kalkamel
Master Member
Don't forget sonar in space and the warp and time travel capable Red Angel suit.
Star Trek Picard Season Three
- Thread starter NakedMoleRat
- Start date
Don't forget sonar in space and the warp and time travel capable Red Angel suit.
I think we’d all prefer to forget.
Demetrios2177
Well-Known Member
They could have easily salvaged the sonar bit if they had just added "photic", as Uhura mentioned it in TMP.
kalkamel
Master Member
To expect the writers of Discovery to have watched TMP, or any other Trek prior to 2009 for that matter, is illogical.
I presume it was intended as some kind of sensor which provided distance/shape readings in a manner akin to echolocation, rather than actual sonar. Given the generally high quality of the scientific/tech talk in the film, I don’t imagine it’s a crude error like the ones we’re talking about. But you never do know.
Of course, TOS had any number of science blunders, like the sonic weapons used against the orbiting Enterprise in “A Taste of Armageddon”, or the “one to the fourth power” heartbeat reader in “Court Martial”. But I’m far more lenient with stuff like that, considering that the show was a meat-grinder made under considerable time/budget pressures, and some things just slipped through the cracks.
…as opposed to modern-day shows made with huge budgets and access to resources which the TOS production staff could only dream of (like the ability to fact-check with scientists all around the world via the Internet). And as opposed to key foundational elements (like the magic mushroom engine) which make no sense at all.
asalaw
Master Member
I have to agree with all of the above. I wonder if photic sonar was supposed to be what we call LiDAR now.
Yeah, the sonic disruptors in Armageddon and “one to the fourth power” are favorites of mine.
Same here. If I had to guess, "photic sonar" may have used photons (either passively or in a more active role) much like SONAR.
That, or it was loaded with Polaroid cartridges that hit the target, developed, and sent back crappy polaroids of the item being scanned.
bwayne64
Master Member
Something I've always thought about the transporters, other than them killing the original you, everytime you use them. Is why when someone gets a disease that they have no cure for, why they just can't call up an earlier, pre diseased version and pop out a new you. I know someone jumped on me for saying that they kill you each time, but they absolutely do. I even found a video of a guy who explains it in more detail, than I've ever been willing to do. Its like arguing about who would win a fight, Batman or Superman, lol.
asalaw
Master Member
Lawrence Krauss makes the same point in his Physics of Star Trek book. Point of trivia, he’s the brother of my torts professor.
Same here. If I had to guess, "photic sonar" may have used photons (either passively or in a more active role) much like SONAR.
That, or it was loaded with Polaroid cartridges that hit the target, developed, and sent back crappy polaroids of the item being scanned.
The name certainly makes one think, "images created by sonar", but that doesn't make sense in a vacuum.
bwayne64
Master Member
Lawrence Krauss makes the same point in his Physics of Star Trek book. Point of trivia, he’s the brother of my torts professor.
Sounds like a smart guy. Yea don't think transporters will ever happen, but we might get a rudimentary replicator. 3d printing is getting better and better. So we might get the resolution down to close to molecular level. But I don't think we'll ever teleport anything living. Like Seth Brudel said, it makes the computer crazy. I never say never, but this is as close to never as you can get, lol.
Sounds like a smart guy. Yea don't think transporters will ever happen, but we might get a rudimentary replicator. 3d printing is getting better and better. So we might get the resolution down to close to molecular level. But I don't think we'll ever teleport anything living. Like Seth Brudel said, it makes the computer crazy. I never say never, but this is as close to never as you can get, lol.
NakedMoleRat
Legendary Member
Batman
NakedMoleRat
Legendary Member
Actually, the military is already working on transporter technology. Their goal is to send their troops directly into enemy battlefields and not spend time with airplanes or tanks.
What they have right now are Tele pods that basically look like the one from the Jeff Goldblum movie the fly.
They can’t be more than 6 feet apart from each other. They have a 3-D scanner that’s operating while a molecular decoder is tearing the original piece down molecule by molecule.
It is then sent through an ether datastream to the next pod. They can’t be more than 6 feet apart from each othe and are physically connected.
They have a 3-D scanner that’s operating while a molecular decoder is tearing the original piece down molecule by molecule. It is it is then sent through an ether datastream to the next pod, where it is reassembled by highly advanced, 3-D printers.
The current pods are no more than 10 inches tall, and they have successfully been able to transport something inorganic like a hammer from one to the next. They have sent an apple through, but all they got was applesauce on the other side.
That information is not classified, but it’s also not shared either!
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Of course, the transporter is specifically said to convert a subject to energy, transmit it to another location, and reassemble it into its original form. So, no, it’s not a suicide booth. O but the very existence of this technology would change the Federation and human life as we know it, and the reality is that it’s a plot device to get characters from place to place. Episodes which deal with certain logical questions (like Pulaski reintegrating as her younger self in “Unnatural Selection”, Thomas Riker in “Second Chances”, etc.), begin raising all sorts of questions. The potential to create endless clones, possible immortality, etc.
As it happens, John Byrne’s IDW TREK comics had a very interesting a story about an alien society using transporters to live forever.
Meanwhile, the second most famous teleporter in pop culture—from THE FLY films—also carefully avoided such questions, because, again, it was a plot device. In the 1958 original, Andre Delambre’s disintegration-integrator worked much in the same way as TREK’s transporter, by transmitting atoms from one booth to another.
David Cronenberg’s (Happy 80th Birthday! I forgive you for slumming on STD!) 1986 rethinking of THE FLY went with the more realistic approach (as far modern scientific theory goes): Seth Brundle’s Telepods recorded the pattern of a subject, disintegrated it, then perfectly reproduced it in the receiving pod. In other words, data was transmitted, but the original atoms were not.
Of course, the Telepods being suicide booths raise all sorts of nagging implications and questions, so the film only hints at how they actually work, so as not to distract from the actual human story of terminal illness that’s being told. It would distort the narrative and the emotional thrust of the film if they’d come right out and said that Brundle killed himself and was replaced by a perfect duplicate (but which now had fly genes interwoven with his own).
Right? That's why I said photons bouncing off of it. But you know what it's called when photons bounce of off something and hit a membrane that can sense it?
Vision.
I guess sometimes, we just gotta sit back, relax and not worry too much about them darn nitpicks, eh?
That has got to be incredibly painful for a living organic subject.
Dunno the context of this pic, but I love how he's just standing in between Picard and Riker with this nonchalant look on his face, and the other two are looking at him like he just ripped a bad one!
The Military have been working on that since the late 70’s, small items HAVE been ”Transported” short distances
