Astronomy Cast

We continue our ad-hoc miniseries through sci-fi franchises. This week we’ll talk about Stargate, worm holes, mind parasites and self-replicating bots. There’s a lot to talk about!

Show Notes

• Stargates, wormholes, and hyperspace travel
• Travel between galaxies including Pegasus Galaxy and Atlantis
• Wormhole stability and Einstein-Rosen bridges
• Faster-than-light travel and teleportation rings
• Naquadah and unstable Quadria as power sources
• Superheavy elements and island of stability discussion
• Matter-antimatter energy concepts
• Energy weapons, plasma, and shield technology
• Human migration across the galaxy
• Ancient alien civilizations and ascension
• Goa’uld parasites and Tok’ra coexistence
• Real-world parasite comparisons like cordyceps
• Asgard cloning and genetic degradation
• Replicators as self-replicating machines
• Praise for Stargate Universe
• Stargate compared to the Isekai genre
• Appreciation for Stargate’s humor and relatable characters
• Humanity’s technological rise across the series

Transcript

Fraser Cain: 

Astronomy Cast, Episode 794, The Science of Stargate. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly facts-based journey through the Cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Cain, I'm the publisher of Universe Today.

With me, as always, is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of CosmoQuest. Hey Pamela, how are you doing?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I am particularly well, because I've been brought a 44-ounce cranberry slushie, so I'm going to be getting progressively more sugar high throughout the piece.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, so you won't hear all of the breaks that we take as Pamela goes to the bathroom, but just assume they will have happened. 44 ounces, I don't even know what that is in milliliters, that's a lot. We continue our ad-hoc mini-series through sci-fi franchises.

This week, we'll talk about Stargate, wormholes, mind parasites, and self-replicating bots. There's a lot to talk about. Alright, Stargate.

Now this is objectively the best sci-fi series. So I just, you know, I need to put my, and I'm not just saying it's my favorite, I'm saying that it's objectively the best, that in a court of law, it would stand up, people would make their case, and in the end, Stargate would win. I brook no argument from anyone, that is just the truth, the reality, this is the universe that we live in.

The Stargate universe. Obviously, you know, people will give me grief to that, they'll send emails, send your emails to Pamela at, no, Starstrider, no. So well, so let's just start with the big one, with the Stargate universe, and that of course is the Stargates themselves.

What is the science of what they're doing in Stargate?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So in theory, there are a series of rings that if you put in the correct number of locked-in runes, will allow you to travel to a matching gate in our galaxy, or, or... Into another galaxy. If you figure out how to enter even more runes, you can travel, with added energy, to another universe, thus, Atlantis.

Fraser Cain: 

Other galaxy.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Other galaxy, that's what I meant to say.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, they're not another universe, they're another galaxy, I think they're in Andromeda? So we're re-watching Stargate right now, my wife and I, and so we're into season seven right now, so we're pretty deep in the re-watch. And again, I'm like, I'm really enjoying going back and re-watching shows that I know that I love, but it's been so long that I actually don't remember the details.

It is literally a new show to me. Every episode, I'm like, I don't remember this, I don't remember that, I don't remember this episode. We just watched Dark City, and that I mostly remembered, the movie, and we just watched the Iron Giant, and I mostly remember that movie, but with the Stargate episodes, each one, like I know the high-level stuff, who the people are, who the factions are, who some of the main characters are, but the episodes, I am as shocked and surprised when the twist is revealed as I was when I first watched the show, which is such a wonderful feeling. It is. When you realize that you can now just go back and re-watch your entire media library, everything you've ever loved is all there waiting for you to be watched again.

Okay, so what is the physics principle that is connecting these Stargates together?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So the idea is that you can, and this breaks the physics, you can connect two points together using a wormhole through basically an extra dimension.

Fraser Cain: 

Right, the Einstein-Rosen bridge.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Now, the problem is that mathematically, those suckers become super unstable the moment any mass enters them, which makes it really hard to travel from one point to another through them. So yeah, that's slightly problematic. Right.

Fraser Cain: 

And we've mentioned this in a previous episode, like a long, long time ago, when you would sort of allow us to talk about this subject. I believe it was nonsense that needs to be debunked. But in that Einstein-Rosen, they came up with the math for how this would work, but the downsides are, as you said, that if any actual matter or energy is in there, then the thing immediately collapses.

But we've seen the classic examples in interstellar and all that, where you take a piece of paper, you draw the two locations, and then you fold it over and you punch right through, boom, these places are connected. And so theoretically, there's some factory, some wormhole factory that the ancients are building and then they're putting them on spaceships, and then they're taking these wormholes to various locations around the galaxy. And so then you can activate them in the wormhole network and be able to communicate.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

But it's even wilder than that, because each point is connected to all the other coordinates. So it feels much more like they're able to generate wormholes that go from one point to the other.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. As opposed to having the kind of wormholes. This is a really cool idea, that if you could make a stable wormhole, you could take one half of the wormhole, put it on a spacecraft, go close to the speed of light, and you have made a time machine.

Because the different sides of the wormhole have experienced different amounts of time. And so you will go through one at the local time, and then you will pop out of the other at the local time for the wormhole. And so theoretically, you can have a time machine.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

But the light hasn't made it between those two places.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. The light hasn't. You're being transmitted instantly through these, through a distortion in space-time.

So the idea was around, of course, these are in Star Trek as well. I mean, we didn't even bring this up in, think about Deep Space Nine. I'm sure they're in Star Wars.

I mean, that's kind of what the hyperlanes are.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So in the last season of Ahsoka, they have the ability with extra power to get.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. Spacewhales go with the space whales to another galaxy.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Right. And this is where I will die on the hill. The night sisters are actually Bene Gesserit.

But yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

Did you just cross the streams? I did.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I did. Yeah, but.

Fraser Cain: 

As opposed to them just stealing a cool idea.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I'm just going to cross the streams.

Fraser Cain: 

Yep.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

OK. OK.

Fraser Cain: 

So so then if you don't have a wormhole, if you don't have a Stargate and a DHD, a dial home device at the planet that you're attempting to reach, you can use a spacecraft.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And this this is a two part system where you have the Stargate. Then you have the control thing that causes the different ringy bits to move and lock in the different runes. Now, the wormhole is generated by the ring thing.

And so you can replace the control system. So the control system is just like your remote, basically. Yeah.

So so just to be clear, I don't know why I'm being so pragmatic. True. And and yes, they do have in the Stargate universe the ability to move through space on spaceships that are also capable of going fast.

And and this is how you get the the spacecraft that land on top of the pyramids, which is really cool CGI in the Stargate movie. But but the aliens in the Stargate universe are just creepy.

Fraser Cain: 

We'll get we'll get we'll get to the to the life forms in a second. But OK, but the yeah, so so they have faster than light travel as well. And it's their version of hyperspace.

And so you have a hyperspace drive on your spacecraft and that allows you to travel at faster than the speed of light and you generate a hyperspace tunnel in front of you and then you enter that and and go. And there's like one episode where they have where they're about to crash into the earth and realize that they can hyperspace through the earth, which is very cool.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So but it's not infinite speed. So they have the same problem as Star Trek Voyager of if you end up through some fate too far away, you're not getting home.

Fraser Cain: 

No, but they they talk about, say, the the the Asgards. Yes. Living outside of the Milky Way.

And then whenever there's a problem, they request the Asgards and the Asgards show up almost instantaneously. So so there is very fast movement, different technology and different civilizations. Yeah, there is very fast move through it.

OK, so then they've got a teleportation system, which are the rings.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yes. And this is one of those things where you have to wonder, is this like a mini wormhole? Is this like it's not clear how those work.

But again, they like to have things work through rings and those are vertical rings versus they go up and down versus standing. Right.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Yeah. So you go into this this room.

It's very much like the transporter of Star Trek that you go into this room, you stand in the middle, these rings pop up, then the rings pop up in the destination. And there you are. Yeah. And you need the rings to move between locations, which is kind of cool. So you don't just randomly transport yourself to some random location. You have to go to a place where.

So you're exactly right that it feels like it's like a mini version of a of a wormhole, however, that works. All right. So let's talk about some of the the technologies that are involved in this.

And I think one of the main things, one of the essentially the main resource that everybody's fighting over in the Stargate universe is Nakuta, which is the equivalent of dilithium. Well, it's not exactly the same as dilithium crystals, but it is it is the same pinch point of a resource that everybody is looking for Nakuta.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I have to admit, I never fixated on that and have no memory of anything other than it exists. So you, sir, who are currently rewatching, please continue.

Fraser Cain: 

So theoretically, the Nakuta is in a stable island of resources farther up the periodic table of elements. And so this is something we've debunked in the past. But in theory, this is just like another element that you can mine, I guess, in the same way you combine dilithium crystals and that it produces an enormous amount of energy like a fission reactor.

And that that and that that is what is needed to power hyperspace drives, to power the Stargates and so on. And then there is this unstable version of a called the Quadria, which has been found on this one planet. And that is used, but it is is unstable.

And so it has unpredictable results. And that is the power source that the that humans use in their spaceships is the quadrics. They have a source for this stuff.

But a lot of the conflict between the the empires in Stargate are over planets that have Nakuta that they're then trying to mine and subjugate the the people who live there and and so on. They have a lot of other technologies that are kind of related. They have this zero point energy as another kind of reactor, like antimatter reactors, which and they have a lot of stuff that the that the Asgards use.

So they're they're able to be able to power all of these.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So let's back up and unpack some of these ideas. So so backing first up to the island of stability, there is when you look at our periodic table, there's the main chunk at the top that those are fairly stable. Then there's all the stuff down at the bottom.

Those those are not stable. Those.

Fraser Cain: 

Americium.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yes. Thank you. Is is very unstable, which has a lot of ironies in twenty twenty six.

And and so as we're going through figuring out how to bombard the cores of atoms with protons or neutrons and get them to move up to heavier and heavier things that don't tend to hang around. There is this idea that you can get back to some place where you've added enough to the core that it's able to hold itself together because of the geometry. Now, so far, we haven't been able to get close enough to prove or disprove this idea.

But the fact that we never find any of this in the universe and supernovae are a thing has a lot of people thinking it doesn't actually exist or we would have found it by now.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Nature has provided a particle accelerator capable of fashioning elements with an enormous number of protons and neutrons, and we have not found them. But that a colliding neutron stars is so much more energetic than anything humanity can possibly offer.

And yet and we know that the Earth has many of the elements that came from colliding neutron stars. And yet we don't find anything beyond the the table of elements as we see it.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Okay. So that was concept one that you just kind of rolled over. Yes.

Zero point. Zero point energy is this idea that our universe hasn't actually like gotten to the lowest allowable energy. So if you think of that model you got for an atom when you were in high school, where electrons can jump up to a variety of different energy levels and then they decay down to lower energies until they get back down to that base energy.

Well, we're up. The idea is that we're not at the base, we're up at like two or maybe higher, and it is collapses to lower energies that perhaps are responsible for the epoch of inflation. It could also like do very violent things to all the rules of physics in our universe as we know it, if we actually undergo a zero point collapse.

So hopefully that's not a thing. But the idea is our universe isn't at the lowest stable energy point and has further can collapse to it.

Fraser Cain: 

And then antimatter reactors, I think it's relatively cheap.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah, that's matter, antimatter, they annihilate when mixed correctly.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. So let's talk about the weapons. You know, Teal'c has this energy weapon, the staff weapon, it feels like it's relatively straightforward, you know, shoots a bolt out of the end of the weapon.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

It's a bolt of energy. It's just a pulse. It's the same annoyance you get in pretty much every other series of, wait, how are we able to watch something that should be traveling at the speed of light move across the room?

But there we are.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe it's not moving the speed of light. It's a blob of energized plasma or something.

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I mean, it will have massif it's electricity. So maybe it's a blob of slow moving electrons.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. And then the other weapon that they have is it's called the Zat gun or the Zat Nikta. And it is the it's the little one that kind of pops open and then they it's their it's their version of the phaser.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

And so one hit stuns, two hits kills and three hits disintegrates. Is the is the rules of the universe. And so instead of setting your thing at stun or kill, you can just hit them once with it and they pass out.

But if you hit them twice, then you kill them.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Don't do that. And I don't know what the time frame is, but you can hide the body easily enough.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, I don't know what that. Well, yeah. So if you do need to, then you just vaporize them with a third hit and they just disappear.

So they go through they go through through that. And again, I mean, however, these things work, they are clearly somehow messing with your nervous system, electricity, you know, your nervous system runs on electricity. So there's some kind of squishy biology explanation for how this all comes together.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

But it doesn't leave the same wild scarring that that getting struck by lightning does. So at least there's that positive.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, the question I always have is like, what's the time frame that if you used to hit a person once, like because all the main characters have been hit by these at guns multiple times. So is it just like once in your life?

No, obviously not. Is it once in a day? I it's probably like getting a sunburn.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. I mean, like you can be out in the sun for whatever, half an hour and then you'll start to burn or 10 minutes or whatever is the number. But then how long of a break do you need before you can then go back under the sun for 10 minutes?

Is it the next day? Is it the same day? Do you have to wait an hour?

What is the what is the what is the delay for being out in the indirect sunlight for you to get a burn again?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

The rate at which the energy dissipates, I guess.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So it doesn't depend on if you're surrounded by an insulating material or on something conductive.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So but they're very handy weapons. And then, of course, you have shields both on the spacecraft and personal shields for the for the ghouls, which we're going to get to.

And again, I think we've you know, we kind of covered shields in Star Trek, both Star Trek and probably Star Wars. So, you know, same same thing, some kind of electromagnetic shield that you are putting around yourself that is redirecting harmful energy away from you.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And I have to just put out a congratulations to the folks over in the YouTube chat who can spell the things in the Stargate universe correctly.

Fraser Cain: 

This is just confirmation of what I of what I said. All right. So one thing I don't think you were sort of expecting this, but one thing that I really like is that almost all of the entities that they interact with are human beings.

They all speak English, which, you know, is obviously a problem. But they all are transported from Earth. Yes.

To different locations, which is such a it's such a cool idea that all this mythology, that all of these, you know, are the ghouls and that you have this migration across the galaxy because these people have been taken to these worlds and set up essentially as slaves.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And that that idea is in Star Trek. Just to be clear, there was the elder race that it transported human beings and plopped them down in different places.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. Right. And that's why Vulcans and Romulans and everybody kind of looks the same.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

No, it's there's actual humans on other worlds that were put there by this race. I've forgotten the name of that. I think it's the same race that holds the.

There's this place that they're absolutely not allowed to fight. It's the glowing light organisms. I think their name begins with the letter O and that's not useful.

Fraser Cain: 

In in Stargate, Star Trek, Star Trek, both Star Trek and Stargate, because there's there is a white glowing thing in Stargate. All right.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah. So so both of them have that idea that there were ancient humans that were used to seed life on other worlds. This is why in the original Star Trek you end up with the planet that has the Native American population.

But Stargate does it in in a much cooler way where the origin of so many different myths that involve human like gods. So the Egyptian gods, the Viking gods, or I guess Norse is the correct phrase. The Norse gods, the Greek gods, they go through them all like Chinese mythology, Japanese mythology.

Yeah, it's really cool.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, they pull all of this mythology and then each one of these is actually a system lord, one of the the big bad, the gold, which we're going to get to in a second, that are running portions of the galaxy and fighting with each other. And essentially they use the humans as their slave shock troops and put them to work and brainwash them and make them think that these are their gods. But in fact, Earth is the is the heart is the original place because, you know, people always ask me this question.

How how do we know that we're that humans didn't come from another planet? Well, we can trace our ancestors back to the to the very first life form on Earth. We know we evolved on Earth.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I read too much science fiction. Let's talk about the Goulds.

Fraser Cain: 

So so the Gula, the word you just said correctly, the Goulds, the Goulds as as General Hammond would call them, the Goulds.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

The the idea is they are a parasitic life form that goes through multiple phases. They are largely aquatic. They go from being in basically the ponds that they're reproduced in pools, whatever, to taking over human hosts where they live in the gut.

And when they're juvenile, they they support their life form, but they don't take over its brain. Now, the problem is these are life forms that are fully capable of joining forces with the human nervous system. And so very much like the Trill in Star Trek, you end up with life forms that are a joining between the parasite and its ego and the human being.

The Trill do not generally go read books, take over and control the human. The Gould, the word you can say, the Gould, that word, yeah, they I their raison d'etre is apparently to take over. Yes.

The the human being and make it their own. And these are life forms that also have extra energy so they can like cause glowing eyes, um, rapid healing. Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. And strength, intelligence, things like that.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So it's one of these things where it's good to live forever, but a whole lot not if you're the host.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the idea of a parasite, I mean, this is this has its place in in science. I mean, we see the cordyceps, which is a kind of fungi that will take an ant, take an ant's brain, have it force it to climb to the top of the tallest plant that it can find and then and then die and extend the fruiting bodies of the cordyceps to then allow, you know, it to be able to replicate itself.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Or in theory, there's a lot of parasites that do things that get the host body consumed or take it to life forces.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Or isn't the one like the one in in cat litter that makes mice be more brave?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

And so easier to get.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And that causes them to get eaten. Yeah. And and so the idea that there are life forms out there capable of taking over hosts by affecting their neurochemistry is a known thing.

There are zombie funguses.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Parasites that will replace a fish's tongue.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

That. Yeah, that's a real thing. People, there is a parasite that eats the tongue and then becomes the tongue and gets a first bite so that it can aid in eating.

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. It's crazy. It's so gross.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

It's so awful. Okay. Yeah.

My stomach has literally just gone.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So the but but it's a great idea that you by having the young gestating inside the bodies of the warriors and priestesses. Yeah. You're you're supplying their immune system.

And so they are completely reliant on this. They cannot escape if they wanted to. They have to you.

They have to use this.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah. Once their immune system has changed, there's no going back. So yeah.

So you can replace the parasite inside someone, which happens to Teal'c, of course. But you can't turn them back normal. Now, there is a cast of the word you can say and I can't that.

Right. The Tok'ra.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

The good ones. Right.

Fraser Cain: 

The good guys.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

They believe that they can coexist more like the Trill do and shared the body in a mutually supportive way. Yeah. There's lots of really cool stuff that goes on.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, totally. Totally. So and then the other thing is the ancients, which were the people that made the Stargate network.

Yeah. And and sort of one of the things that you you learn is that the ancients left technology strewn around kind of like a roadside picnic. And so then it's up to humanity to sort of go through the Stargate to find these little bits and pieces of ancient technology and then try to use this to defend against the the gold.

And then, you know, in Atlantis, they realize there's a whole ancient city in another galaxy and and and so on. But the the sort of thing that does show up quite a bit is that there are these transcended, oh, I forget what they call them, but essentially have ascended. They write these ascended beings.

And this is something that happens to Daniel Jackson for half the season. Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

When I think the actor wanted to take some time off of the show. And so they replaced him with Cornemic. And then he he came back at the end of the season.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

There's also an interesting Easter egg. It's not an Easter egg. There's an interesting side thing to note where the actor who plays Daniel Jackson starts out looking very much like you would expect a classroom and laboratory archaeologist to look just a little bit like clearly not working out all the time.

And then at one point he comes back super buff and he's like, you know, well, so he went off and he films an action adventure movie. So that's what happened. It's the actor who filmed an action adventure movie and ended up with a completely different physique as a result.

So. Right.

Fraser Cain: 

That's fun to watch. And and so the there's one race in this, the Asgard.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

Who are the little gray guys. The little gray guys. Yeah.

Which is so great, right, that they are the the perfect gray aliens. They really have been messing with humanity for forever. But they're essentially the protectors of humanity.

But but the science that I find really interesting about them is that they're all clones.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yes. And that's actually also a problem for them.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. Right. They suffer this problem that that they're getting this genetic degradation over time because of their reliance on cloning.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah. And and it's one of these things where they didn't have to clone. They just like you see in other science fiction stories, somewhere along the line, it was just like, this is a better way to do things.

And the idea of having sex is yicky. And so they're trying to figure out how to change their ways to save their species. And and then there's also the replicants, the replicators.

Yeah, they're kind of like the perfect evildoer. They're like if Minecraft used nano bricks to attack just like they have the ability to use everything around them to convert it into machinery. And and it's wild the way they just like take over everything.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. They're kind of like the Borg.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah. But the Borg, I don't consume matter and recycle it into robots the same way.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. So they keep them looking people like as opposed to they just consume everything down to the atomic level and put it back together in a form. Yeah.

I really dislike the replicators, the whole storyline, the whole implementation of it. I really every time the replicators are on the show, my wife and I, we just groan and roll our eyes and tough through it because I just I really don't like it. They're they're not an interesting enemy to me.

And and the storylines aren't that aren't that interesting, although this kind of and they knew that the CGI was good, though. Yeah. I don't want to sort of spoil where they go with the storyline, but but in the end, it's actually quite a very emotional, brutal ending to the replicators.

Cool. So there's a lot of other stuff. Life is short.

I made a list beforehand. They've got communication systems. They've got sensors.

But yeah, I think that's all the big.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

They got Jason Momoa.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, right. Jason Momoa, the little baby Jason Momoa early on in Stargate Atlantis and then Stargate Universe. I mean, using a lot of the same technology.

And it's an ancient ship that's moving from star system to star system. They only had two seasons of it. I loved Stargate Universe.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah, I loved it, too.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Yeah. It's really too bad.

So I think hopefully, apparently they're working on a new new versions of Stargate. So hopefully we'll see something show up in our lives.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

It's it is amazing. And yeah, it also just like the social stuff they get, like the way human beings, human, really, really good.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

In the series.

Fraser Cain: 

So yeah, I mean, I think like there is a level of humor and yes, and and people not taking themselves as seriously in Stargate that I just like there's a charm to it. Yes, that they just don't have in Star Wars and Star Trek. Yeah.

And I just don't think that like I've never seen anything in either one of those shows that except for maybe Andor, but the band was grim and dark. Again, it's not right. But I've not seen anything that runs this, I don't know, this light and just feels very, very, very relatable.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

I mean, the thing that I really love about Stargate is how much the pieces of the puzzle come back together later on to form a larger picture that they they find a little piece of technology over here and they find a little piece of technology over there. And then you meet with the three years later, they call on those people because now they're an ally and they can help them out. But they can't help them out in this situation, but they can't help them right now.

And then and now the humans have have figured out this technology. Now they have a ship and now they have control over and now they know how to power the wormholes. And it just you get this technological progression.

That goes on through the 10 seasons of Stargate from zero from zero to humanity is on its way to becoming a Milky Way spanning civilization. And it makes sense in a way that I haven't seen any other show tackle.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

There's an element of Isekai to Stargate because you have the humans suddenly got dropped into this completely new situation where they have to figure out how to level up.

Fraser Cain: 

Yes.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And Star Trek and Star Wars don't have that.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And and so I think part of us are part of our heart is there to cheer on.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

The Richard Dean Anderson's character who's like, what is this science? I just have a gun and I want to shoot.

Fraser Cain: 

Just tell me how it works.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Right. So I think that bit of Isekai for before that word was even something I knew existed.

Fraser Cain: 

It just adds a completely different what's the word?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Isekai is the the kind of Japanese storytelling. Am I mispronouncing it? Where where you get dropped into either you're given a new magical ability.

Fraser Cain: 

You're OK. OK, I see. I see.

Yeah. Like like the kind of thing you read in light novels and stuff.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Right. Right.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Lit RPG. Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

There's the lit RPG of the Roomba that gets brought into an alternate universe. Yeah. And become sentient.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Very cool. All right.

So again, best series, sci fi series ever. Watch it. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, Pamela.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And we are about to record our next episode. They will go out two weeks in a row, though. So if you're listening to the podcast, this is the part where I say thank you for amusing me with your usernames, because there are some amazing ones right now.

And I'm sorry for how I'm about to mispronounce them. Some of you have realized you can get me to say truly ridiculous things by having a truly ridiculous username. To those of you who make me laugh, I salute you.

To those of you whose names I'm about to mispronounce, I'm just really sorry. This week, we would like to thank Abraham Cottrell, Alex Raine, Andrew Stevenson, Arnaud de Groot, Balki, Benjamin Davies, Boogie Nett, Brian Kilby, Cammy Rassian, Conrad Haling, Daniel Schechter, David Gates, Dizastrina, Dwight Ilk, Eric Lee, Flower Guy, Galactic President, Scooper Star McScoopsalot, Gold, Gregory Singleton, J. Alex Anderson, Jarvis Earl, Jeff Wilson, Jim of Everett, John Esseth, John Vays, J.P. Sullivan, Kate Sindretto, Kenneth Ryan, Kinsaia Panflanko, Lee Harbourn, Marco Ierassi, Mark Steven Razanek, Matthew Crampton, Michael Prashada, Michelle Cullen, Olga, Paul Jarman, Peter, Red Bar is watching, R.J. Basque, Ron Thorson, Satche Takaba, Shersom, Sean Marion, Shobhana, Stephen Miller, the Lonely Sandperson, Tushar Nakini, Will Hamilton. Thank you all so very much.

Fraser Cain: 

All right, thanks, everyone, and we will see you next week.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Bye bye.

Live Show

Today we continue our mini-series; evaluating the science of various sci-fi franchises. We did Star Wars last week, this week tackle Star Trek. From transporters to warp drives, from phasers to photon torpedos. Let’s tackle what Star Trek gets right and wrong about science. Let's look at the science of our galaxy, some day far in the future. 

Show Notes

• Warp drives, antimatter, and dilithium crystals
• Warp vs impulse engines
• Tractor beams and phaser physics
• Photon torpedoes and beam weapon challenges
• Transporters, quantum teleportation, and Heisenberg Compensators
• Faster-than-light communication and quantum entanglement
• Shield technology discussion
• Privacy concerns from always-listening devices
• Star Trek predicting tablets, flip phones, and video calls
• Tricorder-inspired medical technology
• Hubble Space Telescope imagery influencing Star Trek visuals
• Star Trek’s impact on science, technology, and diversity
• Nichelle Nichols as a groundbreaking role model

Transcript

Fraser Cain: 

AstronomyCast, Episode 793 The Science of Star Trek. Welcome to AstronomyCast, our weekly facts-based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Cain, the Publisher of Universe Today.

With me as always is Dr. Pamela Gay, a Senior Scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the Director of CosmoQuest. Hey Pamela, how are you?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I am dealing with the fact that we appear to have AstronomyCast triggered extreme weather Monday.

Fraser Cain: 

Yes.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

There is thunder, there is hail, there is a pocket of red passing overhead while we record.

Fraser Cain: 

Right.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

No tornadoes today, though.

Fraser Cain: 

Right, but last time we tried to record, you had multiple tornadoes bearing down on you. They were hunting you.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

It's true.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. It's true. Yeah.

And I am having unseasonably warm weather here. It's gone. And in the beginning of this episode, I'm going to feel like I'm a little out of breath, because I literally just came in from double digging out my vegetable bed in the grueling heat.

It is crazy. Early May, we can still have freezing nights where I am in Canada in early May. Yeah.

We hit 28 degrees yesterday, Celsius, which I don't know.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

That's like high 80s.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. 2080 in F. 82.

So we hit 82 Fahrenheit. Yeah. Yesterday in Canada in early May.

It's bananas. I think the record for this place here is 25 degrees.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So I think we kind of crushed it anyway, but these are not the records you should be striving for.

Fraser Cain: 

No, I know. I know. But the gardening must go on.

And so I go out until I completely overheat. And then I hide away for the rest of the day in the in the air conditioned room that we have. So.

But let's get on with this week's episode. Today we continue our mini series evaluating the science of various sci fi franchises. We did Star Wars last week.

This week we tackle Star Trek from transporters to warp drives from phasers to photon torpedoes. Let's tackle what Star Trek gets right and wrong about science. All right.

Where do you want to start? Do we should we start in the in the same way that we did last into we started in transportation location?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I think we.

Fraser Cain: 

That was easy.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah. We started with location and then jumped to asteroids, which both series just get so wrong. Yeah, everybody does.

So we're going to go with the the the warp drive is is another. This is tunneling outside of regular space to get past the speed of light. We're just going to accept it and appreciate the fact that they are at least using antimatter channeled through the lithium crystals somehow or or focused with the aid of the lithium crystals.

It's never really explained which which antimatter is the most efficient source of power that we know of. So kudos for that.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. They never really discuss how they're making their antimatter.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

No, it's right. It's mining the lithium crystals is a real problem that comes up on the regular.

Fraser Cain: 

But yeah, yeah. The matter is just sort of like. So I mean, dilithium crystals as the as the catalyst for making antimatter.

But the but the reality is that antimatter is is merely a battery that you can take enormous amounts of energy. You can create antimatter and theoretically dilithium crystals will let you do this efficiently as close as possible to perfect equals MC squared. You can just go back and forth from from regular matter or turn energy into antimatter at roughly equivalent of the amount of energy that you kick into it and then you store the antimatter.

But they never talk about how they're going and getting their antimatter. They always just talk about the fact that the dilithium crystals are this and we need more dilithium crystals and that. And I think they literally don't think about the just the way you need to get your hands on antimatter.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I'm sure they think of it, but they very wisely don't discuss it because then we might have things to fault them for.

Fraser Cain: 

Yes.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And and this is a show that when they started filming it, there was such a difference in existing technology and understanding of science compared to what we have today that it's really easy to understand why they would choose to make the choices they made.

Fraser Cain: 

Mm hmm. So and I mean, I think a lot of people are familiar with Alcubierre drives that, you know, theoretically you can warp spacetime, that in fact, it's not completely crazy that you warp spacetime as a way to get you from your location to some destination just merely requires more energy than the universe and negative energy or negative. Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

There's a lot of things in the Star Trek universe that really require more energy than it's comfortable to think about.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Like core tenant of writing for Star Trek appears to be just ignore energy constraints.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Yeah. So warp drives, you know, you can move.

Space can expand faster than the speed of light. So as long as you're not moving through space, you're bending space, then theoretically that is feasible. What about impulse engines?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

They don't really explain those that I've seen either. They just are what you use in solar systems. They don't have the same potential to destroy an atmosphere, although there are examples of warping out of atmospheres.

So in general, if you aren't trying to go massive distances, you use your impulse engines, and you don't want to work out of an atmosphere that's dangerous.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. But some kind of ion engine, something more related to the kinds of propulsion systems that we have, and they take you up to the speed of light and, you know, not, not past it.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And they don't require nacelles like warp drives do.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. Yeah. Let's talk about tractor beams.

So I so this is cool. So I actually did an interview with somebody about tractor beams, just the most recent interview on my channel at the time of this recording. And the way this works is that you, you know, you take advantage of the reality that, you know, if you charge something with one polarity, then something else will be attracted to that if it's the opposite polarity.

And so what they do is they have an electron gun, they fire electrons at a piece of space debris. This is all theoretic work, but, you know, they've tested in the lab and, and as you are firing your electrons at this target, it is negatively charging the target. And because you are giving up your electrons, it is positively charging you.

So now you and the target are attracted to each other and it starts to drift towards you. And so theoretically, you can imagine some scaled up version of this, where they're able to just throw an enormous amount of electrons at the, at the target, charge it up and, and pull it along. Probably not with the strength of a tractor beam, but, but that is like not totally crazy.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I, I, I love this. Yeah. It continues to be the, do not worry about how much energy might be used probably.

And, and what's cool about tractor beams is this is technology that it doesn't seem to follow the rules of momentum. So you can have someone zipping past and as long as you can grab them, it doesn't cause the ship with the tractor beam to get yoinked forward. You're not going to drag another ship off with the tractor beam.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And this is something in both the Star Trek and Star Wars universe that kind of confuses me that, that it's not like a rope. I, I've owned horses. I own dogs that think they are horses.

And when they take off on that leash, I'm, I'm going to feel a transfer of momentum. And that just doesn't seem to happen with tractor beams. This is, this is apparently the part of the tractor beam I'm going to obsess over.

Fraser Cain: 

Right.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah. The energy. The, the failure to transition momentum.

Fraser Cain: 

Right, right, right. That you're going to.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

That the ship that is getting grabbed onto isn't going to be able to pull all of her kingdom come the ship that is trying to grab a hold of it.

Fraser Cain: 

Right, right.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So, so firing your engines while being trapped in a tractor beam isn't going to just move you and, and whatever has locked a tractor beam onto you. Right. But the tractor beam haver can pull something.

So it's one way failure to transfer momentum.

Fraser Cain: 

Got it. Okay.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Sorry.

Fraser Cain: 

No, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. All right.

So, so let's talk about weapons. Cause I think we sort of transitioned to talking about weapons. So we've got the phaser.

We'll start there. Do you have any idea how a phaser works?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

No.

Fraser Cain: 

Okay.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So, all right.

Fraser Cain: 

So I looked up a reference. The Trek, is it the Trek-no-pedia?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Oh, Star Wars is the Wikipedia. I'm super familiar with that. I don't know the Star Trek one.

Fraser Cain: 

What do they call it? So they fire Nadeon particle beams. So they've, they essentially, they've invented a new particle called the Nadeon.

And so then they, they fire energy again, just doesn't matter where it comes from into this crystalline substance. And then this generates Nadeons, which are then channeled into a coherent beam and they're fired at your target. So you have essentially a particle accelerator in your hand, but not that you are accelerating existing particles.

You are turning raw energy at exactly the right frequency into these Nadeons. And then you are directing those Nadeons out.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

But then how does the stunner work?

Fraser Cain: 

Well, the stun setting, who cares? Right? It disrupts the nervous system.

The nice thing about the Nadeons is that if you fire them at a low enough energy level, then they just disrupt the body's nervous system. But if you crank it up higher, then you kill. And if you crank even higher, you disintegrate.

All right. Right. But I love, you know, your description, like you kind of blew my mind maybe 15 years ago when you were explaining how particle accelerators work, that you are taking particles, you are accelerating them in this, you know, environment.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Magnetic fields.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. You're smashing them together. You are concentrating energy and then particles are freezing out of that energy.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yes. And that sounds like that's how these phasers work.

Fraser Cain: 

That's how these work is that you are taking energy. Somehow you are accelerating. You were taking the energy and you were concentrating into a small enough area with exactly the right frequency that you are generating this perfect kind of particle.

And then you are throwing that particle at your target and then doing various work to them.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And this is actually something we kind of know how to do. It's just a very imperfect science. Yeah.

Where like when we're trying to create neutrinos of specific masses, we're slamming particles together that have the combined mass energy that has the probability of coming out with these particles. Now, the problem that we run into is there's multiple ways to add up to get that energy, but apparently they have a filter. So we're good.

Fraser Cain: 

We're good. Yeah. So photon torpedoes, they're simpler.

They're very simple, which is that they're just matter-antimatter. They're just kaboom. And that I think the science is solid.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah. Yeah. That completely works.

The trick is getting something to be sufficiently collimated over a great enough distance. And that I believe is solvable. So I'm good with those.

Fraser Cain: 

What do you mean by collimated? With photon torpedoes, you're firing this shell with matter-antimatter inside of it, and then it just detonates when it hits its target.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

They're lit up. So they're not firing a packet of light that's created. They're actually firing the matter-antimatter?

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah, they have a shell. He clearly knows Star Trek better than I do. I was prepared to talk about the computer systems.

Transporters, and you know so much more.

Fraser Cain: 

I have the Trek-nology book.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And it's Memory Alpha, according to the chat, is the site that you go to get all the information.

Fraser Cain: 

So it's written by Ethan Siegel.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Okay, that makes sense.

Fraser Cain: 

He wrote the Trek-nology book, which goes into all of the technology of Star Trek. So yeah, yeah. I like the way Paul- Boom, boom, and pill form.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah, I was about to point the same thing out.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about transporters.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

They are death machines, and this is something that is not recognized often enough. These are devices that scan all of the atomic properties of your body. They are able to discern at the surface level the difference between what is you and your microbiome and clothing, and what is the atmosphere, and leave the atmosphere or the water or whatever it is behind.

But here's the thing, is it scans all of the up, down, spin, rotational modes, the quantum, everything about your body, where the electrical signals are in your nerves. Yeah. And then it disassembles you at the far end into the constituent matter that would have been there.

So it replaces the atmosphere. We're not hearing a pop every time someone transports in and out.

Fraser Cain: 

And then- And you're not inflated with that air or the bug flying by.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Exactly.

Fraser Cain: 

Right.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Then it takes the volume of space that you would go into on the other end and replaces the you and your microbiome and your clothing and equipment as well, and anyone who you happen to have scooped up, and then replaces that volume of space on the other end with particles that have the correct waveforms, the correct everything. And the amount of energy and energy in this, yeah, the amount of information and energy in this.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That you are dismantling a human being at range to an atomic level, you are storing- To a quantum level.

To a quantum level. Yeah. You are storing the information in a computer, and then you are reassembling that person at another distance.

Yeah, it is crazy.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Now, quantum teleportation is real- Is different, but that's like a single pair of particles at a distance that both simultaneously exist.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And the thing about the way transporters work is there's a buffer that's holding your signal, which means there's the potential, as happened to Riker, to create two of somebody. And then there's also the, there's a Heisenberg- Compensator, yeah. That's the word.

Yeah. Because in our reality, as we understand it, you can know where something is, or you can know where it's going, and you can't know both at the quantum mechanical level. And if you don't know both, you can't recreate the human being- Right.

Or the teacup or anything else. So I deeply appreciate that both Willy Wonka and Gene Roddenberry came up with this really cool technology. We're not getting it in real life as far as physics has any say.

Fraser Cain: 

I think the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with its infinite improbability drive- That's just fun. Is like a slightly more feasible idea- Yeah. Because we are a collection of particles with a probability state of us being where we are.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

And that there is a slight, but not zero chance that we're actually on Mars, that all of our particles are all on Mars.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Or we'll fall through a chair.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, or we'll fall through the chair or whatever. And so in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they just push the probabilities to put them somewhere else. And that's how this thing is able to transport itself.

And that is kind of cool that you could say, well, you happen to be here on our spaceship, but maybe there's a chance that you're down on the surface of that planet. And then the probabilities of all of your particles shift, and there you are down on the planet. That wouldn't allow you to store things in the pattern buffer and blah, blah, blah.

Right, right, right. And that would probably not have you die in the way that a transporter is really a suicide booth, right?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yes, yes.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's transporters. So we've covered engines, we've covered transporters, we've covered- Let's talk about shields.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Um, shields are another one of those things that takes a whole lot of energy, is somehow able to work without frying all the nearby electronics. So here's the thing about shields, is you can imagine that there's some sort of an EM field that is capable of when a energy weapon strikes it, the energy gets dissipated through the field. Uh, but if you had that powerful of a field, the stuff inside of the field would be getting impacted rather badly as well.

And that's not happening. So I have no idea how shields work.

Fraser Cain: 

Um, okay. All right, so let's talk about the communication system, because they go faster than light with their ability to communicate.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yes, and this is one of those things that you can start to imagine through quantum entanglement. Although there's the fascinating case that quantum entanglement requires the, uh, two communicating entities to each have a pair of particles that originated from each other. Except that's not a thing in the Star Trek universe.

So yet again, they simply made stuff up, which I respect.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, but I mean, like, it's really important to say you can't use entangled particles as a way to communicate faster than the speed of light.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

No, no.

Fraser Cain: 

Right? That the way I always describe it is that if you take a pair of gloves and you put them into two boxes and then you give them to two people and the people walk away and they go to other sides of the earth and one person opens up the box and goes, oh, I got the left glove.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

The other one automatically has the right.

Fraser Cain: 

I know the other person has the right glove, but no information has been communicated. It's not like you're like, you can know when the person opened up their box and looked at their glove.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So the thing is, you can take a photon and you can run it through a filter and go, oh, it's left hand circularized. You can then run it through another filter and have it now come out right hand circularized. And the changing quantum state gets reflected in the other particle as well.

What we haven't figured out how to do is to get those changing quantum states to change at our back and call.

Fraser Cain: 

Well, you observe them.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And thus it is now stuck like that.

Fraser Cain: 

Right, but the point is, is that the act of observing the particle, like if I'm the other person and I observe my, you know, the two particles are entangled together, you've observed yours. That doesn't tell me anything halfway across the galaxy. Even though, you know, if you see yours is right-handed, mine will be left-handed.

There is no way to communicate any information. They absolutely will instantaneously across any distance fall into their correct placings, but no information is communicated. I don't know.

Sounds like I get a little bell that goes ding. The other person has observed their particle. There's just the back to the boxes with the left and right hand glove.

Anyway, let's talk about computers, holodecks, things like that.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

All right. So the thing about the computers that didn't occur to me until I was prepping for this show is we have a lot of concerns nowadays, at least randomly in moments of existential angst, that there are little devices all around us all the time waiting for us to say key words. And when we say those key words, they leap into readiness.

And it often feels like when you agree to that Facebook thing, do you not agree to the Facebook thing that says it can be listening to you? It absolutely is. I'm using that information for ads all the time.

And with my home device in a ball or other people's home devices in a pock, they're listening for keywords. But in the Star Trek universe, you just walk into a room and you say lights on, you say Earl Grey hot, and you get into the turbo lift. All these devices somehow are constantly listening and able to filter intention.

And no one ever worries about the fact that they're constantly listening. And people are holding very personal conversations in these turbo lifts. That's a great plot device.

And so you can imagine that a hacker could very readily understand everything about everyone just by planting software seeds that are like, get me the secrets of everybody because they're always being listened to.

Fraser Cain: 

That is such a slow down concern scientifically compared to warp drives.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I understand, but this bothers me today.

Fraser Cain: 

It sure does. Yeah, yeah. Now, to be fair on the turbo lifts, I think they hold a little handle.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

That's only in the old generation in the OG.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, yeah. But they grab a little handle and that is like a UI. Yeah, it's a UI thing to show intention.

But obviously, I mean, we are just one more technological advancement away from your Claude or Chattopadhyay, whatever, listening to you and knowing when you're talking to it just because it's obvious in the same way that a human, like if we were in the room together and I looked over at you and I said, tea, Earl Grey, hot. And you'd be like, yeah, all right. And you'd get up and you'd make some tea for us.

I wouldn't have to go, Pamela, tea, Earl Grey, hot. You'd get the intention, right? Or earthquake, we should run.

You know, I'm not going to use your name first.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I have no concerns about the software figuring this out. It's strictly the privacy concerns. We, as we move into the future, there's going to be less and less privacy.

Every time someone goes through the transporter beam, every bit of their medical knowledge is now in that computer.

[365]

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So I don't know. I had an existential crisis preparing for this show about privacy concerns in the Star Trek universe. I don't know why.

It was just where my morning was.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, that is so the least of our concerns.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah, brains aren't, brains do what brains are going to do.

Fraser Cain: 

Let's talk about a couple of things that they did get super right. The one is just the communication devices.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah, they're ubiquitous. They are carried everywhere. They come in itty bitty tiny voice only.

They come in face to face. They catch you in awkward moments.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

All these things, they in the original show didn't catch the awkward moments nearly as much as that got caught in subsequent shows after we started having Skype and FaceTime as part of our day-to-day experience.

Fraser Cain: 

But I mean, think about the original Star Trek and the little flip phone.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah, that was a thing in the 90s.

Fraser Cain: 

That was the Razor, right?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

And then the pad. Yes. Was absolutely the iPad.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And then the iPad.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Newton did it first.

Fraser Cain: 

And you could absolutely have a little badge on your chest that you touch it and it's a connection to your chat GPT that then takes it, listens to what you say and then performs actions on your behalf. That is absolutely within, yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

The Apple Watch with a cell connection is essentially a chest thingy down to all the health sensors embedded in it. It's just, it turns out health sensors really want to be touching your skin.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, yeah. So I think we are so far ahead of schedule on the computing and the telecommunications side of things. And tricorders.

Right. Yeah, there was an X-Prize like a decade ago where they were trying to build a tricorder essentially.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And they're slowly getting there between infrared imaging of the human body. There's actually been weird cases in museums of infrared educational cameras revealing pregnancies, revealing circulatory disorders, all these kinds of weird things. So between the combination of easy, small ultrasound, infrared cameras, sensors that now have the ability to use cameras to sense oxygenation levels, to sense pulse, to sense through the skin, sort of blood sugar levels, those you really want to sample.

We're getting really, really good at this stuff.

Fraser Cain: 

Yep, yep, totally. Yeah, it's really interesting. Was there anything else in the Star Trek universe that you wanted to think about?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So one of the things that I want to acknowledge is because this is the universe we live in, as the Hubble Space Telescope imagery started to hit the zeitgeist, Star Trek started basing the way they did nebulae, the way they did so many different things on what Hubble was revealing about our universe. There is, in the opening to Strange New Worlds, a reimagining of actual Hubble imagery. Travis Rector, who was part of the Hubble Heritage Project, got to help collaborate on that image.

Fraser Cain: 

That's cool.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And Star Trek has consistently, over the decades, been part of helping NASA get real science out to the public and show anyone could be part of science. And there's a lot of really good information out there about how, at a certain level, Michelle Nichols really struggled with, why am I not out there being part of the civil rights movement? Why am I not out there being more active?

And there were so many people that said, look, you're on TV every day, being a role model of a future where a black woman can be a communications officer with the ability to speak more languages than is rational.

Fraser Cain: 

Right, right.

Fraser Cain: 

All right, I think next week we're going to try and tackle Stargate? Stargate, yes. Nice.

All right. Finally, the one true science fiction. Thanks, Pamela.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Thank you, Fraser. And thank you to everyone out there whose name I am about to mispronounce. Some of you are realizing you can make me say silly things by having silly Patreon names.

To those of you who make me laugh, I raise a toast. To those of you with names I'm about to mispronounce, I'm just really sorry. Here we go.

This week, I would like to thank A Bit of Bear, Alex Cohen, Andre Palestra, Arctic Fox, Boré André-Lovesvall, Benjamin Carrier, Bob Kale, Brian Cook, Buzz Parsec, Cody Rose, Daniel Loosley, David Bogarty, Diane Philippon, Dr. Jeff Collins, Eron Zegrev, Father Prax, G. Caleb Sexton, Glenn McDavid, Greg Vialt, Helga Bjorkhag, Janelle, Jeanette Wink, Jim Schooler, Joe McTee, John M, Jordan Turner, Caleb Axson, Keith Murray, Christian Golding, Laura Kettleson, Lana Spencer, Mark Schneider, Matt Rucker, MHW1961, Super Symmetrical, Michael Regan, Nala, Noah Albertson, Pauldi Disney, Pauline Middleink, Randall, R3, Robert Hundle, Sergio Sansevero, Sandra Stanz, Scott Briggs, Sergey Monolov, Stephen Coffey, The Big Squish Squash, Triker, Will Field, and Zero Chill. Thank you all so very much.

Fraser Cain: 

All right. Thanks, everyone. And we will see you next week.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Bye-bye, everyone.

Live Show