From: ph111-bx@violet.berkeley.edu (;;;;7202)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.tech
Subject: Re: guts in star trek
Date: 17 Aug 1992 19:34:29 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu
Keywords: Unified field theories

In article <5081@tuegate.tue.nl> johan@blade.stack.urc.tue.nl (Johan Wevers)
writes:
>"david gebhardt" <david.gebhardt@canrem.com> writes:
>>I can't remember everything about it, but I do know that the purpose of
>>the theory is to come up with one set of equations that can be applied
>>to electric, magnetic and gravitational fields (I'm sure there are some
>>other things involved, and that's the part I can't recall offhand).
>
>Since Maxwell, and certainly after special relativity, we know that
>the electrical and magnetical field are one field. What is a purely
>electrical field for one observer, is a mix of an electrical and
>magnetical field for an observer which moves w.r.t. the first.
>
>The other forces are the weak interaction (causes beta-decay for example),
>and the color-interaction (causes the forces between nucleons).

Color-interaction? Is that what they're calling the strong nuclear force now?

The current status, last I heard, was something called the "standard model"
which is able to unify the electric, magnetic, and weak nuclear forces into
the "electro-weak" force.  Gravity, as understood by general relativity, is
the last of the unquantized forces, and so is still a "classical" theory.
Attempts at quantization have been made, though, hense the graviton.  I've
also heard that because of its still classical quality, in part, gravity
would probably be the last force to be unified with the others.

One point of my original post, though, was that since warp technology involves
generation of gravity to curve space in such a way to propel a ship, and
since this is done, according to the tech manual I think, by manipulating
appropriate EM fields, then I thought they are able to "induce" a gravity
field by action on an EM field.  And that this is similar, and perhaps
equivalent, to inducing an electric current by passing a magnet through a
wire loop.  And that since the magnet-wireloop result demonstrates EM unity,
warp technology demonstrates EM-gravity unity.  And finally, since we're
not talking Faraday and British 19th century amature tradition science, but
the ultra high tech world of star trek, you'd think they'd have a theory
explaining this EM-gravity unity, instead of building star ships based on
something empirical.  So, given all that, they'd be way ahead of anything
Einstein was working on.  Hense the analogy Barclay to Einstein, 20th
century physicist to Newton.

One more thing about Einstein.  All the estimates I've heard of him say
he was the greatest physicist (scientist, maybe) of the 20th century.  The
popular mind might say "of all time" but he'd have to distance some pretty
incredible people to do that.  I think it's probably true that he's more
well known than any other scientist, but that shouldn't be good enough for
star trek, unless you also believe the Wesley and Alexander characters
belong there.  Also, Einstein didn't start really concentrating on
unification theories until about the last 10 years of his life.  By then,
although his reputation remained without equal and he continued to be
held in highest regard, he had fairly isolated himself by continuing to
be a holdout against quantum mechanics.  One of the most famous
correspondances in the history of science is that between Einstein and
Neils Bohr.  They argued back and forth about the legitimacy of QM, and
Bohr was always successful in resolving every paradox Einstein thought of
to try to show QM to be inconsistant.  I don't think Einstein made any
important or lasting contributions to unification theories in those last
10 years.  Which is also why I found it inappropriate for Barclay to want
to talk to him about it.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.tech