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!
@taladar@dustojnikhummer Why not just let the crew member stay on the ship and just send dozens of copies of them to the planet to overwhelm any danger with sheer numbers?
Well, it makes sense to me to want to have the away mission in the memory of the crew member you retain long term unless something happened to them on the away mission.
@taladar @dustojnikhummer Why not just let the crew member stay on the ship and just send dozens of copies of them to the planet to overwhelm any danger with sheer numbers?
Well, it makes sense to me to want to have the away mission in the memory of the crew member you retain long term unless something happened to them on the away mission.