Scifi silly science

[shivkala]

When it comes down to it, the question becomes which is more important: A good story or good science? Sometimes, it's a tough call, but personally, I can forgive bad science if the story is good. The most glaring cases of silly science occur when the story is weak enough to take me out of the action and focus on the silliness of what they are saying/doing.

I know so little about science beyond the basics you pick up in any high school class that if the story is engaging, I don't care how many rules of science are broken!

 

[T'Girl]

but does a Phaser "fire" light? I allways thought it was plasma

Well a arrow (bow and arrow) moves at 340 feet per second, people have been known to duck a oncoming arrow. 340 fps is about a third the speed of sound, for whatever reason a phaser is not a speed of light weapon.

 

[Harvey]

2001 is one of the few films which has handled vacuum exposure correctly.

Actually, as is pointed out on the new DVD, it does get one minor detail wrong: Dave Bowman holds his breath right before the emergency hatch is blown off. Apparently he should have expelled all the air in his lungs right before instead. But, all in all, a much more forgiveable sin than the silly nonsense of, say, Total Recall. Of course, that film can easily be read as Quaid's fantasy, and, therefore, not subject to laws of scientific realism.

The newer version of Battlestar Galatica managed to portray vacuum exposure correctly in the season three episode A Day in the Life.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

In TNG, when somebody fires a phaser, the beam takes a noticeable amount of time to reach its target. Being a beam of light, this should not occur.

A laser would fire a beam of light, but a phaser is something else. That was why I was never too bothered by phaser-beams that obviously traveled slower than light (although I did think it was odd they would use weapons in the future that clearly traveled slower than bullets or tranquilizer darts).

Anyway, I'm another person who says that Hollywood directors could easily make soundless space-battles exciting if they tried.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

When it comes down to it, the question becomes which is more important: A good story or good science?

It is extremely rare that a storyteller needs to choose between the two. Most of the time, these bad science mistakes are annoying because they could have been corrected without affecting the story noticeably.

 

[Davros]

- The idea in Space: 1999 that an explosion on the dark side of the Moon will cause it go flying into deep space rather than crashing into Earth.

There are times when the dark side is facing the Earth. If the light side always faced us, we would only have full moons.

 

[JoeFromEarth]

"The dark side of the moon" often refers to the side of the moon facing away from us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_side_of_the_moon

 

[Truth_Seeker]

Interspecies mating! I've always thought that it's the silliest thing in science fiction.

 

[DevilEyes]

Any show where people change their DNA at will in order to look like a different person (e.g. Alias).

Even crazier, a variation where a half-Human, half-Klingon person is split into their Klingon and their Human part, literally two different people, and then put back together... as in an episode of you know which show.

 

[shivkala]

I also had a problem with the changing a Cardassian into a Bajoran. It just didn't seem like such an easy cosmetic change as they portrayed it.

 

[Myasishchev]

Nobody asks for 100% realism, but stupid, glaring errors such as sound in space could easily be avoided. I think that cutting between scenes of silent battle from a space POV and scenes from inside the ships where you have thos loud explosions, people screaming, etc. would be more dramatic by this contrast.

So I take it you're a Firefly fan.

Actually, weird solar system aside, Firefly is a surprisingly realistic for sci-fi. No sound in space, no FTL.

I'm pretty sure Firefly has FTL. There's no way they zip between planets at the clip they do without it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Here's one thing: In TNG, when somebody fires a phaser, the beam takes a noticeable amount of time to reach its target. Being a beam of light, this should not occur. The beam should instantly appear between the phaser and its target without any noticeable transition time.

The only time in all of Trek that I can remember this actually happening correctly is in VOY's "Future's End", and it was a 29th century phaser being fired.

but does a Phaser "fire" light? I allways thought it was plasma

No, it's still light. The main difference between a laser and a phaser is that the phaser rotates frequencies continuously. PHASed Energy Rectification.

 

[DevilEyes]

I also had a problem with the changing a Cardassian into a Bajoran. It just didn't seem like such an easy cosmetic change as they portrayed it.

I'd take any cosmetic change over the nonsense about casually changing people's DNA.

 

[Myasishchev]

Here's one thing: In TNG, when somebody fires a phaser, the beam takes a noticeable amount of time to reach its target. Being a beam of light, this should not occur. The beam should instantly appear between the phaser and its target without any noticeable transition time.

The only time in all of Trek that I can remember this actually happening correctly is in VOY's "Future's End", and it was a 29th century phaser being fired.

but does a Phaser "fire" light? I allways thought it was plasma

No, it's still light. The main difference between a laser and a phaser is that the phaser rotates frequencies continuously. PHASed Energy Rectification.

What is "energy rectification"? Does the energy atone for past sins, and if it's really good, get to become mass again?

 

[drychlick]

i not mind silly science! It scifi and NOT real! just enjoy the story love dr

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

but does a Phaser "fire" light? I allways thought it was plasma

No, it's still light. The main difference between a laser and a phaser is that the phaser rotates frequencies continuously. PHASed Energy Rectification.

What is "energy rectification"? Does the energy atone for past sins, and if it's really good, get to become mass again?

Memory Alpha quotes the ST:TNG Technical Manual:

Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual explains the inner mechanisms of a phaser. Phaser is the acronym for phased energy rectification according to the process of turning stored energy into an energy beam without intermediate transformation. Energetic plasma is pumped to a prefire chamber made out of a superconducting lithium-copper. There it undergoes a rapid nadion effect in which strong nuclear forces are liberated. A protonic charge forms and is released in pulses to the emitter made out of the same superconductive crystal. A beam of elecromagnetic energy is released from it at the speed of light. (pages 123-125)

 

[Myasishchev]

Huh. That description defines it as a thermonuclear-powered laser. Leaving aside whatever a rapid nadion actually is, "strong nuclear forces are liberated" during nuclear fusion--plus I don't know why else you'd generate a plasma, and a superconductor would be useful in magnetic confinement. "Beam of electromagnetic energy" is pretty self-explanatory.

Maybe a nadion is actually just a fancy future term for He3 nucleus.

 

[C.E. Evans]

No, it's still light. The main difference between a laser and a phaser is that the phaser rotates frequencies continuously. PHASed Energy Rectification.

What is "energy rectification"? Does the energy atone for past sins, and if it's really good, get to become mass again?

Memory Alpha quotes the ST:TNG Technical Manual:

Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual explains the inner mechanisms of a phaser. Phaser is the acronym for phased energy rectification according to the process of turning stored energy into an energy beam without intermediate transformation. Energetic plasma is pumped to a prefire chamber made out of a superconducting lithium-copper. There it undergoes a rapid nadion effect in which strong nuclear forces are liberated. A protonic charge forms and is released in pulses to the emitter made out of the same superconductive crystal. A beam of elecromagnetic energy is released from it at the speed of light. (pages 123-125)

So in short, "phased energy rectification" is basically a fancy term for the process in which the energy in a phaser's power cell is converted (or phased) into a directed energy beam.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Memory Alpha quotes the ST:TNG Technical Manual:

Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual explains the inner mechanisms of a phaser. Phaser is the acronym for phased energy rectification according to the process of turning stored energy into an energy beam without intermediate transformation. Energetic plasma is pumped to a prefire chamber made out of a superconducting lithium-copper. There it undergoes a rapid nadion effect in which strong nuclear forces are liberated. A protonic charge forms and is released in pulses to the emitter made out of the same superconductive crystal. A beam of elecromagnetic energy is released from it at the speed of light. (pages 123-125)

The description of phaser fire as just "electromagnetic radiation" is inconsistent with canon.
In DS9, O'Brien made a clear distinction between a phaser and a high-intensity laser.
The effects of laser fire are not consistent with what we see phasers do, either - I'm talking about that highly efficient disintegration. If light from a laser would so rapidly disintegrate a human body, it would do so by transferring a lot of heat to the atoms that compose this human body and the "disintegration" would actually be an explosion (imagine a few Kg of C4 exploding - something like that).

As for what phaser fire is composed of - it's composed of nadions, which are treknobabble particles that can phase (disintegrate) most things out of existence and which travel at less than the speed of light.

 

[The Wormhole]

Nobody asks for 100% realism, but stupid, glaring errors such as sound in space could easily be avoided. I think that cutting between scenes of silent battle from a space POV and scenes from inside the ships where you have thos loud explosions, people screaming, etc. would be more dramatic by this contrast.

So I take it you're a Firefly fan.

Actually, weird solar system aside, Firefly is a surprisingly realistic for sci-fi. No sound in space, no FTL.

I'm pretty sure Firefly has FTL. There's no way they zip between planets at the clip they do without it.

I was under the impression that in the series it usually took them weeks to get from one planet to the next. Which, although faster than modern-day spaceships, does not mean FTL.

But then, in Serenity we do see them moving around the solar system pretty quickly.