only amazing inventions but complete paradigm shifts in the understanding of physics, who knows what will happen?

But given the current — and incomplete — knowledge of physics, *most* of Trek's tech is not feasible, at least the more interesting ones. Trek is "fiction in science" — not "science in fiction".

 

If the theory of particle entanglement can ever be exploited for practical purposes I think it could have far reaching consequences. It's remotely possible you could have an instantaneous communication system from it. If so then instantaneously communicating across light-years in realtime could happen.

Could tachyons (if they exist) ever be used to transmit information? If so then you'd have another version of FTL communication.

These are cases of there's no proof that such things do not or cannot exist...yet.

Or I ain't got a freakin' clue what I'm talking about.

Manned FTL is a whole other issue and one I think would require something truly revolutionary in regard to physics.

 

Warp9 summed it up really well. There are indeed some aspects to Star Trek gadgetry that we already have or are well on our way to getting. Clearly we have done miniaturization even better in some respects. Those TOS tricorders had mini CRT's in them. We have LCD panels. Although our phones are smaller than the communicators and more capable (touch screen manipulation and miniature Internet enabled applications), they are limited by range. Those hand held communicators didn't need a network of satellites and cellphone towers to operate.

The iPad is definitely much like a PADD, perhaps even more sophisticated in some respects. I don't know how flexible the PADD's are... many of them seemed manufactured for certain types of data displays, not instantly reconfigurable.


But I keep coming back to energy... which leads into this:

Yep... even if you weigh in the possibility for faster-than-light travel, the distances we'd need to cross to get to habitable worlds are still unrealistic from a human lifespan perspective. It's a sad, sad truth... If we do indeed manage to survive through the stretch of the Earth's ability to sustain human life, we'll have to find some way to either terraform Mars or Europa. Leaving the solar system would be... way too impractical, given the estimated future technology and resources at hand.

 

Well, I don't know much about it myself, but here is what I've gathered...

The problem with quantum entanglement is that even though the effect appears to be instantaneous (there are some physicists who hold out for old-fashioned hidden variables), one cannot (according to what I've read) use those instantaneous effects to communicate information that would result in a causality violation at the level of relativity theory.

Basically, you know that if a particle is "spun up", that its sister particle will be found to be "spun down", but you can't control which way it will go, so you couldn't send a message using spin measurements.

With regard to tachyons, you've already noted serious reasons to doubt this as a possibility. You would have to establish that they exist and then find a way to emit these wonderful particles that travel faster than light. We might as well say "Winged horses, if they exist, might be used to fly over the English Channel."

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Limits to Growth
vs.
Romantic Induction

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We've experienced quite a bit of amazing progress in science over the centuries. The 20th century was a technological explosion.

From this trend we've inducted that science and technology will continue climbing higher and higher at the same exponential rate.

The same reasoning, however, led some of us to believe that the stock market would continue growing and growing forever without a crash.

The problem is that the picture of physics we have is much more complete than it was in the 19th century. And the discoveries we made in the 19th century were rather cheap and easy - for a couple cents worth of copper wire connected to a dynamo, you could discover the secrets of electro-magnetism. Today's science projects cost more and more, but they only hope to add a little bit to what we already know. We've got, for example, a $4.5 billion science experiment underway in Europe (the CERN Large Hadron Collider) which is designed to find a few really tiny particles we haven't been able to observe in the past.

In the 1960s we were anticipating flying cars. We're still waiting. Indeed, most of our new consumer product "advances" are just variations of connecting a microprocessor with an illuminated screen. We've got gadgets, but we don't have warp drive.

If we cannot, however, simply use the lazy induction that "science will always make radical forward progress", this does not mean that we should fall prey to equally silly idea that "Science has figured it all out. There are no big surprises left."

We cannot really make a justified projection off of either of these thoughts.

If we limit ourselves to what we know, and what is realistic in the foreseeable future (which is all we can really lay claim to with any confidence), however, we are forced to conclude that we presently have no reason to expect that most of what we see in Star Trek will be in our future. This isn't to say that it won't, but to observe the limits of our vantage point.