Have you tried turning the Star Trek off and on again?
Spoilers A list of bad scientific errors in Discovery
- Thread starter ISS_Einstein
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Yes. I even unplugged on the cables and got one of the magic cans of air.
I'm not even a fan of attempts at scientific accuracy in the novels. It seems to me anyone focusing on inaccuracy as a complaint to be rectified is missing what I at least see as the point of the show.
If we were going to insist on scientific accuracy we lost the way pretty much around the time the Talosians started employing psychic powers or the transporter whisked people off to their planet, not to mention the very fact of FTL.
Scientific accuracy just isn't what trek does, never has been and nor should it start trying now.
The last episode was the first and only time on DSC that EPS conduits were mentioned. They were being overloaded when they came into contact with the mycilial networkNot necessarily bad science within the context of the Trek universe, but I wish they would cut down on the references to EPS conduits. It's just so B&B era.
Kor
This will happen when someone remarks "I'm glad we installed those capacitors and breakers to handle power fluctuations in all the consoles. Someone could have been hurt."
There are some laws in science so fundamental that they will likely never be overturned, even over the span of an eons-long civilization - such as the conservation of energy/matter - this is the problem with the first example in the thread (the metal gravity generator) - its getting even the basics wrong.
You can do remarkable things with basic physics - move entire planets the size of Jupiter by igniting huge fusion-torches running off the hydrogen in their atmosphere(!!!) You can build a shell around an entire star and harness it's energy(!!!) You can have civilizations that survive for a trillion years by rationing the energy of a long-lived red dwarf or black hole(!!!) But there needs to be an understanding of what makes sense and what does not; the show sometimes seems to display it, and other times not. For anyone interested in exploring science fiction concepts, I recommend Isaac Arthur:
You can work around things. This is what Arthur C Clarke meant with his famous magic quote. Not that the laws of physics are changeable, but that you can find loopholes - you can conjure a "burning bush" with a hidden infra-red laser! That is what advanced species like the Q have done in all likelihood. Maybe you could steal matter/energy from another universe to cheat conservation of mass - but to create matter or energy from knowhere (I dunno, playing with a quantum membrane or something...) and violate the law - if it is even possible, it would be a godlike power that would render your setting incomprehensible to audiences. The actual law remains true for all practical purposes, and a lesser civilization like the UFP circumventing it would really destroy the internal consistency of the setting.
Specific energy of fuel sources
Antimatter - Matter/Antimatter annihilation - 89,875,517,874 MJ/kg
Deuterium-tritium - Nuclear fusion - 338,000,000 MJ/kg
Uranium-235 - Nuclear fission - 144,000,000 MJ/kg
Plutonium 238 - Nuclear decay - 2,239,000 MJ/kg
Gasoline - Chemical - 46.4 MJ/kg
Coal - Chemical - 30 MJ/kg
Gunpowder - Chemical - 4.7–11.3 MJ/kg
Alkaline battery - Electrochemical - 0.48 MJ/kg
A general understanding of the energy requirements of things is also necessary in sci-fi - you can't power a phaser with an internal combustion engine. People coming out of school should have a decent idea of this. We don't know how much power it would take to "warp space", but Star Trek assumes an antimatter fuel source. Circumventing some laws would probably require like an entire solar system's annual output of power - or multiple stars - or even a galaxy. This is where the Kardashev scale comes in:
Civilizations
Type 1 (can harness all energy falling upon a single planet from it's star, or equivalent)
Type 2 (can harness all energy emitted by a single star, or equivalent)
Type 3 (can harness all energy emitted by a single galaxy, or equivalent)
Earth today would be a Type 0.5 or something - basically type 0. Star Trek or sci-fi fans are generally some of the best informed amongst the public, so it surprised me when a couple of things were misunderstood. The mushroom issue is complicated by how Prototaxities is a theoretical genus for an ancient fungus, but a 'genus' is not a mere moniker, as I understand it as a biologist with a bachelor's degree - for one thing all Earth species are related, so if there were an ancient Prototaxities on Earth, it would make the spore drive native to the planet Earth's specific ecosystem - it is intended to be the formal scientific language for an actual taxonomic group of related species - it is not a piece of slang, or an Anglicization of a place name (Romulus, Remus, Beijing, Peking, Mumbai, Bombay).
Except Star Trek has already done that. This is not new. Perhaps not on this scale, which may underline the objection, but it is not new.
Also, Star Trek has gotten scientific nomenclature wrong for so long that's part of its own world building now.
Could you provide an unambiguous example?
- Repicators convert energy into mass, they don't create something from nothing.
- Voyager's stupid batmobile armor from Endgame is probably meant to be replicated, or holographic.
- Q, for all we know, moves mass and energy around; though there would be no way to tell.
- Same goes for Giant Green Space Hands and the like.
I still haven’t gotten an answer to why space rocks = FTL. Can someone answer me? Einstein???
Self-replicating mines spring immediately to my mind.
The self-replicating mines were not Star Trek's finest hour, and I'm not defending them - I wouldn't have chosen such an obvious plot device - but the fact that they contain replicators already sorts out half of the problem. Now you just need a replenishable energy source. The wormhole itself perhaps? This is the explanation in the Technical Manual:
So, zero point energy, like Stargate Atlantis, is what Herman Zimmerman, Doug Drexler & Rick Sternbach reasoned. It's better than nothing I guess.
The replication system is further explained as well. Each mine has initially only 1/65 of the material stored in them for a single replacement mine. Replicators however transfer material to one another where it is needed in the field through networking. As stated in DS9: "A Time to Stand", the neighbor of a detonated mine does seem to replace the lost mine in the end, material however comes from at least 65 different mines. As stored material begins to run out the mines have a zero-point extraction system for matter replenishment.
Of violation of the conservation of energy? Vaporising phasers. Where does the matter of a 200lb guy go? If it were converted to energy, there should be a devastating explosion. If it were literally vaporising, that is superheated into gases, the heat output would be incredible - you'd fry your own team. What it appears happens is that they briefly glow, then disappear. Magic.
Or the hundreds of exact replicas of that ecosystem we've seen throughout the galaxy the last fifty years.
You simply can't get away with applying even basic rules of science to Star Trek because it immediately starts to crumble. It's a fictional construct, roughly internally consistent, to tell a space story. It's basic technological ideas are contrary to core physical laws (uncertainty principle, relativity, transmission of EM in and out of the galaxy, conservation of energy/matter, etc etc), but we just accept them because they help tell the story we are watching. What you're doing continues to be very selectively applying conditions only to Discovery in order to make it appear unusually "bad at science". It's exactly as bad at science as not only other Trek, but other soft sci-fi adventure programmes. These tend to dominate because realistic space travel shows are very hard to make interesting and fast paced.
Had we applied such high standards, 99% of the genre would not hold up to such scrutiny, including TOS. It’s called science FICTION. We’re supposed to take it with a grain of salt.
Nitpicking the science in Trek is like Spock trying to comprehend the meaning of “Row Row Row Your Boat” instead of sing along with it.
“It’s a show, you green blooded Vulcan!”
Again, why are space rocks more believable as a means to FTL while space mushrooms aren’t?
Nitpicking the science in Trek is like Spock trying to comprehend the meaning of “Row Row Row Your Boat” instead of sing along with it.
“It’s a show, you green blooded Vulcan!”
Again, why are space rocks more believable as a means to FTL while space mushrooms aren’t?
TL;DR seriously man.
Can you accept starships going woosh and phasers pew pew in a vacuum? If so, then you're ok with Star Trek being scientifically inaccurate, which it has been from day one
My biggest complaint of “wow this science is way off” was during INTO DARKNESS when the Enterprise, parked next to the moon, began to get pulled by Earth’s gravity to the point people were falling SIDEWAYS.
It’s about as dumb as Mariel Hemmingway surviving the vacuum of space in SUPERMAN IV, but it doesn’t ruin the movie for me because I felt it had more issues than gravity.
It’s about as dumb as Mariel Hemmingway surviving the vacuum of space in SUPERMAN IV, but it doesn’t ruin the movie for me because I felt it had more issues than gravity.
The Kelvin movies dialed up the junk science quite a lot. See for example Spock watching Vulcan's destruction from another system with his naked eye. If any Trek property deserves the title of worst science, it's probably JJTrek.
True. That never really registered for me because Trek had already committed that like in GENERATIONS where Soran and Picard witness the sun going dark immediately after the fusion probe hit it.
Funnily, Abrams would do that again in THE FORCE AWAKENS.
