Physics and Star Trek

The science-fiction media franchise Star Trek has borrowed freely (but very loosely) from the scientific world to provide storylines. Episodes are replete with references to tachyon beams, baryon sweeps, quantum fluctuations and event horizons — though often the uses of scientific jargon is half-correct at best, and more frequently, great artistic license is taken with real scientific concepts. Star Trek is first and foremost a vehicle for entertainment, and the primary aim of the writers is to deliver drama, not science. Many of the technologies "created" for the Star Trek universe were done so out of simple economic necessity — 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 Star Trek technology feasible, while detailing the blunders the show has made. — Krauss's book explores modern physics, using Star Trek as an organizing pattern and source of inspiration. Along the way, he shows that some treknobabble is just nonsensical, and that certain technologies are implausible or essentially impossible. 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.

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). 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.

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.

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.)

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.

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 the sublight speeds they attain over the really short periods of time. 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.

References

External links

* — A Guide to the Physics Governing the Star Trek Series

Physics and Star Trek: Encyclopedia BETA

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