SPOILER thread for Star Trek with SPOILERS IN IT

[unbongwah]

Don’t let words like “black hole” and “singularity” in the script fool you: Red Matter is just a magic planet-destroying substance / weapon; trying to explain it with Real Science™ will just make your head hurt.

[wonderpug]

My guess is because faster than light travel, teleportation, and telepathy are generally poorly understood, or purely theoretical, so a fair amount of hand-waving is allowable.

When you’re addressing something that has relatively well understood mechanics, like black hole formation, you’re held to a higher standard. The point is that, generally, we’re holding them to the standard of well understood scientific knowledge. For things beyond modern scientific knowledge (eg. warp engines), they get a pass as long as they’re internally consistent, because that’s accepted as a storytelling convenience.

our understanding of the universe’s speed limit : our understanding of warp speed
:: our understanding of black hole formation : our understanding of red matter black hole formation

[Creole_Ned]

To get away from the science nerd arguments for a moment, I watched Wrath of Khan again last night and was struck by how subdued WoK looked in comparison to the very bright, colorful new film. WoK also began the cheesy effects recycling and its smaller budget really showed in several shots. Styrofoam caves and all that.

Still a great Trek film, of course and the Enterprise/Reliant cat and mouse still holds up well visually 27 years later. Love the shot of the Enterprise nearly crashing into the Reliant as the two ships travel blind in the nebula.

I imagine if Qt3 was around in 1982 we would have been arguing about the feasibility of the Genesis device and why the Enterprise had a deadly radioactive chamber in engineering but apparently no radiation hazard suits to wear.

[Pogo]

I forget if this was discussed earlier, but does the Red Matter hand-waving also explain why the planet centered black hole sucked in the entire planet in a matter of minutes? If I’m not mistaken, it would take years and years for a singularity at the center of a planet to have any noticeable effect: the singularity starts with a very small mass, so it has only a very small gravitational field, and absorbs the core of the planet only very slowly.

I guess the red matter could explain both these phenomena by somehow creating a “more massive” singularity than would otherwise be allowed.

Yeah, to keep it consistent, they explained red matter as a highly unstable but incredibly energetic materials. That energy is turned into huge amounts of mass, which allows it to instantaneously become a very large gravity sink forming a black hole.

[bago]

I did say “relatively”.

Compared to say, telepathy, or time travel.

That was the joke. Relativity, matter approaching the speed of light on the accretion disk, Hawking Radiation, and the evaporation of black holes. That and it’s a problem Einstein himself couldn’t really wrap his head around.

Einstein himself wrongly believed that black holes would not form, because he believed that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilize their motion at some radius.

[unbongwah]

That still makes no sense in the real world. Matter & energy are just flip sides of the same coin; they can’t be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to the other. Gravity is based on mass, not density. Red Matter is spontaneously generating matter out of basically nothing, in order to create enough extra gravity to cause a planet to implode.

So, like I said: magic.

Yeah, to keep it consistent, they explained red matter as a highly unstable but incredibly energetic materials. That energy is turned into huge amounts of mass, which allows it to instantaneously become a very large gravity sink forming a black hole.

[caesarbear]

Anyone can turn on Discovery channel and learn about blackholes. This 2009, blackholes are old school. The script should have stayed away from the word completely and made up some other kind of fantasy sci-fi, like a broad spectrum localized subspace inhibiting pocket.

[AndrewMyers]

Anyone can turn on Discovery channel and learn about blackholes. This 2009, blackholes are old school. The script should have stayed away from the word completely and made up some other kind of fantasy sci-fi, like a broad spectrum localized subspace inhibiting pocket.

That’s exactly why they should use black holes. People understand what they are and what they do.

[ReptileHouse]

That’s exactly why they should use black holes. People understand what they are and what they do.

Then people get hold of the ideas and make movies where they are a plot device doing things completely different from what physics tells us they do. Cognitive dissonance sets in creating a rift in the surrounding craniums which then consumes the otherwise stable enjoyment of the movie residing in the nearby grey matter and it just goes downhill from there.

Using understood phenomena is a good thing. When doing so, however, they should at least pay lip service to the actual science behind those things.

[Telefrog]

If the heat of the planet’s core were needed for the Red Matter to use as a catalyst, then how did it work in space against Nero’s ship?

[caesarbear]

Obviously the combination of ruptured power couplings and warp core breach prevent the formation of a quantum flux capacitance.

[Pogo]

That still makes no sense in the real world. Matter & energy are just flip sides of the same coin; they can’t be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to the other. Gravity is based on mass, not density. Red Matter is spontaneously generating matter out of basically nothing, in order to create enough extra gravity to cause a planet to implode.

So, like I said: magic.

The magic is in the material that they call Red Matter. Otherwise, the concept is actually fine, if that “matter” is extremely energetic and its energy is turned into matter. Density is only relevant in that there’s a huge amount of matter created in what would seem to be a very small space (like the size of a planet’s core). So I’m not sure if you’re implying that I said that matter/energy are being created out of thin air.

[unbongwah]

E=mc^2 - it would take a hell of a lot of energy to produce enough matter to create a strong enough gravitational field to suck up a planet in a short amount of time. And if Red Matter really is that energy-dense, well, it raises other questions as well…

Seriously, I have no trouble hand-waving it away as Super-Science™, just as long as no one tries to argue it’s grounded in physics as we understand it.

[Editer]

It’s physics, Jim, but not as we know it.

[Eric_T_Cheng]

Seriously, I have no trouble hand-waving it away as Super-Science™, just as long as no one tries to argue it’s grounded in physics as we understand it.

That’s why I prefer (pre-prequel) Star Wars over Star Trek because the former doesn’t explain the science behind FTL hyperspace, it just works! Whereas a Star Trek engineer would explain how a car’s internal combustion engine works in great detail every time he would get inside and about to turn on the ignition.

[Pogo]

E=mc^2 - it would take a hell of a lot of energy to produce enough matter to create a strong enough gravitational field to suck up a planet in a short amount of time. And if Red Matter really is that energy-dense, well, it raises other questions as well…

Seriously, I have no trouble hand-waving it away as Super-Science™, just as long as no one tries to argue it’s grounded in physics as we understand it.

God dammit man, that’s why the Red Matter is magic. We’ve already established that.

[caesarbear]

The Red Matter isn’t the problem, it’s the misuse of blackholes.

[Derek_Meister]

Whereas a Star Trek engineer would explain how a car’s internal combustion engine works in great detail every time he would get inside and about to turn on the ignition.

The new movie really had little, if any, technobable. Probably why some of the critics refer to it as the star-warsified Star Trek.

[bkrani]

The heat from the core of the planet was what provided the spark to create the black hole. I’m not sure if that was explained in the movie or if it’s something I picked up from the novelization.

Entirely IMO but the mass at the core of a planet, being much more dense, would allow a small black hole (or a large one for that matter) to absorb extra mass much more rapidly and thus grow faster.

[Athryn]

I saw this on Friday, and loved every bit of it, even though the plot will dissolve into mediocrity if I think about it too hard.

But so many awesome shoutouts, I just loved it. I love Star Trek movies, even the bad ones.

Did anyone else notice the small cameo-ish bit that the Doctor from Stargate:Atlantis had? Evidently he tried out for the Scotty role also but didn’t get it, but they gave him a little bit part anyway. I thought that was kinda cool.