Odds are good, the Burn was because a large quantity of Dilithium was removed from the universe 900 years ago, and because Dilithium is linked on a quantum technobabble level, a wave effect began oscillating through the crystals until it built up enough to explode simultaneously (because again, quantum linked). Thereby making the Burn be Burnham's fault.
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[+] Star Trek Discovery (Fan) Thread
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
Well, the episodes have spoken of a single incident of The Burn. They haven't been saying that dilithium, in general, has become unstable and has been randomly detonating every once in a while, and the stuff is sitll around, just scarce. So, this is probably only a concern if The Burn was caused by some weapon or was otherwise initiated by people.
But risking all the remaining dilithium in the galaxy to get at Discovery would seem, an extreme choice.
Resonating for 700 years before going boom, all at once? I don't think that sounds plausible.
Insofar as we have established that, say, the Enterprise D was a darn sight faster than the original Enterprise, yes.
However, they can write their way around that super-easy. Dilithium is used to mediate matter-antimatter reactions in a warp engine. Post-burn ships are going to be working with less dilithium in their engines, meaning less matter-antimatter reaction, meaning less power.
The fact that couriers need to continually trade for dilithium suggests that ships in general are trying to get by with so little that even recrystalization is insufficient long-term - ships are working with so little, and pushing those crystals to the limit, so that they need to replace crystals frequently. Meanwhile, Discovery's working under a design and load that, barring mishap, the ship can go for years without needing new crystals.
So, they can reasonably say that most of the galaxy is driving economy Yugos, and the Discovery is a Porche with a huuuuuge gas tank.
MarkB
Legend
It's worth noting that the dilithium didn't actually explode during the Burn, it just stopped functioning. The explosions resulted from there no longer being a mediating agent between the matter and antimatter streams in the warp core.
So another Burn wouldn't destroy all dilithium. And it would only affect Discovery at all if their warp drive was powered up at the time.
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Yes, but the dilithium crystal (which, in that future, are rare) was then inert and in the middle of a matter-antimatter collision. That's not healthy. You don't walk away from that. You do, in fact, blow up if the matter-antimatter streams intersect in the middle of you. It wasn't like all the ships went boom, and you could go back and salvage the dilithium once it reactivates (if it reactivates). That stuff is gone. Destroyed.
Dilithium was scarce - let us assume that ships were getting by on low replacement supply and a lot of recrystallazation. So, like, 90% of the extant supply goes boom, because it is already in ships and other large power systems. You now have 10% of the supply remaining.
Can you afford to do that again? Take out 90% of what still remains (which is in what ships remain), leaving yourself with 1% of what once was, just to get Discovery?
MarkB
Legend
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Fair point - but I'll bet the current ships have some form of safety measures in place to at least limit the damage in case of another Burn. Dilithium supplies secured to survive a nearby detonation, quick cut-offs to the antimatter stream, extra shielding around the core etc.
And if a particular faction can ensure that they have their dilithium safely stockpiled, and all their ships' warp drives powered down when it happens, then to them it might be worthwhile to trash everyone else's dilithium supplies.
Dilithium availability aside, I would expect the technological power to have increased by an order of magnitude over 1000 years. We've seen their transporters are better, and they have cooler looking interfaces. The ship-to-ship weaponry was certainly more powerful, but we're talking a thousand years. It should awe-inspiringly powerful in comparison.
I suppose there's an argument that maybe a post-bird galactic decline means it's effetely more like 300 years of development rather than 1,000. But The Enterprise-E would stomp all over the TOS Enterprise, and that's only, what 100 years?
I suppose there's an argument that maybe a post-bird galactic decline means it's effetely more like 300 years of development rather than 1,000. But The Enterprise-E would stomp all over the TOS Enterprise, and that's only, what 100 years?
FitzTheRuke
Legend
I think that's it - the Burn put everyone back several centuries. Sure, some fun advances survived, (like the transporters) but subspace communication and interstellar travel have had some serious setbacks. Not to mention society in general is not at its best. My point is, they may have even LOST a lot of technology. I think, for example, 300 years earlier would have been wizard.
MarkB
Legend
The Burn was only somewhere a little over 100 years ago, so they had around 900 years of advancement prior to that. But maybe we're missing more in the big picture - maybe dilithium isn't the only resource that was running short. Some of what we've been presented with suggests quite incredible collapses in communication and trade, even given the difficulty of warp travel. The situation that occurred in the last episode arose because Earth had lost communication with a research outpost on Titan - that's not even beyond our own solar system, and they still couldn't maintain useful links.
I wonder how much of the technology in the Star Trek universe is reliant upon resources available only in certain parts of the galaxy, even aside from dilithium. If you can't build or obtain the parts necessary to maintain your technology, you have to start falling back on what you can make locally.
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