The Physics of Star Trek Read Online Free PDF

for those aboard the spaceship. At close to the speed of light, a journey to,
     say, the center of our galaxy would take more than 25,000 years of Earth time. For those
     aboard the spaceship, if it were moving sufficiently close to light speed, the trip might
     take less than 10 yearsa long time, but not impossibly so. Nevertheless, while this might
     make individual voyages of discovery possible, it would make the task of running a
     Federation of civilizations scattered throughout the galaxy impossible. As the writers of
     Star Trek have correctly surmised, the fact that a 10-year journey for the
    
    
     Enterprise
    
    
     would correspond to a 25,000-year period for Starfleet Command would wreak havoc on any
     command operation that hoped to organize and control the movements of many such craft.
     Thus it is absolutely essential that (a) light speed be avoided, in order not to put the
     Federation out of synchronization,
    
    
     and
    
    
     (b) faster-than-light speed be realized, in order to move practically about the galaxy.
    The kicker is that, in the context of special relativity alone, the latter possibility
    
    
     cannot be realized.
    
    
     Physics becomes full of impossibilities if super light speed is allowed. Not least among
     the problems is that because objects get more massive as they approach the speed of light,
     it takes progressively more and more energy to accelerate them by a smaller and smaller
     amount. As in the myth of the Greek hero Sisyphus, who was condemned to push a boulder
     uphill for all eternity only to be continually thwarted near the very top, all the energy
     in the universe would not be sufficient to allow us to push even a speck of dust, much
     less a starship, past this ultimate speed limit.
    By the same token, not just light but all massless radiation
    
    
     must
    
    
     travel at the speed of light. This means that the many types of beings of “pure energy”
     encountered by the
    
    
     Enterprise,
    
    
     and later by the
    
    
     Voyager,
    
    
     would have difficulty existing as shown. In the first place, they wouldn't be able to sit
     still. Light cannot be slowed down, let alone stopped in empty space. In the second place,
     any form of intelligent-energy being (such as the “photonic”
    energy beings in the
    
    
     Voyager
    
    
     series; the energy beings in the Beta Renna cloud, in
    
    
     The Next Generation;
    
    
     the Zetarians, in the original series; and the Dal'Rok, in
    
    
     Deep Space Nine),
    
    
     which is constrained to travel at the speed of light, would have clocks that are
     infinitely slowed compared to our own. The entire history of the universe would pass by in
     a single instant. If energy beings could experience anything, they would experience
     everything at once! Needless to say, before they could actually interact with corporeal
     beings the corporeal beings would be long dead.
    Speaking of time, I think it is time to introduce the Picard Maneuver. Jean-Luc became
     famous for introducing this tactic while stationed aboard the
    
    
     Stargazer.
    
    
     Even though it involves warp travel, or super light speed, which I have argued is
     impossible in the context of special relativity alone, it does so for just an instant and
     it fits in nicely with the discussions here. In the Picard Maneuver, in order to confuse
     an attacking enemy vessel, one's own ship is accelerated to warp speed for an instant. It
     then appears to be in two places at once. This is because, traveling faster than the speed
     of light for a moment, it
    
    
     overtakes
    
    
     the light rays that left it the instant before the warp drive was initiated. While this is
     a brilliant stategyand it appears to be completely consistent as far as it goes (that is,
     ignoring the issue of whether it is possible to achieve warp speed)I think you can see
     that it opens a veritable Pandora's can of worms. In the first place, it begs a