Most Misused Word in Science Fiction

[Flyspeck23]

A singularity is a black hole, I believe.

A singularity does exist "inside" a black hole, yes.

 

[Viking Bastard]

That would make an interesting premise, a TV series in which aliens invade but we
discover that we hold the ultimate weapon to defeat them: The Mac. After the pilot,
after we break back the invasion, a alliance of alien races against the invaders come
and recruite a team of Earthlings under the leadership of Steve Jobs to battle in the
great intrastellar war.

We can call it 'iSpace'.

 

[The_Universe]

You know, that topic actually came up in one of the old Star Trek novels. (One of the few that was actaully decent, IIRC, though I can't for the life of me remember which one.) Someone--probably Dr. McCoy, though I couldn't swear to that--was discussing the transporter, and wondering if it didn't kill you. After all, if it killed the original person but created a perfect duplicate that believed it was the original person, or if it created a thing that was alive but had no "soul," how would anyone ever really know?

It was definitely McCoy - in fact, I believe the musing was somewhere near the beginning of Diane Duane's Spock's World.

 

[mojo1701]

It was definitely McCoy - in fact, I believe the musing was somewhere near the beginning of Diane Duane's Spock's World.

And mentioned by Emory Erickson in episode "Daedalus."

 

[LordVyreth]

Security. In for example Star Trek everyone seems to bypass security with easy. Even non-intelligent lifeforms are either not detected or somehow instictively now all the important subroutines to acces main ship controls. In never amazes me how a lot of science fiction series seem to feature diffenent aliens or entities with no prior knowledge to eachother existance who somehow seem to be able to bypass, disable, override or nullify every security system the other one has.

Something else that never amazes me is how hits to the shield systems or a completely different part of the ship always seem to blow out consoles and systems within the bridge section. Methinks that it would be wise to insulate or otherwise protect those systems from suddenly blowing out. I mean circuitbrakers are commenplace even in these times.

I know what you mean. I lose suspension of disbelief every Star Trek episode with a big space battle. A few torpedoes hit the shields, and computers on the bridge are bursting into flame or exploding, random gas is pouring out of pipes, extras go flying over the guardrails...Actually, that leads to some questions about the wisdom of bridge design and the lack of seat belts as well.

On a similar note, there's the boarding party raids. It annoys me that it always comes down to people sneaking through ventilation shaf...err, I mean Jeffery Tubes and blasting each other. You'd think we'd have some sort of security cameras and automated weaponry in the future.

 

[Pbartender]

A singularity does exist "inside" a black hole, yes.

Nope, not necessarily.

We've never actually seen what's inside a black hole... That's part of it being a black hole, after all.

All we know is that at the middle of a black hole, there is enough mass in a small enough space to produce enough gravity to capture light, and prevent it from escaping. That space is defined by the Schwarzschild Radius, more commonly known as the event horizon, once the blackhole is formed. This radius is based on the total mass of the object, and you can calculate it for any object...

R_s = MG/c²

M stands for mass
G is Newton's constant coefficient of gravity
c is the speed of light

The Sun, for example, would be about 6 km wide as a black hole, and the Earth would have to be compressed down to less than 2 cm wide before it could form a black hole.

A mass need not be a singularity to be a black hole, it only needs to be smaller than the Schwarzschild Radius.

 

[barsoomcore]

extras go flying over the guardrails...Actually, that leads to some questions about the wisdom of bridge design and the lack of seat belts as well.

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."

 

[barsoomcore]

the Earth would have to be compressed down to less than 2 cm wide before it could form a black hole.

So let's put half the world's population on one side, and half on the other, and SQQQUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZEEEEEEEEEEE...

 

[Captain Tagon]

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."

Well, they can synthasize food.

 

[driver8]

IIRC there was a DS9 episode where a shuttle exploded with half of the main cast in it. They beamed out in time, but only barely - they were "stuck" in the ship's memory, only to appear on the holodeck. For some reason, they couldn't stop the running program (James Bond rip-off), or else these people (Sisko, O'Brian, Kira and Dex - again, IIRC) would've died.

Gosh, that was an awful episode. Didn't make any sense whatsoever.

Sure it does, it was to gain the benefit of the interest of the first Pierce Brosnan James Bond movie being released at the same time IIRC. TNG did a similar thing with that Robin Hood/Q ep during Kevin Costners Robin Hood movie..I think.