Category: Science & Technology

  • The Physics of Wormholes

    According to Lawrence M. Krauss in The Physics of Star Trek, “a surprising amount of modern theo- retical physics research,” clustered in the area of astrophysical wormhole studies, is directed towards establishing the scientific and mathematical prerequisites for timetravel.  “Wormhole time machines are easy to design,” explains Krauss.

  • The Physics of Warp Drive

    Although light from the moon reaches us in about two seconds, and light from Mars in a few minutes, light from Proxima Centauri or Alpha Centauri takes about four years to reach us. A spaceship traveling at current rocketry technology speed would take about ten thousand years to reach any possible Class-M planet.

  • The Enemy Within

    Captain Kirk, Lt. Sulu, Geological Technician Fisher, and three otherEnterprise crew members are approaching the end of a routine, one-day geological survey and specimen gathering mission on the planet Alpha 177. Helm Officer Sulu is tending to a doglike creature indigenous to the planet.

  • The Cage, The Menagerie

    The Cage was the first of two pilot episodes produced for The Original Series. It was filmed at MGM Studios in December 1964 and delivered to NBC’s executive offices in New York in February 1965. It was first shown to the public at the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland.

  • How the Transporter Really Works

    Over the decades, the copious science fictional “explanations” of how Star Trek’s beaming technology really works, or might some- day be able to work, have undergone dis- cernable paradigm shifts. The original notion was that of the dematerialization-rematerialization, matter-to-energy conversion and back physical transporter.

  • All Our Yesterdays

    Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to the planet Sarpeidon, the only natural satellite of a star, Beta Niobe, which is going to explode as a supernova. Although it has been previously established that a “civilized humanoid species” dwells on the planet, Enterprise sensor scans strangely indicate that there is no intelligent life remaining anywhere on that world.