Most Misused Word in Science Fiction

[Darth K'Trava]

"Sir, I must protest. I am not a Merry Man!"

-Hyp.

ROFLMAO

One of my favorite Worf quotes!!

 

[Kesh]

Someone pointed out to me that because you need a navicomputer to do hyperjumps, the MF could be the only ship to make the trip by traveling under 12 parsecs from start to finish without hitting a moon or such.

In the first Timothy Zahn Star Wars trilogy, it was said that Kessel was in a sector of space populated by lots of black holes. There were known safe routes, but they took longer than the shortcuts most smugglers used. Of course, those smugglers usually ended up dead by taking too-short shortcuts, and getting pulled into a black hole.

So, Han was boasting that the Falcon was fast enough to zip between the black holes on a very short path without getting pulled into them.

From what I heard, Lucas loved the explanation.

 

[Kesh]

What confuses me is that if you're generating your own gravity (and let's just leave that little one aside, shall we?) and something causes your ship to shake, why do people lean from side to side? Their relative acceleration due to gravity doesn't change no matter what orientation the ship is in, right? So what's with the leaning?

Generating gravity. Okay.

Oh, and if you can teleport, as explicitly described in Star Trek (breaking down matter and transmitting it for re-assembly), then you can synthesize matter. At arbitrary points in space.

So what, exactly, does Scotty do? I mean, why don't they just have every single component of the Enterprise listed in the ship's memory, and anytime there's any damage, just "transporter" the broken version out and stick a new version of the component into its appropriate location?

"The hoobajoob's cracked! Quick, press the 'New Hoobajoob' button. Okay, phew."

IIRC, one of the technical manuals stated that replicators were really good at making "loose" molecular structures. So things like food, beverages, etc. were easily produced. However, things with "tight" structures (such as dense metals), or which needed extremely precise construction, were beyond the capabilities of a standard replicator and too power-intensive to do often on a transporter system. Which is why they didn't just build a giant replicator in Mars orbit and "beam" ships together on a factory line.

(I'm just full of these silly explanations I've read, aren't I? )

 

[reanjr]

I always found it amusing that no one abused it.
I mean, if you can store it as data and send it somewhere to be replicated, why can't you just knock out replicants of people at will?

I remember them stating more than once that Clone's degrade with each generation (clone of a clone of a clone) but no matter how often you transport someone, they're fine, so why bother cloning?

Michael Crichton had an good explanation of why you couldn't do this in his book Timeline. Basically, the process of "reading" the data destroys it (or at least changes it to the degree that you are left without the original object).

 

[reanjr]

Following up on the recurring 'quantum' issue in this thread - can someone please exoplain to me exactly what a 'quantum singularity' is, why it emits tachyons and why it's blue and swirly.

And while we're talking about blue and swirly... singularities, rifts, distortions and the like. Why are they always, always blue and swirly?

A quantum singularity is a massive point (a theoretical non-dimensional point). Basically, a singularity is a place that is infinitely small and contains a lot of crap. It's directly related to an event horizon. I do not know exactly why they would emit tachyons, but I suppose it might (I have no idea, I'm just speculating) have to do with the area between the singularity and the event horizon being so warped that particles would travel through time and, in essense, travel faster than the speed of light.

Probably related to blueshift, and phenomenon experienced when something travels away from you at near light speeds (and I suppose at extra-light speeds). I would think that because matter entering the "rift" is being whisked away real fast-like, that it creates a blueshift. Seems like a reasonable (if flawed) reason.

There may be some actual reason that would make this happen continuously and in a swirl, but I do not know of one.

 

[reanjr]

My theory is that what you hear isn't the sound of the engine or explosion, but the electromagnetic waves which the engine/explosion produces, through your ship's radio.

My theory is that you are hearing the sound from the point of view of the ship blowing up. It is very common in TV and movies to juxtapose the audio and the video (the camera shows something far away [like two people talking] that you hear on audio as if you were right ther).

I also think my theory is the most scientifically sound.

 

[reanjr]

Really, it isn't a word, but my greatest sci-fi pet peeve is why so many advanced civilizations have access to teleportation devices, fusion energy, quantum computers, but no UPS - or surge protectors, for that matter. I guess that safety doesn't make for a good story.

I think most of these technologies require such massive amounts of power that you simply can't create a capacitor to power them. It requires an actual active power system.

 

[reanjr]

You find some interesting terminology when you read really old science fiction. I read a lot of it from the Golden Age and it can get pretty bizarre. I was very, very confused at times until I realized they were using different words to refer to the same thing. The two most bizzare are using 'Star' and 'Planet' interchangably and using 'Galaxy' and 'Star System' interchangably (as in, 'We're going to the Alpha Centauri galaxy').

What's interesting is that the definition of the word planet is still pretty much up for grabs. In some cases it basically boils down to "We know one when we see one".

 

[Wayside]

What confuses me is that if you're generating your own gravity (and let's just leave that little one aside, shall we?) and something causes your ship to shake, why do people lean from side to side? Their relative acceleration due to gravity doesn't change no matter what orientation the ship is in, right? So what's with the leaning?

On the subject of gravity (though only vaguely sci-fi), one of the things that I've always found odd (or curious, maybe I'm wrong) is superheroes who can run at superspeeds. When you run, you always push up as well as forward, but if you were running at that speed, gravity wouldn't have time to bring you back down, so you would actually end up suspended in mid air, waving your arms and legs really fast.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

What's interesting is that the definition of the word planet is still pretty much up for grabs. In some cases it basically boils down to "We know one when we see one".

You mean, like every other year Pluto is the 9th planet, while he previously wasn´t?