In its efforts to boldly go where no one has gone before, the latest Star Trek movie boldly introduces scientific ideas which no one has seen before.
According to Harvard astronomers, the makers of "Generations," which premiered last Friday, included several scenes that deviated significantly from the established laws of science.
"Star Trek in general is sort of wishful thinking," said Professor of Astronomy Jonathan E. Grindlay. "It's great entertainment, but unless we have missed something basic about space and time, which is a possibility, I don't think it would work."
Adam G. Reiss, a third-year graduate student in astronomy, agreed.
"They really stretch a lot of the science into inaccuracies in order to further the plot," he said.
One such flaw, Reiss said, occurs when a probe is launched into the center of the star. As soon as the probe reaches the star, the star blinks out.
Although the star would blink out in practice, Reiss said, it would not do "It would be a very long time before you saw the star go dark," said Norman A. Grogin, a third-year graduate student in astronomy. In fact, the crew of the Starship Enterprise's initial reason for launching the probe was scientifically flawed, some Ph.D. candidates said. In the movie, the probe was sent to extinguish the star in order to change the magnitude of its gravitational pull, graduate movie-goers said. But the force of a star's gravity is not changed when its light fades, they point out. "You haven't changed what is there," Grogin said. "When a log is burning, you see fire. If you throw water on the fire, the log is still there." Grogin explained that the star is like a log. If the light of the star burns out, the star is still there, he said. Thus, the mass of the star--which is primarily responsible for its gravitational pull--has stayed the same; only the outer appearance of the star is different. Consistently Wrong Some of the scientific inaccuracies in "Generations" are recurrent throughout the Star Trek series, astronomers said. Read more in News
