User:Chaser/SF

Working titles: Physics and science fiction; Science and science fiction

Science fiction writers have always differentiated between science fiction as, in Asimov's words, "imaginative fiction" and fantasy.

"However imaginative your [science fiction is, it] must be at least scientifically plausible."

Ochoa and Osier, in their prescriptive guide to science fiction writing, say that "Science fiction, by definition, is a literature based on science. That is what makes it different from fantasy."

They also differentiate between hard science, imaginary science, and wrong science, indicating that imaginary science violates existing scientific theory, but with an adequate explanation about new technology or future scientific discoveries that violate current laws of science. It "is acceptable if handled plausibly and consistently." This is not inconsistent with the writings of Arthur C. Clarke, one of the "Big Three" of science fiction, who said in his third law that: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The science-fiction media franchise Star Trek has borrowed freely from the scientific world to provide storylines. Episodes are replete with references to tachyon beams, baryon sweeps, quantum fluctuations and event horizons. Many of the technologies "created" for the Star Trek universe were done so out of simple economic necessity &mdash; the transporter was created because the budget of the original series in the 1960s did not allow for expensive shots of spaceships landing on planets.

Outside observers have used both Star Trek 's strengths and its weaknesses for educational purposes. Physicist Lawrence Krauss has written The Physics of Star Trek, a book which postulates what phenomena might make some Star Trek technology feasible, while detailing the blunders the show has made. He followed this book with a sequel, Beyond Star Trek, which applies the same approach to Independence Day, The X-Files and others. Astronomer Phil Plait takes a similar attitude in his "Bad Astronomy" website, a regular feature of which is reviews discussing the scientific mistakes in popular movies and TV shows.

Flaws in Star Trek science
There are a number of what appear to be obvious flaws in the "science" of Star Trek, and an equal number of explanations that attempt to explain those flaws as misunderstandings.

Sound and light in space
A feature of almost every episode (as well as most non-Star Trek science fiction television shows and movies) is the reverberations of sound: the Enterprise blasting into warp, firing the phasers, villains' ships exploding. But sound is the vibration of a medium. Space is a vacuum, and therefore devoid of matter, including any medium (e.g., air) for sound to travel through, so no sound is ever possible.


 * Response: Much of the noise in Star Trek involves things that can be heard from within the ship. For example, when a phaser is fired or when a ship is being hit by a phaser, presumably there is a noise that can be heard within the ship. It may also be noted that when a ship or other object in space explodes, it explodes into (usually small) pieces. When these remaining particles come into contact with another ship, including the one that fired the destroying torpedo or phaser beam, they set up vibrations within that ship which are generally called "sound". The primary issue with "hearing explosions in space" is not that they are heard, but that they are heard too soon and would likely sound more like thunder. Additionally, some of these sounds could be rationalized as acoustical feedback the sensor systems provide for the ship's crew. Some present-day radar systems, especially in the military area, already do this.  Another explanation is that the sounds in space have been added simply for dramatic effect; a battle without sound might have been perceived by producers as boring.

Like many action-oriented SF shows, Star Trek features battles between spacecraft, many of which use some sort of energy weapon. Early in the original series, the Enterprise crew members used lasers (see, e.g., the pilot episode "The Cage"). These "lasers" were either red or blue depending on the era. Unfortunately, science dictates that without a reflective medium, photons are not scattered out of their direction of travel. A laser beam passing through space can be seen only if dust particles present in space scatter its light or if it heats up the gas present in space enough to create a trail of glowing plasma. Simply put, a laser is invisible in a vacuum.


 * Response: References to lasers are incorrect and should be retconned out, especially considering that Star Trek: Enterprise uses "Phase cannons" and "Phase pistols" (although this itself contradicts a line in Star Trek: The Next Generation that phasers didn't exist in the 22nd century, though this is assuming that Phasers and Phase Pistols are the same technology). The beams in Star Trek are phaser beams, and as such, they emit light when going through a vacuum. Sources like the Star Trek Technical Manual indicate that phaser weapons emit beams of "nadions", one of many fictional particles invented for TNG.  Presumably, a nadion beam can emit light even in a vacuum; nadions might spontaneously decay into photons, for example.  There are no physical laws forbidding this process, since nadions have whatever properties the Star Trek writers give them.  Also, like with sound, a battle involving only invisible weapons would be incredibly boring and confusing for viewers.

Removing baryons
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode entitled "Starship Mine", the Enterprise docks at a space station to remove "baryon" particles, which supposedly build up on the hull of the spaceship during warp travel, necessitating periodic cleaning. However, the only stable baryons known to exist are protons and neutrons, which constitute the nucleus of all atoms, and hence are the core of all the visible matter in the universe. Getting rid of the baryons would unfortunately eliminate the Enterprise entirely.


 * Response: In this episode, the "baryon sweep" is largely a plot device to remove all the personnel from the Enterprise, so in this case, one could argue that the writers merely chose the wrong word to create the necessary treknobabble.  Also, since the scenario already involves warp travel, subspace and other fictional phenomena, one might as well say that the "baryons" involved here are other particles besides protons and neutrons, new particles which are found in subspace.  If these hypothetical particles were fermions composed of three quarks, they would qualify as baryons, thereby making the episode technically correct. It may also simply be a very overly formal and scientific way to say they physically need to wash the hull occasionally.

In space there is neither "up" nor "down"
Artificial gravity is a staple technology in science fiction. In the depths of space, there exist no reference points to establish which direction is "up" and which is "down"; therefore, on board a starship, the sense of direction can only be provided by the artificial gravity. Why then, do sudden course changes or impacts upon a ship toss the crew members to the floor? (From a viewer's standpoint, this is because having crew members thrown about during a battle makes for a more dramatic effect, as well as the difficulties of depicting starship life on an Earth-bound soundstage.)


 * Response: The standard Star Trek explanation invokes inertial damping fields. Without some sort of dampening field the sudden acceleration involved in space would cause objects in the ship to be instantly flattened.  To avoid this, the ship has a force field that counteracts forces due to acceleration.  The strength of this force field must be constantly updated with the ship's current acceleration.  However, if the ship encounters an unexpected acceleration or force, the calculations are momentarily incorrect, and this causes a shudder, as the damping fields are momentarily unbalanced.  The Star Trek Technical Manual terms this a "characteristic lag".  The unbalanced fields are set up so that they are well within the levels tolerated by human beings, but they can cause people to fall out of chairs.

In a scene cut from the film Star Trek: Nemesis, the filmmakers added a new captain's chair with an automatic seatbelt function.

Starships appear to navigate like airplanes
Starships appear to navigate like airplanes. Instead of turning instantly, they seem to need to bank, and are unable to pitch up and down. Most viewers have little knowledge of what space maneuvers would look like, and so the special-effects designers make movements that look more familiar. Furthermore, for many years all shots of the ships were created using models, which have a limited field in which they can move without showing the mounts that hold them up. Consequently, most battles are shown as if the ships were ocean-going vessels, where both ships are in the same horizontal plane and only shoot forwards or back, with very few cases of a ship attacking from below or above.


 * Response:  Within the Star Trek world itself, starships appear to navigate like airplanes because the nacelles of the starships apply forces similar to the wings of aircraft.  The movement of the starships is controlled by balancing the forces on the nacelles, which requires that starships bank in order to turn. The practical answer for viewers is to establish a familiar reference so that it would be more evident that the starship is moving when seen on-screen.

Thruster use in space
Because of the lack of friction in space, a ship need not continuously expend fuel to maintain a constant speed. Much travel at sublight speeds can be achieved by coasting, thus saving precious fuel. That being said, shutting off the engines is not enough to slow down or stop a ship, and slowing down is not just a matter of reducing thrust. A ship must actually expend as much fuel to accelerate negatively; by Newton's Laws, in order to accelerate negatively, a ship must direct its thrust in the opposite direction. Therefore, the standard Star Trek ship design with only forward-pointing engines is technically implausible (or at least highly inconvenient).


 * Response: Ships in Star Trek have thrusters, but these are not the same as the impulse engines. The sublight speeds of the impulse engines are attained by the same method they use for warp, just at a lower intensity. These "sublight fields" are gravity manipulating fields that distort space-time around the vessel. This "trick" allows them to move a proportionately greater mass with smaller engines and fuel requirements over longer periods of time than should be possible for those fuel requirments and engine sizes at sublight speeds. When the energy to the "mass-lightening" field coils shuts off, the distortion changes back to normal and the full mass of the ship becomes apparent to the universe, which makes the ship stop moving. (As with many Trek technologies, which depend upon "subspace", it can presumably have whichever properties the show requires.)  In addition, Shinzon's Reman warbird Scimitar has reverse-pointing thrusters.

Star Trek technology
Individual technologies are discussed in separate articles:


 * Cloaking device
 * Dilithium
 * Holodeck
 * Impulse drive
 * Mobile emitter
 * PADD
 * Phasers
 * Photon torpedo
 * Replicator
 * Shields
 * Tractor beam
 * Transporter
 * Heisenberg compensator
 * Warp drive

Some aspects of Star Trek technology that were once thought of as pure fantasy are getting closer to reality every day; the remarkable similarity between cellular telephones and the communicators of the original series is one example. (Indeed, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere points out that mobile phones have become even more streamlined than the original Star Trek series's communicators.) William Shatner's non-fiction book I'm Working on That explores the connections between Star Trek technology and the evolution of real-life science.

Tatooine’s twin suns


Episode IV contains a scene where Luke Skywalker stands and watches the double sunset of Tatooine’s twin suns.

Of the 242 Exoplanets currently known, about 20 or so actually orbit binary star systems. Specifically they orbit what are known as "wide" binary star systems where the two stars are fairly far apart (a few AU). Tatooine presumably is of the other type - a "close" binary, whereby the stars are very close, and the planets orbit their common center of mass.

Therefore, Tatooine's twin suns vista is by no means science fiction. In fact, like so many fictional stories, it foretold in 1977 something we would only be able to scientifically confirm some 25 to 30 years after. Many planets are now presumed to orbit binary star systems, though gravitional effects from the dual star system tend to make them very difficult to find with current doppler and transit methods of planetary searches.

Asteroid field in Episode V
In Episode V, after the Battle of Hoth, the Millennium Falcon is pursued by imperial ships through a dense asteroid field. The chunks of rock in the field are moving at rapid speeds, constantly colliding, and densely packed. Ordinarily, an asteroid field or belt is unlikely to be so densely packed with large objects, because collisions reduce large objects to rubble that then eventually aggregates into planetoids by mutual attraction. Such a densely packed field could exist if it is either “young and transient” or “dominated by an external force”; there are a few clues that either might be happening in this scene of the movie.

In contrast to Star Wars, the ship of "2001: A Space Odyssey", (Discovery One)'s course took it directly through the asteroid belt in 2001, without real fear of collision on the part of the mission organizers.

Sound
Star Wars, like much science fiction, has various action sounds in space that the characters react to and are apparently aware of. But sound, as a pressure wave, must propagate through some form of matter. Since space is vacuous, it cannot actually carry sound waves. Two explanations have been posited. First, it is possible that the various ships’ deflector shields, when hit with radiation from explosions or blasters, cause the ships themselves to vibrate, producing sound. Second, the audio may be synthetically generated by ships’ sensor systems. Producing such sound would be beneficial because humans naturally react to their environment. It would also be an efficient use of a pilot’s limited senses during combat.

One line points to some or all of the sound portrayals being synthesized for the benefit of the pilots. In A New Hope radio play, Han Solo tells Luke Skywalker:


 * Your sensors'll give you an audio simulation for a rough idea of where those fighters are when they're not on your screen. It'll sound like they're right there in the turret with you.

Some of the sounds may also be generated inside the ships themselves; presumably if a blaster shot is fired or received, it will produce a sound inside the ship, even if it cannot be heard in other ships.

Yet, none of these explain why one would hear sound during external shots of vessels in space (although it may just be the sound that the ships in the shot can hear). Sound is commonly found in science fiction portrayals of space, as sound arguably lends to more interesting and engaging battles. See, for example, Physics and Star Trek (Sound and light in space).