How does red matter stop a supernova?

[Brandonv]

I think that Trek XI is a good movie, and I can rationalize most of the plot holes, but I can't figure out how red matter is supposed to stop a supernova.

When I picture a super nova, I think of the explosion as a sphere expanding through space. If you hit this sphere with the red matter, as Spock did, then I would expect that at best you would poke a hole in the sphere. I guess if the Romulan's home solar system was the only one close enough to be threatened, then this might work.

I guess another possibility is that the supernova was more like a gamma ray burst (Wikipedia), and the danger was that Romulus was lined up with one of the exploding star's poles.

And then there is the question of how exactly the red matter stops the supernova. Does the black hole somehow suck all the energy up, or was the red matter meant to work in some other way and the formation of a singularity was unintended?

 

[sojourner]

I think most of us have basically given up on this one. Boil it down to "meh, plot device".

 

[Vance]

Through the power of bullshit...

Sadly, yeah, that's about it. It's the worse deux ex machina ever used in Trek.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The same way something called "dilithium" enables ships to travel faster than light speed.

 

[ALF]

I would like some red matter to put on my toast.

 

[Lazarus]

And then there is the question of how exactly the red matter stops the supernova. Does the black hole somehow suck all the energy up, or was the red matter meant to work in some other way and the formation of a singularity was unintended?

The red matter creates a black hole that vacuums up the exploding supernova. Presumably leaving you with a black hole at the centre of your solar system instead of an exploding star.

Think of it in the same vein as...

Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

...but unfortunately lacking the eventual conclusion

 

[Timo]

I don't really see how we could divine the properties of red matter out of onscreen evidence. After all, there was no supernova onscreen. The red matter was never used in the way it was intended to.

In the movie, red matter created black holes. Doesn't mean it was designed to do that in a supernova; black hole generation might be a minor side effect of the intended working mechanism, or then something that only happens when one misuses red matter.

Remember that Spock missed a tight time window in deploying the red matter. There wouldn't be one after the explosion took place: the expanding cloud of particles and radiation would take its sweet time reaching Romulus and other systems. Spock thus was probably aiming at dropping the thing in before the explosion started. One could do all sorts of interesting stuff there with a substance that densifies matter, depending on exactly when one deployed the substance. Essentially, a supernova is a black hole in the center, and then a cloud of stuff that didn't fit in the hole and got evicted. Create the hole a bit earlier in the process, and all the stuff might fit inside after all...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

I think that Trek XI is a good movie, and I can rationalize most of the plot holes, but I can't figure out how red matter is supposed to stop a supernova.

When I picture a super nova, I think of the explosion as a sphere expanding through space. If you hit this sphere with the red matter, as Spock did, then I would expect that at best you would poke a hole in the sphere. I guess if the Romulan's home solar system was the only one close enough to be threatened, then this might work.

Nope, doesn't make much sense. Sojourner's right, it's irreconcilable with any proper physics or even Star Trek logic. If the red matter could suck up all the light from Hobus, the red matter black hole is probably a bigger threat than the "supernova" in the first place.

I guess another possibility is that the supernova was more like a gamma ray burst (Wikipedia), and the danger was that Romulus was lined up with one of the exploding star's poles.

And then there is the question of how exactly the red matter stops the supernova. Does the black hole somehow suck all the energy up, or was the red matter meant to work in some other way and the formation of a singularity was unintended?

The real question is implied there--how would a lightspeed phenomenon remotely threaten a faster-than-light society? To the Romulans, contemplating losing their homeworld to a gamma ray burst is like someone worrying about being run over by a glacier. That's why I always put "supernova" in quotes.

I mean, towing a sufficiently large asteroid a few (ten, hundred, whatever) million kilometers in front of the planet would likely deal with the effects.

I guess if they'd tried they could've made an oblique reference to collective action problems, like global warming or overuse of arable land, where some star went supernova around right now and the Romulans still haven't done anything to avoid or mitigate the damage in the 24th century.

 

[Klaitu]

The whole supernova thing is off, because it's not an actual supernova, it's a supermagical plot device supernova that somehow can explode Romulus, despite the star not being in that solar system. Furthermore, this supernova was somehow a "threat to the galaxy"

Other enormous problems here include black holes not being actual holes that you can go through, and the vagueness by which using red matter sends you back in time. Did Spock send that supernova back in time? Is the Narada debris littering some prehistoric landscape?

The macguffin factor of Red Matter is probably the main thing that bothers me about the film.

 

[Plecostomus]

This is where you have to use your imagination.

Also the Countdown comic is quite helpful.

And if all else fails, add subspace to the equation. "subspace supernova"

There is plenty of astrophysical stuff we don't know yet. Perhaps it is possible for a supernova to explode with enough force to BBQ worlds a distance away.

I was thinking the force of the original supernova was postulated to extend to subspace. The resulting subspace shockwave had the property of causing other stars to go nova quite a distance away. So the intent was to consume the star with a singularity to prevent this from happening. When the star exploded ahead of schedule (and how the hell can us mere mortals schedule something of this magnitude?!) the only thing Spock could do was drop red-matter charges along the wave-front to protect other worlds from the approaching subspace clusterfuck.

The Romulan homeworlds were lost, maybe some other systems as well. Remember, the Tkon Empire was done in by a single supernova as well, and they were FAR more advanced than the Federation.

 

[Timo]

Remind me again, what was the actual dirt on this Hobus supernova thing? The exact dialogue? In the movie, not in the comic.

Did the supernova "blow up" Romulus, or merely kill the people there? Did it do so within a commercial break, or within a few decades? Did somebody already die before Nero and Spock were launched to the past, or was their fate merely sealed? Where did these people die - on Romulus, or somewhere else?

(Alternately, is there an online transcript of the movie somewhere?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Plecostomus]

More or less some odd property of the Hobus star caused it to continue to build in power and intensity until it exploded with such force it threatened nearby systems.

Spock convinced Nero this would happen but neither the Romulans or Vulcans would listen, so he (spock) used up all of his remaining political capital to make the Red Matter and outfit the Jellyfish in an attempt to do SOMETHING. On his way to Hobus the star exploded and the resulting shockwave shattered the Romulan homeworld. Nero managed to rescue some fleeing government officials... learned the location of a Romulan fall-back base and that's where he got ahold of "Borg Technology."

There were some other events including a battle with Klingon ships to prove the might of Nero's ship, an encounter with Captain Data and the Enterprise E and some other stuff but that's the gist of the story.

 

[Timo]

Umm, but how about answering my question? Sorry to be a bother, but I'd really like to hear the actual dialogue and not to hear the bits from the comic.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

Also the Countdown comic is quite helpful. .

I dunno. How does glossy paper stack up as a source of kindling?

All right, it's not that bad. But is it doubleplus not good.

Did the supernova "blow up" Romulus, or merely kill the people there? Did it do so within a commercial break, or within a few decades? Did somebody already die before Nero and Spock were launched to the past, or was their fate merely sealed? Where did these people die - on Romulus, or somewhere else?

Well, Spock's flashback shows Romulus being taken apart by a big ol' wave of fire. But then again Spock's flashback shows him seeing Vulcan implode as if Delta Vega were a Vulcan moon, so ymmv regarding how literally that's supposed to be interpreted.

 

[Timo]

So there's no dialogue on Romulus having been destroyed "immediately" by the supernova? Just this visual that may or may not represent something Spock witnessed with his own eyes in realtime?

Is there anything on Nero seeing Romulus die? Or people on Romulus die?

Sorry to bother with these dialogue requests, but I was rather totally drunk during my theatrical exposure to the movie, and I don't yet own the DVD...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

It is a plot device, much as subspace explosions, as per the Hobus supernova, was needed to destroy Romulus & Remus. the Red matter is basically the same idea, take the explosion(explosive energies?) and create a wormhole spanning two universes.

 

[Search4]

I won't get the words right, but Nero says to Pike he saw it happen (the destruction of Romulus). I don't believe there's any direct comment on timing between the Hobus explosion and the plent being destroyed.

And what of Remus?

 

[O'Dib]

I just realized, red matter is a similar plot device to Genesis. Something that can both save lives, and be used as a weapon.

 

[Longinus]

The supernova had made much more sense had it been the star of the system planet Romulus was in. Nothing in the dialogue particularly contradicts this, though the whole "threat to the Galaxy" line makes whole thing nonsensical.

 

[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.