How does red matter stop a supernova?

[Captain Robert April]

Sounds like it was plotted by a five-year-old.

 

[lennier1]

I always thought the black hole just couldn´t absorb all the bullshit contained in that cheap plot device and simply overloaded?

 

[Chaos Descending]

I guess we could ask someone from 1609 how an LCD Television works too, and he'd have as much of a clue about that as we do about how Red Matter stops a supernova.

 

[Captain Robert April]

EXCEPT, we happen to know a few things about supernovas, what they do, and a pretty good idea of what they CAN'T do. Enough to conclude that red matter bears a very close resemblence to a certain brown matter.

 

[David cgc]

I guess we could ask someone from 1609 how an LCD Television works too, and he'd have as much of a clue about that as we do about how Red Matter stops a supernova.

"But why don't you call it an etheric window? 'TV?' Do you take us for slack-jawed fools, that you must dumb-down your technology for us?"

 

[Vance]

Nice try.. but there's no reason to believe that basic physics will change in two hundred year's time. Our understanding, maybe... but not reality itself. The 'red matter' is complete bullshit. Sorry. It's a deux ex machina that embarasses even The Genesis Project.

 

[Brandonv]

Here's what I think on red matter, the vortex it creates, and the Hobus supernova.

Basically, the Hobus supernova was NOT the cause of the potential galaxy-destroying wavefront...at least, not by itself. Rather, the star was sitting on a right smack on a spatial/subspace/temporal rift. The star's explosion was kind of like blowing up a nuke in a fault line--which may not cause that sort of effect in real life, granted, but the imagery works. The energy of the supernova screwed up the rift it was sitting on, and THAT is what allowed the explosion to propagate much further, and with much greater force, than it should've been able to do in that amount of time had it been just the supernova itself. You may even have had energy coming out of the rift itself, adding further fuel to the fire.

Enter red matter. I don't think that what we see is all there is to red matter, because it must operate on extradimensional levels. Whatever its nature is, it's capable of doing the exact opposite of the rift I described, and therefore being able to reverse the explosion if deployed quickly enough and in the right spot. It also demonstrates the ability to at least temporarily open what may be colloquially referred to as a black hole, but is in fact something other than that (despite having intense gravitational forces and an "event horizon" at least in the sense that there's a point where, once crossed, a ship is forced into free fall into the rift and cannot hit escape velocity)--it's a spatiotemporal rift that, instead of exploding outward, pulls inward.

Yes, it's convoluted...but it's the only way to get things to make sense.

Good explanation, and I agree that the black hole must have been something different than a normal black hole. I like the idea of the explosion being a subspace anomaly. Maybe the Hobus star had some kind of super rare element in it?

As for Spocks narration about a black hole sucking up a supernova, maybe Spock was just simplifying everything as much as possible in order to explain it to Kirk quickly?

 

[Gepard]

How does red matter stop a supernova?

Very well, thank you.

 

[Captain Robert April]

While you're at it, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?

 

[Gepard]

By devoting your energy to more productive outlets than debating a plot device in a movie.

Oh, sorry. I meant practice, practice practice.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Here's what I think on red matter, the vortex it creates, and the Hobus supernova.

Basically, the Hobus supernova was NOT the cause of the potential galaxy-destroying wavefront...at least, not by itself. Rather, the star was sitting on a right smack on a spatial/subspace/temporal rift. The star's explosion was kind of like blowing up a nuke in a fault line--which may not cause that sort of effect in real life, granted, but the imagery works. The energy of the supernova screwed up the rift it was sitting on, and THAT is what allowed the explosion to propagate much further, and with much greater force, than it should've been able to do in that amount of time had it been just the supernova itself. You may even have had energy coming out of the rift itself, adding further fuel to the fire.

Enter red matter. I don't think that what we see is all there is to red matter, because it must operate on extradimensional levels. Whatever its nature is, it's capable of doing the exact opposite of the rift I described, and therefore being able to reverse the explosion if deployed quickly enough and in the right spot. It also demonstrates the ability to at least temporarily open what may be colloquially referred to as a black hole, but is in fact something other than that (despite having intense gravitational forces and an "event horizon" at least in the sense that there's a point where, once crossed, a ship is forced into free fall into the rift and cannot hit escape velocity)--it's a spatiotemporal rift that, instead of exploding outward, pulls inward.

Yes, it's convoluted...but it's the only way to get things to make sense.

Good explanation, and I agree that the black hole must have been something different than a normal black hole. I like the idea of the explosion being a subspace anomaly. Maybe the Hobus star had some kind of super rare element in it?

Unlikely unless something extradimensional has managed to bleed through the subspace anomaly that I propose. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure the heavier elements can exist in significant quantities within a star.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Nice try.. but there's no reason to believe that basic physics will change in two hundred year's time. Our understanding, maybe... but not reality itself. The 'red matter' is complete bullshit. Sorry. It's a deux ex machina that embarasses even The Genesis Project.

Do you know what Red Matter is or what it does?

Alchemists in 1609 thought that they had a pretty good grasp on how the universe worked too.

Before Einstein, Newton was the be-all-end-all of physics. Then quantum mechanics, then (maybe) string theory, or brane theory. How about that Higgs Boson? Magnetic Monopoles?

 

[Captain Robert April]

We know what a supernova is and what it does.

 

[Vance]

well, we're just a bunch of tech-geeks.. we can't possibly compete with the science and technical wisdom of a Hollywood Writer!

 

[BolianAuthor]

Wow... Nero was the last of the Romulan Empire? What happened to all the crews of all the offworld Warbirds, and the Romulan Ambassadors? I mean, surely the Romulan civilization need not die with the world...

I mean, can't all the Warbirds band together, and form some sort of ragtag fugi-- ooohhhh... right. NM, then.

 

[lennier1]

Do you know what Red Matter is or what it does?

A MacGuffin some writer pulled out of his ass.

 

[Myasishchev]

well, we're just a bunch of tech-geeks.. we can't possibly compete with the science and technical wisdom of a Hollywood Writer!

I suspect Orci and Kurtzman know what a supernova is too, but for some reason decided the science didn't matter. Receipts have sort of vindicated them, the jerks.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American consumer.

They wanted the mass audience, well, there ya are. A drooling band of misfits that are easily distracted by shiny objects and loud noises.

Good luck building on the franchise with that kind of new audience.

 

[Tiberius]

I always figured that the supernova was a big epanding thing, and Spock was planning on using the red matter to create a blackhole inside it (the aforementioned punch-a-hole-through-it) and use the black hole's gravity to stop the expansion.

Not really scientifically credible, but it's a movie, not real life. And if we're willing to accept faster than light travel, then why not this as well?

 

[BolianAuthor]

The really sick part of all of this is that there is still a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, which WILL destroy it, eventually... and you can't just toss some bullshit red matter from your ass into it, and expect it to go away.