Home > Physics and Star Trek
Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Star Trek will have noticed the considerable emphasis on science and technology (commonly referred to as " treknobabble") used in the various incarnations of the show. It is well known that many members of the professional scientific community are also trekkers. For many people, Star Trek constituted their first and/or only introduction to many scientific concepts. The impact of the show on the scientific world is certainly significant - NASA named the first space shuttle orbiter " Enterprise".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 at best half-correct and more frequently, great artistic license is taken with real scientific concepts.
It should be noted that 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. Moreover, the writers of the show are not scientists (its "scientific advisor" Rick Sternbach is actually an art director who has a layman's interest in science but no formal training) and frequently misunderstand basic scientific concepts like conservation of energy. Frequently, understanding why many of the technologies used in the Star Trek universe are implausible is equally interesting and educational.
1 Flaws in Star Trek science
There are what appear to be a number of obvious flaws in the science of Star Trek, and an equal number of explanations that attempt to explain those flaws as misunderstandings.
1.1 "In space no-one can hear you scream..."
A constant 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. Simple fact - sound is a physical wave, and a physical wave must have a medium to travel through. Space is a vacuum, 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. As far as noises for events outside a ship, these can be explained simply as background music. It is true that in a real space battle there wouldn't be the sound of phasers firing exterior to the ship, but there also wouldn't be the musical accompaniment that exists in Star Trek battles.
1.2 Getting rid of baryons
In the episode entitled "Starship Mine", the Enterprise docks at a space station to get those pesky baryons removed. Baryons (we are told) build up on the hull of the spaceship as a result of warp travel, and the ship needs to be "cleaned" periodically. There is a slight problem with this — the only stable baryons known to exist are protonFor alternative meanings see proton (disambiguation). Proton Classification Subatomic particle Fermion Hadron Baryon Nucleon Proton Properties Mass: 938 MeV/ c2 Electric Charge: 1. 6 × 10−19 C Spin: 1/2 In physics, the proton is a subatomic particles and neutronNeutron Classification Subatomic particle Fermion Hadron Baryon Nucleon Neutron Properties Mass: 940 MeV/ c 2 Electric Charge: 0 C Spin: 1/2 In physics, the neutron is a subatomic particle with no net electric charge and a mass of 940 MeV/ c 2 ( kg; verys, 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. Oops.
- Response: There are stray proton and neutron particles in space. As for just why these build ups are bad, who knows. And the fact that the rest of the ship didn't get destroyed indicates the sweep is selective. Why it seems to be bad for living tissue, another question not answered. It might have to do with something similar to brushing teeth. In the episode where Riker was on a Klingon ship, there was some organic material causing damage to both the Enterprise and the Klingon ship.
