Star Trek Canon Database

Displaying 1 to 6 of 6 records.

Database started: 1999-07-27
Page generated: 2013-05-23

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TNG Season 4, Ep# 96: "Half a Life" PICARD VO: Captain's Log. Stardate 44805.7. For generations, the people of Kaelon Two have been working to revitalize their dying sun. The Federation has offered to assist in testing what may be a solution to this problem. TIMICIN: The basic theories for helium fusion enhancement have been discussed for over a century, but there's been no method of practical application until now.	Realism: I have never heard of any remotely possible theory for accelerating the rate of fusion in a star, since the rate of fusion is fixed by the star's elemental composition and mass.
TNG Season 4, Ep# 96: "Half a Life" PICARD VO: Captain's Log. Stardate 44805.7. For generations, the people of Kaelon Two have been working to revitalize their dying sun. The Federation has offered to assist in testing what may be a solution to this problem. TIMICIN: The basic theories for helium fusion enhancement have been discussed for over a century, but there's been no method of practical application until now.	Culture: Picard explains that the Federation will assist Kaelon Two. Some Trekkies tend to assume that any planet featured in a Star Trek must be a Federation member planet unless it is explicitly stated to belong to some other organization. However, I would like to point out that this is invariably an unfounded assumption. Picard's personal log statements could describe a Federation world or a non-Federation world. In fact, it might more easily suit the idea that Kaelon Two is a non-Federation world (imagine an American naval captain saying "the United States has offered to assist New Jersey"). I bring this up because many Trekkies tend to erroneously draw cultural revelations about the Federation from worlds which have not yet been established to be Federation members (New Sydney is a good example of this problem, since it is explicitly described as a non-Federation world yet I have received dozens of pin-headed E-mails using its capitalist nature as disproof of my "Marxism in Star Trek" essay).
TNG Season 4, Ep# 96: "Half a Life" LWAXANA: One thing I don't understand ... if your people have known for generations that their sun is dying... why not simply evacuate the planet? TIMICIN: It is our home... it defines who we are as a people. If Kaelon ceases to exist... so do we.	Misc: these guys remind me of the idiots who like to build houses in obvious danger zones (like the shores of mighty rivers), and after each destructive flood, go right back and build them again, in the same damned place. I don't know why people get so attached to geography. I'm happy living where I'm living, but if a volcano sprouted up out of the ground nearby, I'd pack my bags immediately. Hell, I've given serious thought to the idea of packing my bags just to go someplace where the taxes are lower.
TNG Season 4, Ep# 96: "Half a Life" TROI: You've been selecting for twenty minutes. LWAXANA (telepathic): I am a woman dressing for a man. Something you might try now and then, dear. I wonder if Timicin likes green. TROI: That's not very telepathic of you. LWAXANA: I tried telepathy on him; he's the wrong species. Right species for everything else, though. And you might try that once in a while, too.	Misc: the people of Kaelon 2 are another species which the Betazoids can't read.
TNG Season 4, Ep# 96: "Half a Life" (after launching torps into the star) GEORDI: Shock wave patterns within predicted range. 1700% rise in gamma radiation levels. Helium fusion rate increasing... TIMICIN: What about the heat and pressure levels? GEORDI: Steady so far. Density at 1100 g/cm³. Temperature approaching 60 million degrees Kelvin. TIMICIN: We want it to stabilize at 220 million. DATA: Pressure wave harmonics dispersing. Temperature in target zone increasing... to 81 million degrees. GEORDI: Still rising. 90 million degrees Kelvin... And now one 110 million. Looking good ... 137 ... DATA: Radiation and pressure levels still stable. GEORDI: Temperature 160 million degrees Kelvin ... 170 ... 190 ... now 200 million ... TIMICIN: It's happening. (the star shrinks in size by ~30% and changes colour from red to yellow) GEORDI: 207 and rising ... 219 ... and twenty! Two twenty! And holding! Looks like congratulations may be in order. PICARD: Mister Data? DATA: Turbulence patterns are within predicted parameters. GEORDI (quietly): 222... DATA: Temperature is rising in the core again, Captain. 230 million degrees Kelvin... GEORDI: Now 251. Still rising. 260 million degrees. DATA: Rate exceeding critical levels. Core density becoming unstable. RIKER: Let's get the hell out of here. PICARD: Warp two, Ensign; now! (the star undergoes a violent release of surface material, resembling a nova)	Realism: there are lots of realism problems here: The life of a star has predictable stages which are defined by its mass and chemical composition, as well as the physics of nuclear fusion. The idea of altering that progression is patently ludicrous. It would require magic elemental transmutation of the star's core. Of course, I'm sure they can always think up some silly "protomatter" or "subspace" technobabble to explain how it's actually possible, probably involving a magical chain reaction of some sort. Why are they trying to heat it up? An increase in the stellar core temperature would only make the star grow even bigger, rather than making it shrink. As a star ages and shifts from hydrogen burning to helium burning, its core shrinks and gets hotter and hotter, while its outer surface is pushed outward and gets cooler. If you want to make the star's surface shrink and heat up, you should actually cool down the core. The speed at which the star shrinks is ridiculous. Even if you could cool down the core and make the star shrink, it's not going to shrink 30% in a matter of seconds. Just look at the numbers; an aging red star, more than a million kilometres wide, is supposed to shrink hundreds of thousands of kilometres in diameter in a matter of seconds, which means that its surface is being accelerated to a sizable fraction of c! It's supposed to be a star, not a black hole. If the people of Kaelon Two live on a planet orbiting a red star, it must have been that way for many millions, if not billions of years. There is no reason to believe that changing the star back into a yellow star would improve their environment, which must have adapted to the red star. In fact, one would think that the change would make their world uninhabitable. Earlier in this episode, Timicin says that they've got 30 or 40 years left. That is utterly ridiculous; the stages of a star's development take place on enormous time scales, where 30 or 40 years would make absolutely no difference whatsoever. The only rapid event would be a supernova, and a star which is in the helium burning stage is eons away from that.
TNG Season 4, Ep# 96: "Half a Life" BEVERLY VO: Finally got an actual letter from Wesley... topped the class in exo-biology, but he's still struggling in Ancient Philosophies.	Realism: the writers obviously believe in the "Renaissance Man" paradigm of scholars who understand all aspects of academia. However, while that was admirable in its time, it was only possible because of the narrow scope of science and technology. Times have changed. The fields of science and technology have exploded since the Renaissance, so much so that one man cannot possibly hope to understand it all. The idea that one man can "generalize" and simultaneously study physics, chemistry, engineering, astronomy, military tactics and strategy, philosophy, literature, history, and biology to the point of achieving even a modest familiarity with them is utterly laughable even today. With three more centuries of development in those fields, it would be even more ridiculous. The phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" leaps to mind. Such a person would gain the ability to engage in cocktail-party discussions about those subjects, but not the ability to do any productive work in them (actually, that reminds me of Captain Picard, who's a classic example of a multi-disciplinary dilletante). Even within science or engineering, people specialize. Someone who specializes in robotics will have only the most superficial understanding of quantum mechanics. Someone who specializes in quantum mechanics will have only the most superficial understanding of metallurgy. Someone who specializes in metallurgy will have only the most superficial understanding of biochemistry. The engineering or science student specializes in a narrow field and takes electives only to add superficial knowledge about other subjects. When he graduates, he should have detailed knowledge about one specific field, a firm grasp on the basic methods and philosophies of science and/or engineering (this might actually be the most important asset), and some superficial knowledge about technical fields in which he didn't specialize. There's no conceivable reason that this will change as we learn even more about the universe.

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