computer help: Very geeky Star Trek question. - Help.com

Any explanation would have to be either ‘expanded-universe’ fiction or theorizing.

Why can’t they work just like regular modern radios? Riker and Picard could be on a private channel, or maybe when Picard presses a button to talk, he is selecting a channel. Then Riker simply hears Picard speaking and responds.

Maybe the computer records and uses the ‘Picard to Commander Riker’ line to initiate the session then replays the ‘Picard to Commander Riker’ line from memory to the call recipient to alert them to the call and identify the calling party (like caller ID but with voice..

As for how the call would be handled - most likely WiMax mesh type network - protocols similar to the likes of VoIP (eg Skype/Voice as data)…

Maybe Pickard and Riker are secretly gay lovers who have their own private communication line.

Or it could be that the writers didn’t really think out the semantics of it. Anything they have an explanation for they usually make a point of explaining in a way that is really just a bunch of made up scientific sounding words. One of the big problems of star trek is it is too much about the technology.

If you do figure that one out though, let me know and pleas also tell me why the enterprise sounds like an airplane from outside even though it is in a vacuum (and thus would make no noise).

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betta wrote:
Or it could be that the writers didn’t really think out the semantics of it. Anything they have an explanation for they usually make a point of explaining in a way that is really just a bunch of made up scientific sounding words. One of the big problems of star trek is it is too much about the technology.

Ugh, I think I solved it!

betta wrote:
If you do figure that one out though, let me know and pleas also tell me why the enterprise sounds like an airplane from outside even though it is in a vacuum (and thus would make no noise).

That is baby stuff. Tell me this, when all the space ships turn up to have a fight, why are they all the right way up. Why does one not arrive upside down etc - after all there is no up or down (well, point of reference to work out what is up and down from) in space therefore there is no right way up to travel.

Similar explanation for that one. It just wouldn’t look so good on camera. Or they could all buy their artificial gravity machines from the same manufacturer. Makes me wonder how their antigravity is supposed to work, but I’m sure they explained it at some point with some technobabble.

I sometimes wonder why on the original series they don’t shut of whatever makes that “ding” every half second. I would lose my mind spending 8 hours a day on the deck of that ship.

And as I think of time, everyone seems to always be running on the same clock in the entire universe. They never have jet lag, there is never any night shift spoken of, they are never called out of bed to receive a transmission… even non-allies seem to be running on the same time. It’s as if outer space were a time zone. What’s with that?

One thing often misunderstood about light is that light travels the same speed relative to all reference points at once. It is hard to wrap your brain around it. That means that if two starships are headed in the exact same direction and travelling at light speed, EMF waves sent between ships will travel light speed relative to the ships, but also light speed relative to a stationary point of reference.

Here’s a better question. How do the ships manage to go at and beyond light speed without converting the ship and everyone on it into pure energy? How do they go beyond light speed without traveling backward through time? And don’t say a worm hole because they always make a real big deal about wormholes.

I don’t know, but I’d like to act like I know, is that ok?

marfi wrote:
So if a star ship is traveling say warp 5, than radio waves will never reach it. The other thing is what is warp speed. Like warp 1, warp 2 etc. I do know that warp 2 is not twice the speed of light but the speed of light to the 2nd power.

Anyway, my situation to answer my smart kids is about the speed of radiowaves. They say that if the star ship is 5 light years away from earth, than the radio waves will take 5 years to reach them. This I agree with.

Since Light travels at the same velocity relative to all reference points, it should be able to catch up to the ship traveling faster than the speed of light because it is travelling at the speed of light relative to it. However as far as is known traveling beyond the speed of light is an impossibility. asking how light would behave relative to something that travels faster is rather absurd because it can’t be known because the phenomenon does not exist (as far as we know). It is like asking how a warp drive works (so that I can build one).