Season 2 of the critically acclaimed Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiered June 15 (streaming on Paramount+). So today, Short Wave Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber chats with two Trekkie physicists about the science powering the show and why they love the franchise. Astrophysicist Erin Macdonald is the science consultant for Star Trek, and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical physicist and author of the book The Disordered Cosmos. This episode, the trio discusses not only the feasibility of warp drive, global cooperation and representation and how the transporters that beam crew members from the surface of a planet to the ship might be breaking fundamental laws of physics.Questions about the "scientific" underpinnings of other pop culture? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We'd love to hear from you!
Is one carbon atom the same as another carbon atom, philosophically? Can you keep your identity when all your atoms are replaced by other atoms of the same kind? It’s the ship of Theseus problem
Irrelevant to the transporter as the same matter is moved by the matter stream and reassembled in the same order. This is less asking if the ship of Theseus is the same ship after the hull and the mast were replaced and more asking if my kitchen table is still the same after I took the leaf out, folded the legs in, put it in a truck, moved to a new house, and set it back up
Do you think you have the same skin cells as last week, yesterday, 20 minutes ago?
Do you think the new cells come from the same carbon atoms?
We’re already being disintegrated. It’s just a lot slower with imperfect replication. In fact, one could make the argument that that is a decent argument for life. Although it does include viruses and prions, so maybe not that far.
Is one carbon atom the same as another carbon atom, philosophically? Can you keep your identity when all your atoms are replaced by other atoms of the same kind? It’s the ship of Theseus problem
Irrelevant to the transporter as the same matter is moved by the matter stream and reassembled in the same order. This is less asking if the ship of Theseus is the same ship after the hull and the mast were replaced and more asking if my kitchen table is still the same after I took the leaf out, folded the legs in, put it in a truck, moved to a new house, and set it back up
Do you think you have the same skin cells as last week, yesterday, 20 minutes ago?
Do you think the new cells come from the same carbon atoms?
We’re already being disintegrated. It’s just a lot slower with imperfect replication. In fact, one could make the argument that that is a decent argument for life. Although it does include viruses and prions, so maybe not that far.