If you could create a traversable wormhole, then you could create a time machine, there's no doubt about it. But the question is: Can you create a traversable wormhole? And that all depends on having weird negative energy configurations. We simply don't know if that's possible. It's not ruled out, but I wouldn't bet on it. It's an open question for modern physics that people like me continue to work on every day.
The biggest question: Of all the TV series, which is your favorite?
The Next Generation is the best series overall, though I think some of the best individual episodes may have been in the first, classic series, if you suspend disbelief and take into account that the special effects were much worse.
If you had to pick just one, who is your favorite Trek character?
I always liked the science guys. So in some sense Spock was interesting in the first series, and I kind of like Data [the android from The Next Generation]. Data is probably my favorite character.
See what we're tweeting about
39 Comments
Add CommentRegarding time travel and the "three years before you left" concept, I'm more likely to agree with Daniel Hawking's explanation in Lost that everyone is on their own linear timeline, regardless of their travel forward or backward in history. Activities that "happened before" in their past may have had different characters than those of the present, even if the latter behaves as the past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere was a report recently on successful use of high intensity UV light to disrupt materials. It sounded very much like a phaser.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are several more examples of how science has changed in the past fifteen years. For example, we have seen baby steps in cloakingand teleportation. Granted they are baby steps but they are progress.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe also have the "Set to stun" effect with a weapon called the Phaser: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8275-us-military-sets-laser-phasrs-to-stun.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder, in 1000 years, will there be people who insist this is as real as some of the tripe we're told was real from about 2000 years ago, and religiously adhered to because it's in a book. ;)
If you heat an object to billion degrees instantly that would create a powerful explosion also. Phaser cannot be that. To make an object disappear Phaser ray should somehow cause all particles to be converted to "virtual" particles and go out of existence. :-) Space shield maybe a really powerful but limited distance electric and magnetic field combination. Any object hitting to the field would get ionized and disintegrated because same charges repel and magnetic field would protect the ship from ions, just like Earth's magnetic field protects from solar wind. :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author takes a very narrow view of science and our knowledge of physics which is still very infantile at best. We still have no idea of what gravitational or magnetic fields are or how they affect matter at a distance. Once we learn how things like these really work our entire view of the universe could change radically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we assume there is technology to bend space-time in the future, then it could be possible to open human-size wormholes to short distances therefore no need to capture and transfer immense amount of information to do quantum teleportation. :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like Lawrence Krauss' explanations of Trek tech, but I think he slightly overstates (!) the information involved in teleportation of human beings. According to the Holographic Principle, the total information content of any three-dimensional volume can be completely described on the two-dimensional region enclosing that volume. While we are still talking about extremely large amounts of information, the total amount is much, much less than if we had to describe every bit of the volume.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am wondering if do we really need to copy quantum states of each particle in the human body for teleportation to work. If you can copy all atoms/molecules to exact correct spot, what difference it would make if the quantum states of atomic nuclei also are same or different for example?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToday producing anti-matter maybe a really hard problem but imagine what if some type of field/ray discovered in the future that induces matter to switch to anti-matter instantly? And what if after that they invented a reactor that uses anti-matter to produce immense amounts of energy efficiently?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisangels & demons live in another dimension that isn't bound by our physics...they are the only true 'ET's'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnti-matter can be produced using radioactive substances. We use PET Scan in Medicine, which is the result of the detection of the photons emitted by the annihilation of the anti-electron, positron, produced by a positron-emitting radioactive decay, and an electron inthe target tissue. It should be possible to find other strudy natureal sources of anti-matter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey, Moses parted the Waters, didn't he? And all he had was a stick.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey, Moses parted the Waters, didn't he? And all he had was a stick.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that if we could go back 300 years into the past and told the scientists of the day about lasers, the Internet, high definition television, mobile 'phones, portable music/mp3 players, air travel, and the international space station, they'd also say that it's impossible and that it's all crazy. Why? To have all these technologies requires many discoveries in Science and the resulting convergence of multiple technologies that have been learnt over centuries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt present our technology is able to manipulate electrons in rather limited ways, and we still don't yet fully exploit the quantum mechanics of electrons or photons at larger scales.
In my humble opinion, I think that in order to have warp drive, transporters, shields and phasers will require the convergence of what I may term as hadronics technologies; the manipulation of hadronic particles such as protons and atomic nuclei. Perhaps the manipulation of bosons and leptons such as muons and neutrinos. Then again I could be completely wrong and other exotic matter technologies may be develop and converge after decades or centuries of development to deliver what we can only now dream about in science fiction.
The biggest problem with the new movie is that it didn't even attempt to explain anything with the "psudo"science of other star trek movies, rather it just used JJ Abrams classic "a wizard did it" explanations like he uses so frequently on LOST.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are all time travelers. We are all traveling forward in time. It is also possible that we are already traveling backwards in time and not even be aware of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe can only witness particles or matter that travel with us, forward. These are particles that we can see, but with the universe being as complex as it is and as yet the unknown more exotic particles that we can't see or quantify; there can be no doubt that particles are already traveling backwards in time.
As human beings we are already traveling much slower in time than some or most parts of the universe. We are spinning around on our planet, our planet is spinning around the solar system, our solar system is spinning around our galaxy, and our galaxy is flying through the universe.
If a person were dropped off in a self-contained life supporting capsule with all the food and water to last a lifetime at the end of the galaxy and were left with zero momentum relative to the actual universe; time would travel much more faster for that person and their entire lifetime would be lived in trillions of a fraction of a blink of an eye. We'd still be here on earth alive and well living through time as we know it.
In conclusion, time is different for a stationary object relative to the universe as well as all objects that exist in the universe that are in motion. The perception or calculation of time is different everywhere. Time has no significant meaning on a universal scale.
Did the author of the article grow up in Severna Park, MD, perchance?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wanted to add to my earlier comment that we should be humble enough not to impose limitations on what future Scientists may discover 300 years from now, or which kinds of new technologies future Engineers will develop from these new discoveries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI recall seeing a documentary on television a few years ago marking the 30th anniversary of the invention of the first microprocessor; the Intel Engineer who invented the first microprocessor was interviewed and he admitted he never had any idea that the first microprocessor he designed for use in a calculator would evolve into multi-media PC's that can calculate floating point numbers in the gigaflops range of performance, with gigabytes of magnetic hard disk, and laser based optical data storage.
If even a genius cannot predict the directions in which technology will evolve 30 years into the future, how can we make bold predictions about what kinds of technologies will become or will not become commonly available 300 years from now?
Perhaps future experiments with the LHC in Switzerland may confirm theories that particles at atomic or subatomic scales exist in more than four dimensions. Maybe a more advanced Standard Model of particle physics that describes the behaviour of hadrons at high energies, whether free or bound in atomic nuclei may be developed; this theory may mathematically define how to manipulate possibly leptons or hadrons to either produce or help to produce exotic matter particles, or transmute leptons or hadrons into exotic matter particles, or perhaps to permit harnessing the energy in the vacuum. If enough vacuum energy may be harnessed then this may be the basis for something like a warp drive, or the vacuum energy may be used to produce the exotic particles that may be required to produce a warp drive.
One type of former science fiction spacecraft drive that has already been Engineered and has already been used for several spacecraft missions by NASA to explore the Asteroid belt, is ion drive. The impulse engines featured in Star Trek are a type of ion drive. The first ion drive was experimented with by Robert Goddard in 1916-1917 and it took almost a century of further experimentation and development, and since 1972 they were used to provide Earth satellite station keeping until 1998, when NASA launched DEEP SPACE 1, the first interplanetary mission to use ion propulsion to maneuver and fly throughout the Asteroid belt.
We have to beware of the error made by one of the most gifted physicists at the end of the 19th Century, Lord Kelvin.
I think we can rule out teleportation as a viable means of transport: you would be have to be broken down and scanned, and a replica (not you: you're atomised) constructed at the receiving end. Who's going to volunteer for this? However, faster than light speed travel is possible using significantly less energy than Dr Kraus is suggesting, according to the theories postulated by Burkhold Heim. Check Google for details. The physics is, to be honest, way beyond me and everyone else I've spoken to. But then, who really understands (rather than parrots) quantum mechanics?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm guessing Mr. Krauss is under 50 years old - clearly the "next generation" himself. Nobody over that age needs to "suspend disbelief" to appreciate the original Star Trek series. :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello Skeptical555,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI studied Quantum Mechanics as part of my Engineering degree at University, and I didn't really understand it either.
To paraphrase Niels Bohr one of the developers of Quantum Mechanics, those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it; but I think Niels Bohr was an optimist because I have been shocked many times and my wife thinks that Schroedinger was cruel to his cat... On a serious note not considering the particle model and focusing on the wave model of quantum physics may probably eliminate much confusion.
"We still have no idea of what gravitational or magnetic fields are or how they affect matter at a distance." I did not understand this part. Classical theory of gravity, namely the general theory of relativity is already fairly accurate for systems well above Planck length (10^-33cm). So we have an INCOMPLETE idea what gravity is. As for the magnetic field, the equations of Maxwell was fairly accurate for classical electromagnetic phenomenon. Further, its quantum field theoretic framework counterpart, called quantum electrodynamics (started by Feynman, Tomonaga, Schwinger) so far provides a fairly accurate description of microscopic phenomenon (some calculations give answers that agree with experiment up to one part in a billion!) and so is with the weak and strong nuclear forces and their unifications (search quantum chromodynamics, electroweak theory though I dont know if there is a good popular science books on these subjects). It is quantum theory of gravity that perhaps we have no idea with (I think strings and loop gravity theories were in their infancies.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this" what if some type of field/ray discovered in the future that induces matter to switch to anti-matter instantly" Well if bombard a particle with another sufficiently high energy, there is a probability (this is all we can know, this is quantum world!) of pair production. But definitely you cant produce an anti-matter of your "target" particle for that would violate conservation of charge! unless of course you use particles that is both its "matter" and "anti-matter".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMatter-antimatter, Sadly you can't get much antimatter (the darn E=mc^2 thingy again), if you use a particle accelerator to make antimatter, you are using an energy globbing machine that gives you only 50% effectiveness, like m=2E/c^2, the other half is boring normal matter, but what about mining the stuff from places such as black holes? (ok, noone can travel to a black hole yet, but you could spare a couple redshirts to get back a bucket of the stuff if you pass by one),
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a theory for the name of Photon Torpedoes, They are called so because they turn what they hit into photons!
Matter-antimatter, Sadly you can't get much antimatter (the darn E=mc^2 thingy again), if you use a particle accelerator to make antimatter, you are using an energy globing machine that gives you only 50% yield, like m=2E/c^2, the other half is boring normal matter, but what about mining the stuff from places such as the streamers black holes produce? (ok, no one can travel to a black hole yet, but you could spare a couple redshirts to get back a bucket of the stuff if you pass by one in the future),
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a theory for the name of Photon Torpedoes, They are called so because they turn what they hit into photons!
I was not talking about really "producing" anti-matter in normal sense, like already done today. It is imaginable there maybe a way found in the future to induce normal matter to switch to anti-matter, just like today we could induce a permanent magnet to switch polarity. There are no conservation of energy etc. issues here!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, Maxwell equations, Einstein's equations etc. do not tell you what a magnetic field, electric field is really! They only describe their effects. How magnetic field is really generated and why it is unknown. What really mass is or how, why it bends space-time? Unknown. Where all constants in physics comes from? Unknown. Physics is still full of big unknowns and as long as any unknowns remain, there is no way to say something is really impossible with 100% proof.
In simple terms, electromagnetic field is a force per charge due to some source charge (electric and magnetic field are just components of field tensor depending upon your coordinate system). In simple quantum field theoretic term, electromagnetic field is a field of photons (quantize classical electromagnetic field Lagrangian!). My point is, in physics you DEFINE what an electromagnetic field is. In the first place how can our equations and theory make sense when we have unknown or ill-define variables? How can we assert "this is the effect of X" if "X is unknown" and we "really do not know X"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow is electromagnetic field generated? The source of an electromagnetic field is a charge.
The concept of mass is well define. Although if you trace history, the concept of mass has undergone a little modifications. Example, Newtonian mechanics simply define mass as the ratio between the force and the acceleration. Or the "quantity of matter" since it is a measure of inertia. of "sluggishness". However, in general relativity, we see that a gas of "massless" photons exert an effect on spacetime just as classical mass do! Why mass bends spacetime? I agree with fb36 on this part, We do not know. Maybe a future quantum theory of gravity would enlighten us about this. Although I would like to add another interesting question "Why is there a mass?"
Where all constants in physics comes from? But any serious theoretical physicist knows that all constants are unity:
G=k=c=h-bar=1
I was just kidding.
There is no such thing as "proof" in science, much more "100%".
Finally, its a goood thing that physics is still full of unknowns. Atleast it still provides employment for physicist.
1.)What are " hadronic technology"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2.)Not all hadrons are bosons.
3.)Muons and neutrinos have spin 1/2 and hence they are Fermoins. i.e. They obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics (see Paulis spin statistics theorem. Any standard quantum field theiry books or relativistic quantum mechanics have this discussion).
4.)Finally, mouns and neutrinos are NOT hadrons. They are leptons and hence not a bound state of quarks.
Maybe the science to make all this possible is under our noses.The same laws that say iron sinks in water is the same law used to make it float.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe naysayers said that mankind would never:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Fly
2. Go in a boat underwater
3. Build a bomb powerful enough to destroy a city by itself
With enough scientific effort, that all became reality. And so will faster than light travel and all the other demonstrations of future physics as seen on Star Trek. I predict that. I guarantee that. If mankind is willing to invest the time & money in the necessary research, IT WILL HAPPEN!
We will never have a maned flight to another solar system for many reasons. I list these reasons in my theory on the creation of the universe and unification theory. " universe-reh.info "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you,
Robert Evan Howard
aclepd.com
aclepd@aclepd.com
Maybe the problems with the teleporters is that they are thinking of bitmaps rather than jpegs/mpegs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy article on Science in Star Trek has been on the web since 1993. There is an update at http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/star_trek.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(This was 2 years before Dr Krauss's book. I am frequently mistaken for him.)
Transporters are glorified xerox machines. I have used xerox machines. They run out of toner and paper. I would never be reproduced by one of their descendants! Besides, one must trust the transporter operator. Can you imagine the pranks? Would you like to have your hands interchanged with your feet?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn "ordinance" is a law or decree. I think you meant "ordnance", which is a weapon or munition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy does mass bend space=time?To put it simply, units of space=time what ever that is,perhapts dark energy,can't occupy the same area with mass at the same moment,and it may in fact flow around,and through mass.This flow may be what gravity, eletromagnetic fields are made of,what holds atoms together,and controls all other behavior of wave mechanics.Maybe it is, just a matter of displacment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime, is an order of things that you can't deny.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI prefer the notion that time does not really exist. What we call time is the memory of previous moments and the fantasy of tomorrow, that which never arrives. And each of us in the middle experiencing the moment of now. Now is the only truth, when it comes to time. Everything else is either a fantasy or an unproven theory.That it is a label that offers us the delusion of understanding something, or a process of things that we can never truly understand. For how different are we than the two dimensional creatures on flatland who exist on a line. They can no more understand the third dimension than we can understand the fourth dimension. It is a limit on perception and existence .
So, how can you understand something, that doesn't necessarily even exist, and if it does, is beyond any practical understanding.
Mechanizing time and ascribing arbitrary values to arbitrary units is not understanding time. The Universe is not mechanical, it is organic. To wonder whether or not life exists out there is absurd, for the universe is life itself. But I digress.
Time does it exist?
Only if you want it to?
Personally, its one massive conspiracy developed by the New World Order, to make economic slaves out of us as the Corporatocracy took over the world. The Industrial Age truly began with the construction of the first mechanical clocks.
There I have said it.
Let the revolution from economic slavery begin....
Time, its just a built in variable of the matrix to fool you into believing that you exist, and are not some cosmic computer code freely existing in the hardwire of another dimension..
Man, I haven't the time for this.........
One of my favorite quotes is the one that says whatever man can imagine, he can invent. Does anyone know who created that quote?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this