WEBVTT - The Tech of Star Trek 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:13.400 Technology with tech Stuff from dot Com. Hey there, and 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:17.280 welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland, 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:20.720 and today we're going to look into something that is 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:24.680 near and dear to my heart. You see, way back 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:29.960 in nineteen sixty six, NBC began airing a television series 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:35.000 called Star Trek. This was the dream child of Gene Roddenberry, 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:37.320 and it's a show that featured the crew of the 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:41.839 starship Enterprise as they explored the galaxy. So their mission 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:45.239 was to be one of science and discovery, although they 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:49.400 frequently found themselves drawn into various conflicts throughout the series. 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.520 Star Trek has been called a space opera, and while 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:55.960 it's in the realm of science fiction, the science bit 0:00:56.320 --> 0:01:02.840 of that wasn't always absolutely least solid. However, over time, 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.560 various writers, editors, and others have fleshed out the world 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:10.800 of Star Trek and attempted to ground as much of 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.000 that technology to the real world as possible, and at 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:18.000 least a few cases inventors have actually turned out to 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:21.920 uh create stuff based on things they were inspired by 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:24.160 from the show itself, so it became sort of a 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.880 self fulfilling prophecy. It wasn't that the technology was necessarily 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:31.720 based in reality, but rather that inventors in reality began 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:34.040 to base their ideas off the Star Trek. So today 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:36.000 I want to take take a look at some of 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.120 that technology, not all of it. We're just gonna look 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:41.760 at a few different technologies that were very prominent in 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:44.840 Star Trek and see how they relate to the real world, 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:48.280 how realistic or unrealistic they may be, given what we 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:51.240 can do today. And I should say I was inspired 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:54.240 to do this episode from a few different sources. First 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:57.240 of all, interest a full disclosure, my parents wrote for 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:00.880 the Star Trek book series for young adults. They wrote 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:04.360 several books in that series, and so I grew up 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:07.120 watching a lot of Star Trek, both the original series, 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:11.359 the next generation series D Space nine, never got into Voyager, 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:14.120 never really watched Enterprise, so okay, so I kind of 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:17.520 left off after D Space nine. But that was one 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:19.799 of the reasons. And the other was that I received 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:22.760 a an advanced copy of a book called Star Trek 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:27.720 Treknology by Dr Ethan's Seagull, and it's a pretty cool book. 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.400 It goes into a lot of this stuff, like the 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:35.600 various technologies that were shown in the series, and how 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:38.200 do they relate back to stuff that you can find 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.079 in the real world. So a lot of the information 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.200 I'm covering today is information that's also in that book, 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.280 although I should also point out some of it is 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:50.360 from a series of podcast that I used to do 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:53.160 called Forward Thinking. You may remember if you had ever 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:56.600 subscribed Forward Thinking, that I would appear on there with 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.280 Joe McCormick and Lauren Voge Obama and together the three 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:02.480 of us, we'll try and suss out the future. And 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:05.320 we talked about Star Trek technologies on more than one 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:10.240 occasion because the the series introduced a lot of interesting 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:13.840 ideas over the course of its run and the course 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:18.679 of its various spinoffs, so it's tough to figure out 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.440 where you should actually start. There's so many different technologies 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.920 that were featured in Star Trek. It's filled with amazing 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:28.760 technology and gadgets, from the mass of starships in the 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:31.400 series to the personal tech that was carried around by 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:34.600 away teams. But I figure one neat place is with 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.320 warp drives. So the Star Trek series had a big problem. 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:42.600 They needed warp drives to get around because space, as 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:46.400 it turns out, is big, you know, like like I said, 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:49.480 and Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guy into the galaxy. You might 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:51.720 think it's a long trip to the chemist down the corner, 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:55.240 but that's just peanuts compared to space. The enormity of 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.280 space means that would take us generations to travel between 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.080 some stars. So if you hear that a star is 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:04.120 four light years away, what that actually means is that 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:08.240 it takes light four years to travel from that star 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:10.920 to us on Earth. So the light we are looking 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.760 at is technically four years old from that star. So 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:16.880 in a way, you could say that whenever we look 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.080 up into the night sky, we're actually staring into the past, 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:24.080 and everything we're looking at has already happened, and in 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:27.600 some cases it happened thousands or millions of years ago, 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:30.120 which is pretty crazy when you think about it. We're 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.000 looking at light that might come from stars that no 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:36.480 longer technically exist, but it's because it takes so many 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:39.120 years for the light to travel across the universe to 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:42.159 get to us that we don't know that that star 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:46.719 died out maybe half a million years ago. Well that's 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.040 really cool to think about here on Earth. But if 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.000 you're talking about a science fiction series, where people are 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:55.360 traveling through interstellar space, it creates a huge problem. How 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.240 do you get from point A to point B? I 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:01.880 mean light? It turns out it's the fastest stuff in 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:06.600 the universe. According to Einstein, nothing can go faster than 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:10.680 the speed of light. Light is the upper speed limit. Now, 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:13.640 to be more specific, I should say that light traveling 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.960 through the vacuum of space hits that speed limit. As 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:19.960 lights speed is somewhat dependent upon the medium through which 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:24.279 it travels. So if light is passing through water, it's 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:26.719 traveling at a slightly different speed than if it were 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:31.279 through the vacuum of space. But unrestricted in empty space, 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:34.240 light runs wild and sets that upper level of how 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:36.839 fast we can go. So, for the record, that speed 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:41.839 is two million, seven thousand, four hundred fifty eight meters 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.040 per second, or if you prefer about six hundred seventy 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:50.080 one million miles per hour, which is pretty darn fast. 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:57.040 But as fast as that is, it's still way too 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:00.479 slow to make the journey between distant stars in a 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:04.240 reasonable amount of time. So Alpha Centauri is a great example. 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:08.000 It's the closest star to Earth outside of our own son, obviously, 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:12.640 and it is four point three six seven light years away. Now, 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.640 that means if your ship could travel at light speed, 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:18.520 and it couldn't, but we'll talk about that in a second, 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:21.280 it would still take you nearly four and a half 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:24.600 years to get to Alpha Centauri. That would be a 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:28.680 very long episode of Star Trek, the original series. You 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:31.760 don't want to spend four years just to get from 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:34.679 Earth to Alpha Centauri only to find out there's nothing 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:36.400 there and that you've got to turn around, come back 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:39.719 and there'll be four more years. Now, you may have 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.800 heard that there have been some people who have been 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:47.120 thinking about sending satellites to do a fly by of 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:52.080 a planet that's that's that's actually an orbit around Proxima 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:56.800 Centauri Proxima B specifically, it is an Earth size planet 0:06:56.800 --> 0:07:00.160 in the Goldilocks zone around Proximus Centauri, and that it 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.440 would take us about twenty years to get those satellites 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:06.680 there if we use the methodology that has been uh suggested. 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.400 And how's that work if it's four light years away 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:12.920 and we can't travel the speed of light. Well, the 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:15.600 idea is that we would launch these very tiny satellites 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.400 up into orbit and we would use lasers to act 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:23.760 as the propulsion for those satellites. So we would speed 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:27.480 them up by shooting lasers from Earth toward these satellites 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:31.240 that would provide the propulsion. They would accelerate gradually, but 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:36.120 they would accelerate continuously, so you would just keep giving 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:38.600 them little boosts and they would keep getting faster and faster. 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.920 And while the rate of acceleration would initially be fairly slow, 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:44.560 it would also be steady, and after a while you'd 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.440 be traveling at a pretty good clip, and ultimately you'll 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:53.960 be traveling at about the speed of light, which doesn't 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.760 sound like it's very fast, you're thinking, but it's that's 0:07:56.760 --> 0:07:59.480 wicked fast. And it means that we would get those 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:02.840 satellites to proxima B at around the twenty year mark, 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:05.960 a little bit more than that actually, So that is 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:09.080 the way that would work. But like I said, you 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:11.200 wouldn't be able to get your spaceship up the light speed. 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:15.240 That's because your spaceship typically has mass. Mass is going 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:17.200 to be the thing that keeps you from achieving that 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:20.520 same speed. As light. Light does not have mass has 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:26.640 relativistic mass, which which means that the at a relativistic equation, 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.400 you would factor in mass with light. It can actually 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:32.319 impart momentum, and momentum is something that only mass can 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:38.120 really do really uh transfer. But it's because we're talking 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.400 about relativistic speeds. We're not talking about actual mass. Like, 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.200 you can't take a particle of light and measure it 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:46.880 to say how much mass it has. So you can 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:49.760 get pretty close to the speed of light even if 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.079 you have mass, at least close to the speed of 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:55.960 light according to our view of things. But you're not 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:59.240 actually gonna match lights speed as long as you're using 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:01.400 something that has mass. So how the heck do you 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:05.160 get around that? If you can't travel at light speed 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:08.240 much less faster than light speed, how do you make 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:12.720 a series where you can explore the galaxy? It would 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:17.080 be a ship where you would have to have generations 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:21.520 of people carrying on the same mission so that you 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:24.200 could finally get to wherever you're going and do whatever 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.000 it was you were hoping to do. How does Star 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:29.040 Trek get around it? Well, that's where the warp drive 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:31.440 comes in. The warp drive is supposed to warp the 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:35.280 fabric of spacetime itself. Now, this helps you travel through 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:38.280 between distant points at a speed that seems to be 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.800 faster than the speed of light, but it's not really 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:44.520 if you're really technical about it, you aren't actually moving 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:48.559 faster than light. You're just decreasing the distance between two points. 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.400 That's easier to explain this if I take a kind 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.120 of fanciful example. So let's say you're looking at a 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:59.680 paper map and you're planning a trip between Atlanta, Georgia, 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:04.880 and I don't know Edinburgh, Scotland. So you've decided you 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:06.959 want to go in a straight line. You use a 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:11.040 ruler and you line up Atlanta and Edinburgh and you 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:15.600 draw a line from Atlanta to Edinburgh with a very 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.760 steady uh rate. So you're you're just drawing this line. 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:22.680 You're moving at a at a decent clip, but you 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.880 know you're just you're just drawing the line there. Now, 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:29.760 Normally such a trip would also involve a track out 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.240 over the ocean, longboat ride, followed by a lot more 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:35.679 overland travel once you hit the UK. But what if 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.640 you just folded the map. So you fold it so 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:42.160 that Edinburgh and Atlanta are right next to each other, 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:44.240 and then you draw a line that connects the two 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.960 of them in this folded over shape. So you're not 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.720 drawing the line faster than you were before. You're still 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.600 using that same rate of speed, but you actually connect 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:56.000 the two cities much faster because you have less distance 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.079 to travel. Well, that's how warp drive is supposed to work. 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:02.560 So simply put, a warp drive shrinks the physical distance 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.599 in front of it and extends the distance or stretches 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:11.360 spacetime behind it, so you'd still travel at near light speed, 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.240 but you use the warp coils to manipulate the fabric 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:18.000 of space itself wrinkly get up, so you effectively travel 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:21.320 less distance to get to where you're going. The warp 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.880 numbers in the show indicated how severe that warping would be. 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:28.240 In Star Trek the next generation, the Federation would actually 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:31.119 learn that all of that warping of space time continuum 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:35.080 had some unintended and dangerous side effects, pretty typical for 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:37.640 stuff that we humans tend to do, and at that 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:40.280 point the Federation would put a limit on warp speeds 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:43.960 except in case of real emergency. I specifically remember watching 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.480 that episode when it came out, because everyone in my 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:50.280 group thought it was ridiculous. We all said, oh, come on. 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:56.320 As the Federation instituted a galaxy wide speed limit. But 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:59.920 how realistic is this idea of a warp drive. Well, 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:04.720 from a theoretical standpoint, there's actually a lot of support 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:08.880 for it. There's the this idea of the Einstein Rosen bridge, 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:12.360 which is a hypothetical structure that could link two separate 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:16.720 points in spacetime together, and that describes a very similar phenomenon. 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:19.479 It's also known as wormholes. Right, You've got a wormhole 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:22.480 in one part of spacetime that connects to a totally 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:25.400 different part of space time, And normally you would have 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:29.360 to travel perhaps millions of light years to get between 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.400 those two points. But the wormhole, it's kind of a shortcut. 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:34.720 It allows you to pop over from one side to 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:38.199 the other. Now, this structure is completely hypothetical. We've never 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:41.520 observed such a thing, but it is consistent with the 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:45.280 rules of general relativity. So, in other words, there's nothing 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:47.480 that we know about the universe that flat out says 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:50.920 this thing is not possible. Right, we don't have any 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.400 proof here that says, oh, this could never happen because 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:58.320 of X, Y and z. But traveling through such a wormhole, 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:01.240 even if it is in fact something that exists and 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:04.760 not just a hypothesis, it would require some stuff that 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:08.000 we're not entirely sure is actually possible or real, like 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:11.600 some form of exotic matter or additional physics as yet 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.439 unsupported by our model of the universe. So it's not 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:20.679 like the hypothothetical nature of this warp or these wormholes 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.520 is enough. You have to even go a step further 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.280 and say, well, even if they do exist, there's no 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.120 way we could travel through one unless we were to 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:35.160 completely reform physics as we understand it today. As for 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:39.080 actively warping spacetime, so not using a wormhole, but just 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:45.280 creating that warp yourself, it's a well, it's in theory, 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.440 it could work within our understanding of the universe. Anyway, 0:13:48.480 --> 0:13:50.800 there's nothing that we know about the universe that says 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:56.040 this would be impossible, so it's hypothetical. But in other words, 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:59.080 there there could be practical limitations keeping us from ever 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:02.640 building such a divi ice. From a purely scientific standpoint, 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.520 nothing we know of says it's completely impossible, but from 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.760 a practical standpoint it may very well be. In a 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:14.280 theoretical physicist named Miguel al Qubair was able to work 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:16.840 out the math showing that it could be possible to 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.120 warp space time in such a way that would be 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.320 equivalent to warp speed. You could shrink the space in 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.200 front of you while along the space behind you, giving 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:27.880 the effect of traveling much faster than light from the 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.800 point of view of an outside observer, although from your 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:34.520 perspective you'd be traveling at normal speeds. And within the 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:38.080 realms of science, there are those who hypothesize about a 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:42.120 type of interstellar drive called an al Qubier drive. But 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:46.280 such a drive would require a pretty hefty dose of energy. 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:50.520 And by hefty, well, I mean that the amount of 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:54.080 energy needed to deform space to create such a warp 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:58.120 bubble would require the equivalent of twenty thousand mega tons 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:01.480 of TNT, or if you pre for a an entire 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:05.640 ton of mass converted into energy. According to Einstein's famous 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:09.400 E equals MC squared. Remember that C squared is the 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.080 speed of light squared, and speed of light is super fast, 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:14.920 So it only takes a little bit of mass to 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:19.240 create an entirely huge amount of energy. Right. Because you 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:24.000 take the mass and whatever whatever metric you're using, and 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:27.280 you multiply at times the speed of light squared, you're 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.800 gonna get a really big number. So a very small 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.160 amount of mass equals a huge amount of energy. This is, 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.120 of course the basis not just of nuclear power, but 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:38.360 of the atomic bomb. It only takes a little bit 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:42.960 of matter for this to become an enormous release. So 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:46.600 an al QB air drive would also require negative mass 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:50.000 to work, So you would need negative mass plus you 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.760 would need an enormous amount of energy in order to 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:56.720 get the drive working. These are some really big limitations. 0:15:56.800 --> 0:16:01.120 It's it's entirely possible that those alone will mean that 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:04.320 will never actually develop one. Now, one thing that might 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:08.080 provide that energetic boost we would need would be an 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:12.240 antimatter drive. Star Trek actually uses antimatter. In fact, they 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.600 have an antimatter containment system, and in one notable instance, 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:20.080 the antimatter containment system lead to the destruction of one 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:23.239 of the enterprises. There was a failure in the antimatter 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:27.240 containment system and then the enterprise was no more. This 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:30.640 would be the next generation version of the enterprise. Next generation. 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:34.440 They treated the enterprise like it was Klean X. You know, 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.280 you just pull one out, destroy it, throw it away, 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:41.000 you get another one. I'm a little bitter about this. 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:45.120 In the original series, they lost the Enterprise one time, 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:48.040 and that would be in Star Trek three, the Search 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:52.040 for Spock, when they destroyed the Enterprise in an effort 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:56.560 to defeat the Klingons. And it was a huge, emotionally 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.720 powerful moment because the ship itself was seen as sort 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:02.560 of a character. And then in the next generation it 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:06.000 became so casual that Picard and I am not making 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.760 this up once said, we still have a lot more 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:12.840 letters in the alphabet, because they would always add another 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:15.000 letter at the end of Enterprise. They have Enterprise B, 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:19.520 Enterprise C, Enterprise D, Enterprise E. And when he made 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:23.200 that comment, I turned off and wanted to throw something 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:27.400 at something else. That's a tangent. That's just Jonathan going 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:32.280 crazy about people casually treating this destruction of this enormous 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.680 spaceship as being not a big deal. Back to antimatter. 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:39.160 So one thing that could provide that energy boost would 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:42.640 be this antimatter drive. So when matter and antimatter encounter 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:46.440 one another, they annihilate each other. And I don't mean 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:49.000 like in the W W E Way where you got 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:52.000 these two guys talking about how they're gonna ruin each other. No, 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:55.679 they literally annihilate one another, and in the process produced 0:17:55.680 --> 0:18:00.200 an enormous amount of energy at a efficient conversion rate 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.760 according to that calculation of equals mc squared or that 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.560 equation I should say, So, if you collide to particles 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:11.040 together at high enough energy levels, there's a chance that 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:17.879 you will spontaneously create new particle antiparticle pairs. So antiparticles 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:22.840 are the counterparts to actual particles. So, for an example, 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:26.919 you've got electrons. That's a negatively charged sub atomic particle. 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:31.160 The antiparticle to an electron is a positron. It has 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.080 the exact same mass, but it has a positive charge 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.200 rather than a negative charge. If an electron an oppositron 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:41.119 meet up, they annihilate one another. So that means if 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:45.480 you actually create these antiparticles, you then have the huge 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:49.680 challenge of keeping them from coming into contact with any 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:53.600 kind of regular matter. If they do, then the antimatter 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:55.639 and the matter will annihilate each other and you'll end 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.359 up with some energy. But that's it. You You can't 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:02.760 keep that antimatter a round. To store antimatter, you would 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:04.879 have to come up with a really clever way to 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:10.040 isolate the antimatter from any physical matter. That happens to 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:12.800 be in the area. Uh, here's a fun fact too. 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:16.160 When the universe first formed is fun fact. Hey, next 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.439 time you're at a party. When the universe first formed 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:20.879 shortly after the Big Bang, we had just a touch 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:25.240 more matter than we had antimatter. There was both during 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:27.760 the Big Bang, but we had more matter than antimatter. 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:29.959 And the reason that's important is because if they had 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:33.720 been exactly equal, we wouldn't have a universe. All the 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:36.080 matter in any matter would have just annihilated each other. 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:39.760 But for some reason, we had more matter than we 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:45.000 had antimatter. Why no, we don't really know. We've actually 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:52.560 produced antimatter in high speed particle accelerator experiments like over 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:55.480 at the Large Hadron Collider. That is something that has happened. 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.040 It's we've observed it, so it's not like it's just 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:02.080 it's not just hypothetical. We've act actually seen this. We've 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:06.040 created antiparticles, and in fact, over its cern there were 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:09.360 teams that even figured out how to keep those antiparticles 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:14.720 uh completely safe for about twenty minutes, which sounds like 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:18.440 a pretty short time, but typically in these collisions where 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:23.720 you generate antiparticles, they exist for less than a fraction 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:28.280 of a fraction of a second. Within within an instant 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:32.800 they have annihilated with a particle. So while you can 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:38.320 measure their appearance and disappearance, it tends to happen instantaneously. 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:40.520 From our perspective, there's no way you would ever be 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:43.639 able to observe it directly, So being able to actually 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.399 preserve anti matter for up to twenty minutes is a 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:52.480 an enormous deal. In the anti hydrogen laser physics Apparatus 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:57.000 or alpha over at CERN created anti hydrogen, which is 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:00.680 pretty cool. I think now they're still mass of engineering 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:04.320 challenges in the way of harnessing antimatter as an energy source, 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:07.440 and it may never be practical, but if it is, 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:10.879 that would be amazing. We would have the capability of 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:14.000 harnessing more energy than ever before, and it would be 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:17.399 relatively easy to generate enough power for all the needs 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:21.840 of everybody on the planet with these antimatter engines, which 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.080 is kind of cool. But you'd have to reconcile yourself 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:25.760 with the possibility that in the event of a cast 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:32.120 trophic failure, everything goes poof, So like the warp drive, 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:35.200 there's nothing in the laws of physics standing in our 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:39.080 way when it comes to antimatter engines. But at this 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:42.280 point it's literally a case of engineering. We may discover 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:46.680 that trapping and harnessing antimatter is beyond our capabilities. It's 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:48.760 not against the laws of physics, it just might be 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:52.440 beyond what we can physically be capable of doing. So 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:55.200 perhaps our warp drives of the future will be fueled 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:58.680 by people shoveling more antimatter into a giant anti coal 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:02.320 furnace or something. And there's probably the lithium crystal involved 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.359 in there somewhere too, all right. So that's the warp drive, 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:08.800 and that's the antimatter engine dealt with. But there's still 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:11.200 a lot to talk about when it comes to Star Trek. 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:13.600 So when we come back, we'll take a look at 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:18.360 tractor beams and transporters. But first a word from our sponsor. 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:27.800 All right, let's talk about trek your beams for a second. 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:31.479 So in Star Trek, also in other science fiction shows, 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:37.840 there are these beams of energy that various vehicles spaceships 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:43.240 typically can use that will help lock other objects into 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:47.400 a position and either tow them toward you or push 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:52.000 them away, or otherwise keep them in the same spot 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:54.000 that you want them to be in. So you can 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:57.520 actually use beams of this energy to isolate and then 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:03.280 manipulate other objects. Depending upon the nature of the tractor beam, 0:23:03.320 --> 0:23:06.879 it could be for boarding purposes, it could be it 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:10.119 could be to help a vessel that is in danger. 0:23:10.760 --> 0:23:12.600 In the case of the Borg, it's so that you 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:15.360 can hold it steady, but so as you can send 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:18.879 all your little Borg soldiers over and start borgafying. Everybody 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:25.280 left and right becomes a Smorges Borg. Ramsey's judging me 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:28.879 and anyway, it's this idea that you could use this 0:23:29.040 --> 0:23:31.479 energy to hold things in place and pull them closer. 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:34.560 But here's a tricky part. If you're using a beam 0:23:34.680 --> 0:23:38.360 of something, if you're beaming energy out at a target, 0:23:38.440 --> 0:23:43.000 you're you're sending something outward. How do you pull that 0:23:43.280 --> 0:23:46.040 thing in towards you? I mean, you're sending energy out 0:23:46.160 --> 0:23:50.159 that's a push. So how do you pull something with 0:23:50.240 --> 0:23:55.080 a pushing force? Clearly, there are some forces that are attractive, 0:23:55.680 --> 0:24:01.200