The U.S.S. Discovery Spore drive, is it complete nonsense or is there a scientific theory I’m unaware of?

  • StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website
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    5 days ago

    Yup.

    And that Alcubierre’s effort, as a theoretical physics PhD student, to prove mathematically that there was a an exception to General Relativity that would make warp possible, was inspired by Star Trek’s fictional drive and not vice versa.

    • T156@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Although it might go both ways these days, since it wouldn’t be at all surprising if newer writers heard of Alcubierre’s warp drive, and incorporated that into Star Trek as a mechanism for how it works.

      • StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website
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        3 days ago

        It’s more that Star Trek’s science advisor Dr. Erin MacDonald is a physicist who did her PhD thesis with the team in Scotland that got the Nobel prize shortly after she graduated.

        As she puts it, her friends got her into watching Voyager when she was working on her PhD and she thought “oh cool, just what I am studying.”

        There’s definitely a feedback loop going on, since Dr. MacDonald is whom they bounce their ideas off of.

        She appears as herself - although as a Starfleet officer in the 24th century — in animated form in Prodigy, and explains ‘Temporal Mechanics 101’ in a learning module.