The Bad Science of The Next Generation
- Thread starter TommyR01D
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Seriously, "subatomic bacteria", is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. I mean it's not just wrong. It's idiotic!!
Only an imbecile who knows nothing about anything remotely scientific could come up with something like that. Yet those two words made it to the script! were read and reread, approved, the actor said them, and it wasn't cut!!!
That guy doesn't know the very basics of physics, chemistry, biology!! And yet he's been chosen to be a sci. fi. writer!!
I mean, he's all fi.!! There isn't a subatomic particle of sci. in that moron!
Only an imbecile who knows nothing about anything remotely scientific could come up with something like that. Yet those two words made it to the script! were read and reread, approved, the actor said them, and it wasn't cut!!!
That guy doesn't know the very basics of physics, chemistry, biology!! And yet he's been chosen to be a sci. fi. writer!!
I mean, he's all fi.!! There isn't a subatomic particle of sci. in that moron!
I’ll take that over a black hole with mass under a pound instantly sucking in an entire planet.
The trouble with having lots of non-humanoid aliens is that the audience will have trouble empathizing with a creature without relatable facial expressions, and writers will have trouble creating drama with characters who can’t have sex with the other characters.
Truly non- humanoid aliens work better in “Hard sci-fi” than they do in space operas.
The trouble with having lots of non-humanoid aliens is that the audience will have trouble empathizing with a creature without relatable facial expressions, and writers will have trouble creating drama with characters who can’t have sex with the other characters.
Truly non- humanoid aliens work better in “Hard sci-fi” than they do in space operas.
A black hole of that mass would have an event horizon of a radius of approximately 1 divided by ten to the twenty-fifth power meters, IE much much smaller than say an electron!!
I don't see how such a black hole could suck anything at all!! I mean it would suck as a black hole, definitely!
A black hole of that mass would have an event horizon of a radius of approximately 1 divided by ten to the twenty-fifth power meters, IE much much smaller than say an electron!!
I don't see how such a black hole could suck anything at all!! I mean it would suck as a black hole, definitely!
Hence, the stupidity of red matter.
Hence, the stupidity of red matter.
It's even more stupid than that. Since red matter is not even a black hole to begin with... it's "something" that when "activated" , turns "things" into black holes, although those things obviously don't include the rocket or whatever you put your red matter into. I mean the red waits till it's inside a planet before it does anything.
But that's only one problem among... countless!!! I mean how do you drill a hole that goes to the center of the Earth when most of it is in a liquid state!!! I mean how do those idiots think matter works? Do they think the magma will gently move aside to let the probe move through?? Seriously!!!
To be frank, intelligent design is basically inevitable in a universe (or just Milky Way) that evolves sentience at the nine billion years mark already. From looking at the one example we know, we can already tell a lot about sentience: it would stop at nothing to do intelligent design! If even remotely humanlike life evolved at an early stage like it did as per "The Chase", it would inevitably engage in a vanity project to seed the galaxy in its image. And we have absolutely no reason to think it would fail.
Also, we would have no reason not to consider these folks gods, or God - given their humanoid origins, they would fit the bill by default. The one thing unlikely to happen would be for God to have the slightest interest in things like "morals", or how this galactic offspring fared in general, as long as it existed. Or in "afterlife", although that, too, could no doubt be arranged if this God so wished. We know mind transference is a thing in Trek; what God would stop short of utilizing it for sending dead people to Heaven or Hell for the shits and giggles, at least on occasion?
If our reality has no ID and no God, it only serves as proof that there is no older sapience around.
GIven one of these abilities, the rest would naturally follow, though. It may be bad science in the sense radio was bad science in the early 1800s. Or it may be bad science, period. But "science, period" seldom pans out.
...But again a direct consequence of Trek, where things can be shrunken. If a runabout with humans aboard can become smaller, then so can bacteria. It's just curious that there are no more consequences to this, is all: science fiction is all about the lemmas, and how the writers keep those from proliferating.
That was the premise, though. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it, other than the heroes' insistence of illogically or at least simplistically referring to it as a "black hole".
What is more interesting there is the properties of these black holes and of the red matter being seemingly all across the map. A single drop delivered in a vial into an expanding superhypernova wavefront consumes that wavefront, with or without creating an immense gravity well (and somehow saves the galaxy). A single drop delivered in a similar vial into a rock planet collapses that planet into an invisible dot while also creating an immense gravity well. But a barrelful being released inside a big starship only slightly bends said ship while creating a fairly modest gravity well. One would expect more punch from the collapsing of that barrel...
Applying identifiable faces and body curves and humanlike sex habits to a snail or a spider is a breeze, though. All scifi shows do that, to lesser or greater degree.
Dunno about that. Many if not most of the aliens of TOS (or, say, Space:1999) were utterly nonhumanoid, consisting of optical effects only. Truly nonhuman aliens, ones that have inhuman motivations and ideas regardless of body shape, are the true lithmus test - and those generally only work in literature, not in visual media.
Timo Saloniemi
Of course “That was the premise”. And the premise is bad science. To me at least, it’s much worse to get real science wrong than it is to make up fake science. Black hole gravity follows the same rules of mass and distance from the center of mass as any other matter. You can just get much closer to the center of mass.
We haven’t seen a lot of hard sci-fi successfully translated to screen. But there’s no reason they couldn’t have something like the Piggies from Xenocide and have it work.
We haven’t seen a lot of hard sci-fi successfully translated to screen. But there’s no reason they couldn’t have something like the Piggies from Xenocide and have it work.
Yet how is red matter "real science" as opposed to "fake science"? We already see that the only slight connection to "real", the mention of black holes, in fact refers to holes through time. So there really is no connection.
...Especially considering that black holes in Trek no longer are "our" black holes anyway: Decker said as much in ST:TMP!
Speaking of terminology, no scifi show uses either "nova" or "supernova" correctly. But in those cases, the bad science is ours. The terminology really makes no sense ITRW, and the scifi shows actually have it much better.
Timo Saloniemi
...Especially considering that black holes in Trek no longer are "our" black holes anyway: Decker said as much in ST:TMP!
Speaking of terminology, no scifi show uses either "nova" or "supernova" correctly. But in those cases, the bad science is ours. The terminology really makes no sense ITRW, and the scifi shows actually have it much better.
Timo Saloniemi
You can find on Earth that kind of truly inhuman motivations. Take the fire ants for example. They put the survival of their species above everything else. When faced with the flooding of their habitat, they hook their bodies together in order to form rafts on which a few of them will put the eggs. The ants forming the raft die of course but the species has a great chance to endure!
I mean you wouldn't see that kind of collective sacrifice in humans for example. I mean individuals sure but for one parent who gives their life for their children, you'll find one that will get drunk and beat the crap out of them. So the behavior of the fire ants is definitely different.
I mean you wouldn't see that kind of collective sacrifice in humans for example. I mean individuals sure but for one parent who gives their life for their children, you'll find one that will get drunk and beat the crap out of them. So the behavior of the fire ants is definitely different.
I'm getting Doctor Who flashbacks now - both the nanogenes (subatomic healing robots) in Series 1 and the "Impossible!" black hole in Series 2.
Not if you're a hard core materialist. They can't stand any conclusions like that.
GIven one of these abilities, the rest would naturally follow, though. It may be bad science in the sense radio was bad science in the early 1800s. Or it may be bad science, period. But "science, period" seldom pans out.[/QUOTE]
True, the term "science fiction" automatically cancels out any idea of "bad science" but the funny thing is, even in science fiction, there's a crazy credibility thing going on with fans. It's irresistible.
I mean there's a difference between science fiction and science bullshit!! Science fiction is trying to figure out how things would change if some things we still don't know about were true or techniques that we still don't master were perfectly controlled, that sort of thing. Science bullshit is when you have people who don't know the first thing about today's science and are therefore reduced to pull things out of their asses come up with crap that would shame a middle school student.
Bad science/tech in TNG always brings me to the holodeck. I can accept a warp drive, transporters, phasers, shields, etc., but not the holodeck.
When you see it "dormant" it is a solid room of finite dimensions, perhaps fifteen to twenty feet square with a grid of, I assume, holograph projectors on the ceiling, walls, and floor. Now I will accept that it can project an image of a scene, let's say a forest, that would appear to extend for miles in any direction, and that you could turn around and look up and down and that scene would appear perfectly naturally. But then you see people walk through that scene! ...for hundreds of yards! Logic says you would take about five steps and bump into the wall. Or does the holodeck allow you to walk through walls? ...and through the hull of the ship ...and stand outside the ship while it's moving faster than light ...all the while it looks like you are in the woods. Remarkable technology.
The alternative is that the holodeck does not function physically but mentally. Instead of creating the scene in that room it creates it in your mind; instead of you walking you merely think you are moving. Such mind control is possible in the Star Trek universe, remember the Talosians. But every time it is encountered the humans are astonished by it, so it is unlikely they have created a holodeck with such power. Especially since they get dressed appropriately for the holodeck scene ("I am NOT a merry man!"), totally unnecessary if the experience is completely mental.
When you see it "dormant" it is a solid room of finite dimensions, perhaps fifteen to twenty feet square with a grid of, I assume, holograph projectors on the ceiling, walls, and floor. Now I will accept that it can project an image of a scene, let's say a forest, that would appear to extend for miles in any direction, and that you could turn around and look up and down and that scene would appear perfectly naturally. But then you see people walk through that scene! ...for hundreds of yards! Logic says you would take about five steps and bump into the wall. Or does the holodeck allow you to walk through walls? ...and through the hull of the ship ...and stand outside the ship while it's moving faster than light ...all the while it looks like you are in the woods. Remarkable technology.
The alternative is that the holodeck does not function physically but mentally. Instead of creating the scene in that room it creates it in your mind; instead of you walking you merely think you are moving. Such mind control is possible in the Star Trek universe, remember the Talosians. But every time it is encountered the humans are astonished by it, so it is unlikely they have created a holodeck with such power. Especially since they get dressed appropriately for the holodeck scene ("I am NOT a merry man!"), totally unnecessary if the experience is completely mental.
