How does red matter stop a supernova?

[Timo]

I hope that's enough

That's great! Many thanks, Zaku!

Spock Prime's explanation leaves open all sorts of possible timetables for the disastrous event. Such as, the star explodes and is found out to be expanding in such a way that it will launch a chain reaction of novae; Vulcans try to work out a remedy that would protect some individual star systems from the inevitable; the development takes several decades; and when it succeeds, at the very last minute, even a superfast ship cannot delived the protective solution to Romulus in time.

Wow... Nero was the last of the Romulan Empire?

Well, hardly. But he was the one in a position to avenge himself and his planet upon Spock, and later upon the other "guilty parties". Might as well call himself the Last Mohican and act accordingly.

I wonder what sort of a place he could have carved for himself in the 23rd century Romulan Star Empire if his plan had worked out...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Traveller]

I wonder what sort of a place he could have carved for himself in the 23rd century Romulan Star Empire if his plan had worked out...

Timo Saloniemi

Well, if he had returned to the Empire with the red matter superweapon instead of trying to blow up the Federation worlds on his own, we could have some kick-ass action in the next movie.

But apart from the destruction of Vulcan (and I doubt this will be even mentioned) there will be no consequences to Nero's actions in the next movie. In another thread I wondered how the Klingons could not have upgraded their fleet with the Narada's technology, seeing as they had it parked in orbit for 25 years. If the comics are considered canon in this case, the Borg tech didn't give them access to any technology- so no consequences from that corner, either.

On the whole, that's pretty disappointing.

 

[Kemaiku]

All depictions of the star in both the comic and film even after the it has apparently gone 'nova' show it still intact but violently churning, its possible what they call a nova in the film is actually some form of violent CME that somehow went superluminal and acted like a subspace shockwave carrying the stellar material, and the material of every planet and cloud/nebula it passed through, as shown in the comic.

 

[QuasarVM]

What does it matter?

 

[Chaos Descending]

We know what a supernova is and what it does.

And?

What does X + 5 equal? You know what "5" is, what's "X"? If you don't know what "X" is, you can't rule out any possible answer to the equation.

Yes, it's just a stupid Movie MacGuffin. What I find funny is that 21st Century science layman are pooh-poohing as impossible some fictional things from one of the most brilliant scientists of the 23rd/24th century.

 

[Vance]

Chaos, the big difference is that this MacGuffin is just a stupid MacGuffin.. there was never any thought given to how it works, or even if it could, because the audiences are expected to be too dumb to care. We're back to a 'wizard did it' as major plot points ... sadly because the audiences, apparently, including a lot of Trek fans, really are too dumb to care.

 

[Captain Robert April]

 

[Chaos Descending]

Chaos, the big difference is that this MacGuffin is just a stupid MacGuffin.. there was never any thought given to how it works

And neither should there have been. That's my point.

It's meant to be unexplainable and exotic future science.

Personally, I wish that technology in Trek was a lot more like technology in Star Wars... it's simply there, and it works. I don't want to know how the transporter works, I just want to know that it gets someone from A to B with a quickness.

I wish Trek (modern) were more plot and character driven and less technobabble driven. But since they did introduce this silly McGuffin, there's very little to be gained from trying to figure out how it works.

 

[iguana_tonante]

You know, the red matter/supernova/black hole shenanigan did bother me a bit (being an astrophysicist and all), because what we saw on screen was definitively different from what we heard from the dialogs.

The supernova was most definitively not a supernova, the black hole did not behave in any way we know it should have, and the red matter is just a big fat question mark.

However, this kind of comments:

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

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

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.

make me happy they did.

More seriously, a couple more thing.

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 agree they did not used the terms correctly, but I can understand their reasons. They are short, simple, well known words of astrophysics, and they convey the right general meaning to the general audience: supernova = big-ass flaming explosion; black hole = super-sucking whirlwind of death. In a popular science magazine (let alone a professional journal) they will be fired, but in a blockbusters I think they made the right call. Personally, I'm glad they did not conjured more serious-sounding, yet still non-nonsensical, names like "exponentially increasing subspace shock wave" or "super-gravitational quantum singularity" to describe what we saw. Leave this to fan-fiction writers, and by the way I love Nerys Ghemor's explanation: excellent thinking.

Agreed. "Red matter" sounds like the sort of jargon a real future organization might use, as opposed to "artificial quantum singularity". The latter is too close to somebody today saying "horseless carriage" when meaning a car!

Absolutely. Also, "black hole" or "big bang" are hardly exoteric science-y speak, too, yet they are used daily by actual astronomers.

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.

Actually, not really. The central black hole is no threat to the galaxy. As the current understanding goes, all galaxies have a super-massive black hole at their center, and it's actually instrumental to the formation of the galaxy.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I think that had they actually taken the time to explain, in the movie, something like what I proposed, people may still have been skeptical, but we wouldn't see the same degree of vitriol that we are in this thread. Failing to explain it was a missed opportunity, in my opinion.

 

[Vance]

Depdends on the explanation. Compare 'red matter', which sounds like a Star Trek version of the M&M Cancer scare, with the Genesis Project. You don't need technobabble, you just need something believable.

A little vial of magic liquid that can cause a star to go nova, but can be held and tossed around? ehhh....

Besides, would have it been a problem to have a nova that was actually a nova? Would have it changed the plot points at all? Not one bit. What we got was junk science wrapped up in gloss, and everyone loved the gloss so much that they'll defend the junk science religiously.. in a Star Trek Tech Forum of all places, where people really should know better.

 

[Timo]

What is this "knowing better" business? It doesn't seem people here even realize that "nova" and "supernova" are completely unrelated phenomena and certainly cannot be used interchangeably even in casual talk.

The idea that a supernova could cause widespread interstellar havoc is well founded in today's science. There's nothing wrong with using a supernova as one's mechanism for a doomsday scenario. Further, it should only be expected that advanced cultures in Star Trek be able to cope with such things, or then perish. The mighty T'Kon perished; the late 24th century Feds apparently had some ideas on how to do better. As they should, because that's a matter of survival.

The exact mechanism of fighting supernova-based domino chains of destruction is left largely open in Spock Prime's description of the events. Possibly the calamity in question here involved the supernova remnant hitting and igniting further stars, and Spock was on his way to drop red matter in the local star of Romulus to stop it from being susceptible to the domino effect. Or whatever. It's a plausible Star Trek threat, and it plausibly requires and deserves a countermeasure.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

No one is complaining about the supernova, really.. it's the red matter that's patently absurd.

 

[Ronald Held]

The physics of supernovae in 4 dimensions is fairly well know.
The problem is the use of the superspace component to destroy everything outward, regardless of any energy considerations. Is that any worse than the use of Red matter to contain and convert/divert the expansion in a wormhole?
How well do we accept the Trilithium effect in stars?

 

[Captain Robert April]

Chaos, the big difference is that this MacGuffin is just a stupid MacGuffin.. there was never any thought given to how it works

And neither should there have been. That's my point.

It's meant to be unexplainable and exotic future science.

Personally, I wish that technology in Trek was a lot more like technology in Star Wars... it's simply there, and it works. I don't want to know how the transporter works, I just want to know that it gets someone from A to B with a quickness.

I wish Trek (modern) were more plot and character driven and less technobabble driven. But since they did introduce this silly McGuffin, there's very little to be gained from trying to figure out how it works.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The physics of supernovae in 4 dimensions is fairly well know.
The problem is the use of the superspace component to destroy everything outward, regardless of any energy considerations.

Is this really anything new? Just the explosion of a Klingon moon knocked the shit out of a starship dozens of light years away... that's TREK physics at work. By that exact same paradigm, a genuine supernova explosion could easily pulverize an entire galaxy unless somebody does something about it.

How well do we accept the Trilithium effect in stars?

Let alone the fact that the "halting of all nuclear fusion" can create a shockwave that can vaporize every planet in a good-sized solar system?

 

[lennier1]

The physics of supernovae in 4 dimensions is fairly well know.
The problem is the use of the superspace component to destroy everything outward, regardless of any energy considerations.

Is this really anything new? Just the explosion of a Klingon moon knocked the shit out of a starship dozens of light years away... that's TREK physics at work. By that exact same paradigm, a genuine supernova explosion could easily pulverize an entire galaxy unless somebody does something about it.

At least that could still be explained with a subspace shockwave from an antimatter power plant that powered the whole mining operation. We all know that Klingons don't do anything only halfway.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ "Explained" is probably too strong a word there, especially since matter-antimatter reactions aren't known to produce subspace shockwaves in and of themselves.

Suffice to say, whatever was present on Praxis also could have been present in the Supernova. Maybe that supernova is an ultimate after-effect of Soran's trilithium weapon?

 

[iguana_tonante]

Is this really anything new? Just the explosion of a Klingon moon knocked the shit out of a starship dozens of light years away... that's TREK physics at work. By that exact same paradigm, a genuine supernova explosion could easily pulverize an entire galaxy unless somebody does something about it.

How well do we accept the Trilithium effect in stars?

Let alone the fact that the "halting of all nuclear fusion" can create a shockwave that can vaporize every planet in a good-sized solar system?

What can I say? Some people are just so focused in hating the movie that they use a completely different scale when they judge it compared to all the other movies or series. The movie's science has no more holes than a typical Voyager episode, but the latter is rationalized right away, and the former is the bane of all that is good and holy.

How well do we accept the Trilithium effect in stars?

At least that could still be explained with a subspace shockwave from an antimatter power plant that powered the whole mining operation. We all know that Klingons don't do anything only halfway.

Case in point. Why is this more acceptable than Nerys' rationalization? In the end, the only difference is that you like TUC and hate ST2009.

 

[Myasishchev]

Depdends on the explanation. Compare 'red matter', which sounds like a Star Trek version of the M&M Cancer scare, with the Genesis Project. You don't need technobabble, you just need something believable.

Now, in fairness, Genesis isn't any more believable at all than red matter.

What can I say? Some people are just so focused in hating the movie that they use a completely different scale when they judge it compared to all the other movies or series. The movie's science has no more holes than a typical Voyager episode, but the latter is rationalized right away, and the former is the bane of all that is good and holy.

Quite the opposite... I was holding Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman to a higher standard. I already know what to expect from Braga or Biller--utter shit in all respects. Orci and Kurtzman created a tremendously energetic, engaging, fun story--that nonetheless needed another draft to be perfected, due to extremely questionable science and bad plotting. Frankly, the same problem is visible in varying degrees, sometimes to a far greater degree, in Star Treks 1-10. That problem is carelessness, a carelessness that should never fly in a serious production.

I mean, let's go back to TUC: a wonderful movie, sabotaged in its first scenes by an unnecessary danger to Sulu's ship (did the USS Nimitz have to get buffeted by radioactive wind from Chernobyl for people to understand it was a serious situation?) and continually undermined by a unfathomable conspiracy of Feds and Klingons to keep the war going between the Feds and Klingons.

ST11 is a product of that mold. Sadly, it didn't break it. It just spent more than money than it.

I find the lost opportunity to go from "nearly great" to "extremely great" unfortunate. I was hoping that ST11 would be the one I finally didn't bitch about.