Star Trek

[Kitsune]

The whole infinite branching timeline thing is current sci-fi vogue, but to associate it with any real science is a bit premature.  Once we actually have working time travel, or at least empirical evidence of working mechanisms that are related to such, then we can say that the new movie's based on real science time travel.  Until then, the whole thing is in the domain of people who like to talk a lot, and may be insane and/or talking out of their ass.

In any event, heavy-duty time travel of the Back to the Future variety may be simply impossible.  The passage of time in general is entirely possibly an illusion of our being creatures of three dimensions, an inability of us to perceive the fourth dimension as anything but a slideshow when in fact it's just as concrete as the first three.  If you could step completely out of time and look at the universe, it would be like a big glass cube with everything of every moment of time frozen inside, with each human resembling a ribbon that stretches from their birth to the point at which their body's dissolved.  Every moment of all of our lives already exists, from the beginning of the universe to the end, we just can't see it.  Attempting to buck this system is futile, it would be like a stick figure trying to leap from one page to another in our three-dimensional world.

[Azaroth]

Until then, the whole thing is in the domain of people who like to talk a lot, and may be insane and/or talking out of their ass.

[Kitsune]

Oh, and as a side note, the whole 'oh noes, since we're old school Star Trek the transporters have a hard time picking up a moving target' is absolute and utter bullshit.  The galaxy is currently hurtling at some half a million miles per hour through the universe, the solar system is swinging through the galaxy at an additional half a million miles per hour, Earth is orbiting the sun at 67000 miles per hour, and just by sitting on our asses on the planet we're doing around 1,000 miles per hour.  So just by 'standing still', each of us is currently plowing through space at the better part of a million miles per hour (depending on whether the galaxy's rotation is moving us with or counter to the galaxy's motion at the moment).

[justdave]

To further blow your mind.  There's a scientist (for real)

Please to be naming?

[justdave]

Stuff.

1st paragraph, very lucid.

2nd paragraph, rife with the sort of the very shit the first paragraph decried.

[justdave]

Oh, and as a side note, the whole 'oh noes, since we're old school Star Trek the transporters have a hard time ...

That was never an issue, except at warp, since the transporters essentially operated at warp, and the ship was moving at....You get it. Besides, arguing science in Star Trek is like arguing 18th century community dynamics in Firefly...Star Trek is NOT hard sci-fi. Everything is a story driver! Everything with buttons in Star Trek is a MacGuffin.

[Kitsune]

Stuff.

1st paragraph, very lucid.

2nd paragraph, rife with the sort of the very shit the first paragraph decried.

That's the point.  Once you start going on about the nature of the unseeable inner workings of the universe, you're pretty much shoveling a big load of mental horse manure.  Unless someone can finish the paragraph with '...and this is a machine that I built that proves it.'

[Chimpy]

No idea what tangental conversation I am breaking into here.

Saw it, liked it quite a bit. Was never a huge Trekkie though, so my opinion does not have the nerd-cred of some people I know.

[Ragnoros]

Saw it, liked it quite a bit. Was never a huge Trekkie though, so my opinion does not have the nerd-cred of some people I know.

What he said.

[Venkman]

@Ghambit: from your post of the Trek science: I'm inferring that while there's infinite timelines, there's only a single consciousness per sentient organism. That can't be right. Yea it makes sense as a pure story telling device, but as a matter of multiverse, it's like saying that in all of infinity only one time line at a time really matters. There's also the assumption that every timeline travels concurrently, which itself wouldn't permit the specific universe it's own binary choices. Eventually the machinations of the moving mass in a timeline is going to impact time itself.

That is the geekiest paragraph I've written in a longtime

@Trippy: I agree. Spock made sense and that's what I meant too about leadership.

@Ragnaros: agree on the ship and Scotty's comment. I don't think it's spoilery to say that the ship seemed entirely intended to show something fearful, and that's it. And the whole Spock time travel thing seemed specifically because Nimoy showed interest in an extended cameo.

[Ghambit]

To further blow your mind.  There's a scientist (for real)

Please to be naming?

Ronald L. Mallett

@Darniaq.  All of infinity from your perspective and mine (singularly), indeed only matters one timeline at a time - the one you're consciously aware of.  It's a failing of our senses and our conscious understanding of the Universe.  However, if we were beings like Wesley Crusher and The Traveler, we wouldnt have this problem and could view the Multiverse in all its grandeur (and travel freely amongst it, simply using our minds).  I agree that all the Timelines, from a higher perspective, do indeed matter simultaneously at every point in space-time... because I posit that Information can flow freely between all of them.  Hence, they effect eachother in the greater binary processes of the entire aether.  I dont assume every timeline travels concurrently, hell I dont assume they travel at all (they probably dont; most likely they're static vibrations or some such weirdness).  If we step out into what would be the Consciousness of the entire "Multiverse" than Time itself has nearly no meaning.  The term "Timeline" is just used to give us mere mortals understanding; in reality what we're really denoting is a particular Universe.  However, one could also say that the Mutiverse itself being a computational consciousness MUST recognize Time because computation itself requires it, unless you're a quantum computer - which will just represent all the data at every point as a probability (it's more like a seething, vibrating mass at a particular frequency).  Since the whole system is entangled, even though it's computing "over time," the passage of time (as we know it) itself isnt a part of the equation.  Also, each Universe being representative of it's own Space, has its own clock per se...  if you were to take a Constant and apply it over all the different Universes, that Constant would manifest itself differently in each.   Pretend you're hovering above the Multiverse shining a beam of light through it.  The speed of light to you isnt violated.  But, the speed of light in each individual universe below is... each in its own way depending on the geometry and physics of that particular Universe.  Kind of like resistance in a wire.

This line of thinking leads many down the path that there is indeed a limit to the speed Information can flow (in a quantum machine).  It seems instantaneous to us, but more than likely it runs at the speed of light from a different perspective (a higher one).  Going further, Time itself doesnt exist from the perspective of the entire Multiverse itself, but it does exist to someone outside of it.  And it exists to each conciousness within it.

   I have a headache

[Engels]

Edit: dupe post. sorry, not gonna ready umpteen pages of nerd analysis to see if the video has been posted before!

Btw, loved the movie. specially Spock and Chekov.

What was it with the odd sidekick that Scotty had?

[Ironwood]

I'm fairly sure we've seen that before.  In this thread.

Hmmm.

[Merusk]

@Ghambit: from your post of the Trek science: I'm inferring that while there's infinite timelines, there's only a single consciousness per sentient organism. That can't be right. Yea it makes sense as a pure story telling device, but as a matter of multiverse, it's like saying that in all of infinity only one time line at a time really matters. There's also the assumption that every timeline travels concurrently, which itself wouldn't permit the specific universe it's own binary choices. Eventually the machinations of the moving mass in a timeline is going to impact time itself.

Does 3 care about 3.00000000001, 3.5 or 4?

[NowhereMan]

Man I hate time travel. I will gladly maintain no matter how well they pull off the time travel thing that this would have been a better film if they'd just left that bit out and had it as a series restart. Mostly because then not every internet thread about it would wind up with a discussion of how time travel would actually work.

[Ghambit]

@Ghambit: from your post of the Trek science: I'm inferring that while there's infinite timelines, there's only a single consciousness per sentient organism. That can't be right. Yea it makes sense as a pure story telling device, but as a matter of multiverse, it's like saying that in all of infinity only one time line at a time really matters. There's also the assumption that every timeline travels concurrently, which itself wouldn't permit the specific universe it's own binary choices. Eventually the machinations of the moving mass in a timeline is going to impact time itself.

Does 3 care about 3.00000000001, 3.5 or 4?

Is a circle a circle before it's measured?

[Raguel]

Kirk was only 17 when he entered Starfleet.

Matters not, he was 34 when he got his first command, and was the youngest captain in starfleet. Nevertheless, it's not even a lore thing, he just doesn't look like he would be in charge of the flagship of the entire federation. He looks like a d-bag from marketing to me. 

I haven't seen the movie, but whenever I see a shot of the crew together, I immediately think: "Star Trek 90210" 

[Chimpy]

I just realized a funny bit about the whole time travel thing.

I went to see the movie with an old friend last night. He and I went to see the first time-travel Star Trek movie together when we were kids. Just an odd aside.

[Mrbloodworth]

Great movie, great relaunch of the series.

The one thing, one, thing that got me. The version of the enterprise in this movie had no letter, implying it was the first. I get the whole time travel thing, but..yeah. Archer?

NVM, that was the "NX-01".

[Slyfeind]

Man I hate time travel. I will gladly maintain no matter how well they pull off the time travel thing that this would have been a better film if they'd just left that bit out and had it as a series restart. Mostly because then not every internet thread about it would wind up with a discussion of how time travel would actually work.

That would be ideal, but I don't think that will ever happen. The impression I have is that the franchise bible demands time travel, because they want to keep everything tied together.

You want Star Trek, you gotta have cameos and borg and time travel. Can't have it without those things.

[Arnold]

Man I hate time travel. I will gladly maintain no matter how well they pull off the time travel thing that this would have been a better film if they'd just left that bit out and had it as a series restart. Mostly because then not every internet thread about it would wind up with a discussion of how time travel would actually work.

The impression I have is that the franchise bible demands time travel, because they want to keep everything tied together.

Wouldn't a rug have sufficed?

[stu]

Star Trek has time travel but no mullets. WTF?

[justdave]

Next, we shall discuss inertia as defined by Hal Puthoff. Or we could talk about N-rays!

[apocrypha]

Star Trek has time travel but no mullets. WTF?

[Venkman]

Pleased to be having more people see this movie.

@Darniaq.  All of infinity from your perspective and mine (singularly), indeed only matters one timeline at a time - the one you're consciously aware of. 

Ok, so the timeline I'm in right now matters only to me. But if there's infinite timelines branching from every binary system (or in psychohistory, every major decision point), then what about my consciousnesses in those other timelines? Do they not matter? Am I some sort of antiestablishment sociopath in those infinite timelines because I subconsciously know that only in some other timeline (like this one: in which I made this parenthetical, instead of the timeline in which I decided not to) am I Darniaq Prime the Singularly Relevant? 

(and yes, I'm just geeking out here because it's fun. I'm not smart enough by aeons to have a real discussion about the multiverse).

[Surlyboi]

For those of you interested in the story that got the whole thing started... Click here.

[NiX]

Amazing movie. Really revitalized Star Trek. I normally don't like J.J. either, so I was pleasantly surprised. Now fuck off with your time travel bitching.

[Surlyboi]

Ah, the nerd rage is so tasty... 

[Samwise]

4. When did Scotty ever engineer a technology that allowed interstellar transporting at warp speed? Hell in SNG, they couldn't even transport within their own ship.

WRONG.  Transporting at warp speed is possible as long as the destination and target have sufficiently similar velocities.  So says the ST:TNG technical manual.

 

[Venkman]

I don't mind me a bit of nerdrage. Always in good fun. But the part I always laugh most about is the idea that anything is done simply because of money. Someone said it here and that link had it too

OF COURSE IT'S ABOUT THE GODDAMNED MONEY.

And so was all the crap that was running the IP into the ground. And so was the very metric they used to determine it was running into the ground

I read the countdown thing from above. Sets up some minor things well. You'd have to accept that jumping to an earlier point in time and destroying the very things that made that jump possible wouldn't cause you to cease to be though. Instead of destroying Vulcan and therefore destroying Red Matter and the event that caused the jump, Nero jumped to an earlier decision point in a parallel timeline.

And why the he'll does Worf always seem to get beat up?

And why does everyone seem to be arming up on discard Borg tech except Starfleet, save the Enterprise which apparently was the one ship that could cause a threat?

The movie I can forgive behind the smoke and mirrors of ships and lasers. But the written stuff should be better than that because it had no budget nor time limit to constrain the act of telling the story.

[Surlyboi]

Nimoy says, If you don't like it, you're a dickhead." 

[Draegan]

Great, great movie.  I'll probably see it again.

I love all the nerd rage.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Very good movie. As a fan of trek in general, mostly tng and ds9 I loved it. Sure some things were a bit over the top like bad guys ship and retractable sword but still, it was fun.  Actiony but still definitely trek, solid movie and a solid start to a new/old crew.

[Quinton]

I enjoyed it.  The plot was a bit silly, the "science" was rather absurd, but it was a fun new take on characters I'm fond of (I grew up watching classic trek reruns after school, etc).  Plenty of little nods to the existing trek canon while clearly indicating that this is a reboot, going its own way.  The casting was really fantastic, and I'd love to see them do more with this reset of the characters and the universe -- a TV series would not upset me.

[Venkman]

Very good movie. As a fan of trek in general, mostly tng and ds9 I loved it. Sure some things were a bit over the top like bad guys ship and retractable sword but still, it was fun.  Actiony but still definitely trek, solid movie and a solid start to a new/old crew.

I purposely started a nerd fight about that retractable sword because I wanted the guys next to me to stop raging over the convenience of wood in the Spock cave