Well, we have a thread that's essentially using the "hackneyed production" as research, so I'd say it's relevant.
How does this sound as an infinite power source?
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Well, we have a thread that's essentially using the "hackneyed production" as research, so I'd say it's relevant.
Actually Stargate is one of the most scientifically literate SF franchises on television. Sure, it takes poetic license and sometimes uses terminology loosely, but it's one of the few SFTV franchises that has made any effort at all to consider real science. For instance, take a look at the SG-1 episode "Tangent," which is one of the most scientifically literate SF stories I have ever seen on television. And the episode "Prophecy" featured a pretty good discussion of the basics of quantum physics, something most SFTV barely dares to touch on. Stargate Universe has particularly solid science, since they have SF novelist John Scalzi as a technical consultant and actually listen to him.
I always thought SG1 had good basis for the technologies they used. Atlantis was a bit far fetched with ancient technology. Star Trek has some really stupid ideas in comparison. Like shrinking a runabout. Phasing people who can run through walls but don't fall through floors.
SG1 made the phase mistake too, actually - after criticizing it in an episode! Still, for the most part it's more 'scientific' than Star Trek, at least in my humble opinion. Anyhow...
If you somehow put the used energy back then it would work I suppose in theory, but that's a bit silly because you need two sources of energy then.
If you somehow put the used energy back then it would work I suppose in theory, but that's a bit silly because you need two sources of energy then.
1) This is Trek Tech, not Stargate Tech
2) Stargate is surpassed only by Bugs Bunny and Rambo-III for scientific incoherence; if you're going to reference Stargate, you might as well start citing Dexter's Laboratory.
Conservation of energy. It works out that the time-reversal device is pretty much just running the same reaction you used to extract energy, only in reverse: ADDING energy instead of subtracting it. This by definition means it always takes at least as much energy to reverse time as you'd otherwise get from the mini-universe itself.
Basically, it's not a power source as much as it is a glorified battery. You can use it to store a universe-worth of useable energy, but then you have to charge it up again with a universe worth of energy.
So THAT's why every human being in the entire universe speaks English!
I'll give you Stargate Universe, though. HUGE improvement.
I disagree. Evidently so does Christopher. Do you have any concrete examples that you feel are less scientific than a comparable example from another show? Because those would be more constructive than just saying it's 'hackneyed', 'incoherent', or 'unoriginal.'
And if you watch carefully, everyone on Star Trek speaks English too. And a lot of them look awfully similar to humans. One part of a show being unrealistic to further the plot does NOT make the entire show 'as scientific as Bugs Bunny,' to paraphrase what you said.As far as using this 'incoherent' show as research, that 'research' actually makes sense. If you can control TIME ITSELF within a certain area to the point where it slows down or speeds up (without doing something so tedious as flying around the universe at the speed of light), it's not such a huge stretch that one could reverse time within that area. Of course it's not practical as it would probably use a retarded amount of energy, but that's not really the point of the thread. Warp drive isn't practical at the moment and neither is containing a pocket universe within some kind of box. It's a mental exercise more than a serious technological debate. The basic physics are sound in principle, I think.
However, newtype_alpha, I agree with you about the Universe-in-a-box-battery. It could store an awful lot of energy but where do you get the energy to put back in? If you have a huge jar of water and you pour some out but then pour it back in, you haven't accomplished anything with that water, or with that energy.
Sigh...
In order of appearance:
- Wormholes with planar event horizons
- Wormholes that "reconstitute" your molecules for some reason.
- The ability to track the exit point OF a wormhole across distances of many millions of light years
- Cultural/linguistic stasis over a period of 8,000 years (cultures that do not evolve, whose languages, traditions, even religious beliefs remain utterly unchanged from a single arbitrary point in human history, apparently of the writer's choosing).
- Language contrivance (everyone speaks English).
- Technology contrivance (we've never seen you before, and you don't look ANYTHING like the people we've spent thousands of years worshipping, but since you're wearing pants we shall assume you are gods).
- Planetary contrivance (this planet has identical climate, atmosphere and gravity to Earth, except it has an extra moon and the people here wear funny hats)
- Conservation of energy (habitual violations)
- Conservation of mass (habitual violations)
- Artificial gravity
Since I already know what your next complaint is going to be, let you stop you right there: yes, half the crap-science that makes up Stargate is fairly common to other science fiction productions up to and including Star Trek. What bothers me--and what has ALWAYS bothered me--is that Star Trek, at least, made some attempt to rationalize what were otherwise artistic conveniences by the production crew. Stargate makes no such attempts, and depends entirely on the viewer's not knowing any better.
Indeed... so in which of the deleted scenes of the pilot episode did the SG-1 team discover the Universal Translator? Or have we forgotten the reason why Daniel was put on the team in the first place?
It IS, actually, since causality can only move in one direction and an effect cannot precede its cause. As mentioned above, it's a little like saying "If you can slow down your car by pushing the brakes, it should be possibly to reverse your car by pushing the brakes harder." It just doesn't work that way.
Except on Stargate.
What did you do with the energy you took out of it? An equivalent process would be used to recharge your universe-battery. If you're using that battery to, say, power a giant forcefield to contain a supernova explosion, you could probably harness the power of a couple of stars to recharge it.
The whole point of a battery--or ANY energy storage device--is to transport that energy in a way it can be conveniently used. As with your jar of water: if the point is to fill the jar in California and then empty it in New York, you've accomplished something pretty neat for your thirsty friend in the local deli.
Don't forget:
- Wormholes that are literal tunnels winding through 3D space, to the point of being able to pass through and interact with objects in their path (!). ("Red Sky, "1969", amongst others).
- The 38-minute limit on Stargate activity that is somehow a law of wormhole physics, except when it isn't.
- Wormholes you can only travel through in one direction, for some reason. Again, supposedly a law of physics (and, again, except when it isn't).
- "The second evolution of humans".
Maybe all of this is still more scientifically literate than, say Star Trek or nuBSG, but that's not saying much.
LOL, people are so easy to please or to anger. Just because they some day dropped the word "universal translator" without ever giving an idea of how the hell such a device could actually work, they say it's much better than Stargate that just never mentioned why they're all speaking English. It's like saying "we have this magic box that does it for us". How the hell is that supposed to be scientific in any way?
And if I remember right, one of the SG1 novels explained that the Stargate enabled everyone who went through the gates to understand the languages. A feature built in by the Ancients.
Not everyone needs to be spoonfed with technobabble that makes a show somehow pseudo-scientific. That's why they have characters like O'Neill who'll stop characters babbling to much when it gets annoying, unlike TNG, VOY or ENT.
And if I remember right, one of the SG1 novels explained that the Stargate enabled everyone who went through the gates to understand the languages. A feature built in by the Ancients.
Not everyone needs to be spoonfed with technobabble that makes a show somehow pseudo-scientific. That's why they have characters like O'Neill who'll stop characters babbling to much when it gets annoying, unlike TNG, VOY or ENT.
There, you've actually said something. Much easier to have a conversation with concrete examples than with phrases like 'it's like Bugs Bunny.'
I'm no theoretical physicist, so I'm not sure what you mean by a 'planar event horizon.' Would you mind explaining that? However, it's the Stargate that reconstitutes your molecules after sending them through a wormhole. Saying it's the wormhole is like saying in Star Trek that the transporter's energy stream reconstitutes itself when it's actually the transporter that does it. On a side note, to me the ring transporters on Stargate make more sense since there's a machine that 'takes you apart' and then one on the other end that 'puts you back together' whereas a Trek transporter can reconstitute molecules at an incredible distance.
As for most of the other things you mentioned, I have to agree that they are valid points. However, sometimes plot contrivances are necessary to make the show work.
Now, no Science Fiction series is going to be totally scientifically accurate. That would defeat the purpose of the FICTION part of the equation. And writing good Science Fiction is about balancing the science with the fiction, taking scientific thoughts, expanding upon them, and making FICTION out of them.
I respectfully disagree. Star Trek solves the problem by throwing technobabble at the screen. "Reverse the polarity!" That's not attempting to rationalize. Star Trek seems to me to rely more on the audience not knowing any better - we're supposed to assume the technobabble means something. If you don't think Stargate tries to rationalize either, that's fine.
It's called 'handwaving.' Even if SG-1 said the Stargate was a translator, it's still wouldn't be scientific. Neither is 'we have a Universal Translator.'
You know what, you're right. Stargate is ridiculous. Why would having a brain tapeworm make you stronger? Why would it make your eyes glow? Why does everyone speak English? Why does Daniel always die? How can there be two evolutions of humanity? I could go on all day, but that's not the point. The FICTION part of Sci Fi is just as important as the Science part. Although go too far fiction-wise and it comes out as Fantasy. So both have to be balanced.
Good points. I admit that time dilation is not the same as time travel. I honestly don't believe backwards time travel is possible in reality, but again, it's a story-telling contrivance, like it or not. In that context only, time dilation fields becoming time reversal fields makes sense. Not in the real world.
A Proto-Universe would make a great battery, you're right. But the huge jug of water is not an infinite water SOURCE since if you take water out, you'd have to put more in. So a Proto-Universe would be essentially the same thing - a huge amount of energy ready to be used, but the energy is already there - in reality, you won't get an infinite amount coming out since again, you need to refill it to get more out of it.
Heh. That was fun.
Personally, I like Stargate and Star Trek. Now you might say I just 'handwaved' this entire conversation by saying Star Trek is unscientific too. In a sense, I guess that's true. But like I said, the point of Science Fiction is that it's Fiction. So saying one show is better because it's more scientific is missing the point, in a way. At least it can be, unless the Science is what you're interested in. But then you should read a Science Textbook instead.
There's "Attempting to plug a plot hole" and there's "Plothole? what plothole?"
As I again point out: is it accidental that NONE of the current fans of Stargate SG-1 remember why Daniel was assigned to the team in the first place? He's not a physicist, he's not an anthropologist, he's a LINGUIST. Specifically, an expert on ancient Egyptian languages and writing. So having the team bounce around on a bunch of planets ruled by subtypes of various ancient cultures that all speak English anyway pretty much negates that entire concept, doesn't it?
You can see him translating stuff every episode.
That plus the incredibly worrying ethical problem of what will happen to any of the beings inside the proto-universe that happen to evolve there while you're mining it for energy. They might not even notice you're doing anything at all, OR you might cause mass extinctions on every planet in that universe every time you drain it. Something to think about.
Except I wasn't the one who claimed Stargate or Star Trek had the benefit of being "more scientific." That whole matter comes from Chistopher, who said:
It's not. Not by a longshot. And for reasons I've already gone through, actually ranks fairly low in terms of scientific accuracy and at best ties with the lowest moments of Star Trek.
That, really, is all my point was: Stargate isn't any better than any other science fiction show, and in alot of ways is much worse.
PERSONALLY speaking, I'm willing to give alot of other sci-fi franchises a pass IF they manage to get everything else right in terms of character development, believability and coherent storylines. Stargate does none of the above; it's pretty much Time Tunnel with assault rifles.
lol, someone's trying hard to save his beloved scifi show's dignity. 
Oops double post...sorry, move on, nothing to see here...
To be fair, you were the one that compared it to Bugs Bunny.
Nonetheless, I respect your opinion, although I still disagree. In my opinion, Star Trek's technobabble is far more annoying than Stargate's failed attempts at explanations. But I've said that already. I should move on. It's all subjective, if you don't like the show, you don't like the show.You also make a good point about the life in the protoverse. It just might need that energy to survive and you just might be committing genocide on a massive scale by draining it.
BTW JarodRussell, your avatar makes me laugh everytime I see it.
Exactly. How would you power the time-reversal device? It would take as much, if not more, energy to reverse the universe than you would get out of it.
However, if you find several protouniverses and just tapped the power out of those...
Well, I think that when people say "infinite" in this context, they're talking about from a practical perspective instead of the mathematical concept of infinity. If we could tap into a power source that could power our civilization for the next ten billion years, I'd say that's close enough to "infinite" for polite conversation.
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