USS Enterprise at warp speed in Into The Darkness. Although this may seem absurd to us, we travel incredibly slowly when compared to the speed of light, so we don’t notice the hands on our watches ticking slower when we’re running or traveling on an airplane. Putting these two ideas together, Einstein realized that space and time are relative-an object in motion actually experiences time at a slower rate than one at rest. Anyone moving at a constant speed should observe the same physical laws.The speed of light (about 300 million meters per second) is the same for all observers, whether or not they’re moving.In his special theory of relativity, Einstein states two postulates: Taken together, space (consisting of three dimensions: up-down, left-right, and forward-backward) and time are part of what’s called the space-time continuum. To sidestep the issue of Newton’s third law of motion and the impossibility of matter traveling faster than the speed of light, we can look to Einstein and the relationship between space and time. So how can the Enterprise possibly go faster than the speed of light without killing the members on board? The same kind of thing happens when a mosquito hits your windshield and splatters. Even though he’d be pushing back with an equal and opposite force, his mass compared to the starship is just too small. What does this have to do with Star Trek and the Enterprise? Even if it were possible to accelerate to something like half the speed of light, such intense acceleration would kill a person by smashing him against his seat. It comes down to Newton’s third law of motion: how for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The first obstacle the writers had to confront is much simpler than you’d think. But what was the explanation? How could they explain an object traveling faster than the speed of light, something Einstein proved impossible in his special theory of relativity? The invention of warp speed solved the opera part of the problem, since it allowed the Enterprise to go much faster than the speed of light. This, of course, wouldn’t make very exciting television. A journey from Earth to the center of our galaxy, for example, would take about twenty-five thousand years if you were to travel just under the speed of light. The biggest problem was that even if a starship could travel at the speed of light, the time to go from one galaxy to another could still take hundreds, maybe thousands of years. At the same time, they wanted to do their best to stick to the laws of physics. So the creator of the series, Gene Roddenberry, and the other writers had to find a way to move the show’s characters around the universe in a timely, dramatic fashion. When people think of the series, they probably think of melodramatic plots involving aliens, space travel, and action-packed laser fights. As the “opera” part of the name suggests, a show like Star Trek isn’t meant to be slow or ordinary. They were essentially creating a space opera, a subgenre of science fiction that takes place in space and covers the span of several galaxies and millions of light-years. When the writers of Star Trek sat down to plan the series, they found themselves confronted with a few problems. The following is an excerpt of The Science of Superheroes and Space Warriors published by HowStuffWorks.
0 kommentar(er)
