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!
Here’s the thing: Does Tom Riker actually prove that? That’s the explanation suggested in the episode, but the preponderance of information about the mechanisms of transporter technology, as given both before and after, conflicts with it. But there’s another hypothesis, a simpler one, and one that we know for a fact transporters are capable of, because it’s a recurring element in Star Trek: Thomas Riker is from another universe, brought to the Prime universe by similar means as many of the various visits to and from the Mirror universe.
Here’s the thing: Does Tom Riker actually prove that? That’s the explanation suggested in the episode, but the preponderance of information about the mechanisms of transporter technology, as given both before and after, conflicts with it. But there’s another hypothesis, a simpler one, and one that we know for a fact transporters are capable of, because it’s a recurring element in Star Trek: Thomas Riker is from another universe, brought to the Prime universe by similar means as many of the various visits to and from the Mirror universe.