Strange New Worlds and Phenomena in the Galaxy

[STEPhon IT]

Star Trek has incorporated findings and theories astronomers has presented for some of their stories. Rogue Planets, Wormholes, Dyson's Spheres, binary stars, and black stars were some of the topics, are there new findings or theories you would like to see in our current Trek series, movies, or a new project altogether?

 

[Valenti]

I've said it before, Star Trek can never be done again because it's controlled by the top brass executives who couldn't cut it as creatives. It's mediocrity supporting itself and glorifying and preaching to themselves. It's owned by the CBS corperation so everything is done on an assembly committee basis where even the janitor gets a say in what goes up on the screen. Visionaries like GR are a dime a dozen I guess, according to them.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I was thinking more towards the science part and was there anything you've read or found out about, a new study from astronomers or other specialists, which you would like to see on Star Trek?

For me, I would like to see a plotline where a spaceship encounters a super massive black hole and the effects of one.

 

[Willsky7]

It would be interesting to see them incorporate dark matter and dark energy, somehow.

Or perhaps a super earth, a planet that is a little larger than earth and covered mostly with water.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Star Trek I love has all that stuff as background to character-led adventures.

For example, "Galileo 7", the "quasar-like phenomenon" which exists soley to cut the shuttlecraft off from the Enterprise, so Spock can have his first command crisis.

 

[SCE2Aux]

The most notable depiction of cybernetic organisms in Star Trek are, of course, the Borg. It is also a very negative depiction. I'm finding it interesting that Discovery has a notable uptick in minor characters that are cybernetic either because that is the way their species lives, or as a result of injury. These are more positive characters and could lead to more complex stories about the role of cybernetic technology.

 

[STEPhon IT]

It would be interesting to see them incorporate dark matter and dark energy, somehow.

Or perhaps a super earth, a planet that is a little larger than earth and covered mostly with water.

My understanding dark matter has a majority of mass energy throughout the universe. I'm trying to wrap my brain around dark mass and dark energy. It can't be seen but it's there. Interesting stuff.

I've just learned about a hypothetical "White Hole", could something like that be even possible in the universe or even in our galaxy? Does anyone know a little more about this phenomena?

 

[Willsky7]

My understanding dark matter has a majority of mass energy throughout the universe. I'm trying to wrap my brain around dark mass and dark energy. It can't be seen but it's there. Interesting stuff.

I've just learned about a hypothetical "White Hole", could something like that be even possible in the universe or even in our galaxy? Does anyone know a little more about this phenomena?

Dark matter makes up something like 97% of the matter in the universe and we can't see it. Because we know so little there is lots of room for story telling there. I would think it would be interesting to tell a story involving dark matter alien life forms.

I hadn't heard of white holes before so I did some short reading on them. It sounds very interesting, the opposite of a black hole. I think this is mostly hypothetical at this point, but some scientists believe that a gamma phenomenon was the result of a white hole, GBR 060614. This would be a really cool plot point ina show like Star Trek. Some physicist has a hypothesis that a black hole is an entrance and the white hole is the exit, but he goes crazy and threatens the ship to prove his theory, or goes in a shuttle into the black hole to get some reading and gets spagehettified.

 

[STEPhon IT]

So a White Hole is some kind of condense supernova? A volcano of the stars???

 

[Willsky7]

So a White Hole is some kind of condense supernova? A volcano of the stars???

If I understand correctly it is not part of a Star, but entirely a separate thing. A black hole is a point in space with high gravity that consumes light and particles, but nothing is emitted from it. A white hole is an area of space that light and particles are emitted from, but nothing is consumed by it.

 

[Timo]

Whatever real phenomenon Trek makes use of, they need to be careful about not describing it as new and exciting. After all, if it's that now, it by definition won't be that in Trek any longer.

But giving a fictional twist to a phenomenon works fine. Archer and his pathfinding team are entitled to being surprised at the sight of an exceptionally large gas giant, a predicted and now confirmed phenomenon. They might be even more entitled to being surprised by a black hole or a quasarlet or a neutron star that defies today's understanding, though. That IMHO is the cleverest way to do it: have our heroes describe an exciting real scientific phenomenon, then declare that what they are looking at is actually different...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shawnster]

I'd like to see an episode or more where they actually explore one of these massive artificial discoveries like the dyson sphere or a VGER like city ship. The dyson sphere was, to me, a really good idea that was totally wasted. All they did was fly inside, turn around, and leave. Let's have a story where they explore the mystery of such a colossus, meet its inhabitants, etc.

Kinda like For the World is Hollow.... Or Orrville's If the Stars Should Appear.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

For some reason it bugs me more when they mess up real science than when they make up their own science. Like how in ST09 the black hole created should have had the mass of a marble and thus the gravitational pull of a marble from the same distance.

I agree about the Dyson sphere idea.

Also would be cool to see them go way, way forward in time to a time there barely exist any stars and meet life forms trying to survive with less and less energy sources.

I don’t follow sci-fi lit enough to know if that has been done. But it’s always been ‘If I ever wrote a sci-fi novel’ idea for me. So much of sci-fi is focused on the potential of the future. Well, what if the future had no potential? The universe is dying a slow heat death. All inventions there ever will be are already in existence, noone’s going to figure out anything tomorrow that we missed for quadrillions of years. Sapient life has struggled through near extinction and near extinction and always somehow made it, but the end is coming, and we’re just trying to find the last few stars left and stretch it out another million years. How do the people live? What is there culture like? Do we even bother recording history anymore? What is still important to us?

 

[STEPhon IT]

TAS had an episode dealing with a Rogue Planet. It came to my attention this phenomena is believe to be possible!!! There's a lot to learn about the galaxy. Fascinating and scary at the same time.

 

[Maurice]

Of course rogue planets are possible. They're even likely given a solar system’s early formation, when many newly formed objects would be colliding or passing one another in ways which slingshot some of them out into the void with enough energy to escape their cradles.

White holes are not a new idea. Heck, the original 1978 The HitchHiker's Guide To the Galaxy radio show even mentions them as the source of material used by the Magratheans to build their luxury planets (hear it yourself at this link).

The trouble with dark matter and dark energy as story points is that since no one as yet understands what they really are or how they work, any use of them in a story is going to be so much handwaving that you might as well make up your own term for whatever you decide to use them for, because it's unlikely to have any passing resemblance to whatever those actually turn out to be... other than something that can't be detected by science in the early 21st century and which have mass (dark matter) or some sort of repulsive force accelerating the expansion of the universe (dark energy).

 

[Butters]

It would be interesting to see them incorporate dark matter and dark energy, somehow.

Or perhaps a super earth, a planet that is a little larger than earth and covered mostly with water.

I think dark matter and dark energy are the things they should stay the hell away from. They’re called dark not because they’re dark but because we can’t see them. When a branch of physics appears to shed light on them, and it will, terms dark will be dropped in favour of something more descriptive.

Dark matter/energy will date the show more than cartloads of padds.

Super Earths though.

 

[STEPhon IT]

What about Super Earths? Would there be life forms tall enough to habit the planet? Would those planets have more or less of what's on our Earth?

The scary thought I have, if there are Super Earth's out there; could there be Super Jupiters as well???

 

[Tenacity]

When a branch of physics appears to shed light on them, and it will, terms dark will be dropped in favour of something more descriptive

We still use term "dark side of the moon," even-though the far side has been photographed and mapped. Some terms just stick.

 

[1001001]

We can thank Pink Floyd for that.

 

[Butters]

We still use term "dark side of the moon, even-though the far side has been photographed and mapped. Some terms just stick.

What’s the alternative? The side of the moon we can’t see? The ‘Other’ side of the moon?

The dark side of the moon is still called the dark side of the moon because the name remains descriptive and apt.

You might be right, it could stick, but we don’t know what dark matter/energy is, we can only observe the effects. When we know how it works, we’ll have a description of its properties and probably a bunch of new names for fields and particles.

Another reason to avoid dark matter and energy is that the scales they operate on would have as little narrative impact on the characters as it would in any other show.

I suppose, maybe, a precisely calibrated operation like a transporter could be a affected by a one in a trillion WIMP collision with a baryonic atom.

A time travel equation might be affected by dark energy with comical results. Maybe not.

The one dark thing that did capture my imagination was the Dark Flow, but last I’d heard was that it didn’t exist.

What I would like to see tackled in Trek is the Holographic principle, that one I just can’t get my head around.