The Science of Star Trek – Dr. Michael Wong

you may have heard of something called Faraday's ball some of you may even have play around with it in science generally it's demonstrated with a coil of wire and the magnet and because the magnet the wire and the changing magnetic field induces an electric current in the wire this discovery helped us unite the forces of electricity and magnetism into something that we now understand that love as electromagnetism now imagine imagine that you could unite the forces of electromagnetism with the force of gravity and as Einstein told us gravity is looking more than the beggining and rippling of space pop so what have you had an electromagnetic source of energy so powerful that you could literally warp the space around you expand it behind you contract it in front to the power of science a little sprinkling of imagination you'll excreted a tidal wave of space you could surf faster than the speed of light what would you do with such a marvelous engine I think I know I think you would venture out into space the final frontier explore strange new world seek out new life and new civilizations boldly find yourself in a remonstrance you be an explorer going where no one has gone before and all the while making new friends general fond memories and learning what it means to be human this was the vision of a man named gene roddenberry who in 1964 submitted a proposal to NBC studios while at the television show but he called starts and from sergeants very inception Gene Roddenberry knew that science was going to be at its core in fact in his original proposal he wrote about an equation that was penned by astro physicist Frank Drake just a few years ago the situation looked like that it's meant to organize our knowledge and our ignorance about the cosmos and then attempt to estimate the number of intelligent transmitting civilizations of the doubt thing is in 1964 you put it just Google Drake's equation in fact did Roddenberry had no idea what drinks bunch look like so under the pressure of the studio submitted proposals a lot of time he just scribbled something random and submitted luckily he studio executives of NBC also I have no idea and Sartre wasn't proven now much later Frank Drake would actually come on board stars I could scientifically advise an episode and he was shown this fictitious equation of his that Du Monde very original and he just laughed out loud he said Oh gene don't you know that raising something to the first power is simply itself why would you like that [Applause] so this is what rates equation actually looks like again it has to be the number of transmitting civilizations in the galaxy and it multiplies terms together and we don't have time today to go through all of them in detail but suffice to say the last four journey shown here in red are highly uncertain it's difficult to know for instance the probability is for the divergence of life on planets or the lifetime or the transmitting civilizations or things that you spoke have no good grasp but the first three numbers shown here in blue are asked for physical numbers there are numbers that we can know today thanks to breakthroughs in astrophysics so if we take those first three numbers and multiply them together we've got the number of earth-like planets in the galaxy that would be the number of stars in the galaxy multiplied by the fraction of those stars and planets multiplied by the number of earth-like planets in our planetary system no team Roddenberry back in the sixties did not know what this number Lots there was no boyfriends but he did know that this number was going to be huge because the number of stars of our galaxy is literally astronomical so when we figure out what this number is the other choice about how you are going to feel about it you're gonna feel small because you're just one life-form on a tiny mote of dust floating in space where you going to feel water because you're a part of this random evolving cosmos it's special because no matter what else is out there it's what all of those possibilities they're still just one and only one of you this is the kind of philosophizing that dr. McCoy brought to Captain Kirk in an episode of the classic Star Trek series called the balance of terror this also captain purpose pitted against the Romulan commander equally as formidable as him and Kirk is doing the draining weight of starship command he's second-guessing his every move he just wants vacation dr. McCoy being his friend comes up to Kirk and shows him the map reality of the universe the snap is captain back into action let's take a look at that seat I wish I were along see woods picked us dance responsible [Music] Roderich that's nothing [Music] luckily expect an answer something I saw ups a job afterwards you miss galaxy earth plants and all of the universe 3d matrix is like this and all of that they don't destroy the 1 Inc [Music] all right so dr. McCoy says there are three million earth-type planets in our galaxy let's see how great that estimate is so today we know that there are about 200 billion stars in our galaxy now this is not an exact figure it's an order of magnitude estimate but it's sufficient for our purposes thanks to the Kepler space policy the most powerful men finding device in all human history so far we know now that the fraction of planets fraction stars that have planets is approximately 1 I just think that almost every star you can see in night sky has a planet going around thanks to the hard master physicists around the globe we now know that's the occurrence rate it's a good sized planets and the so called Wolvie locks I'll go through what that means in just a second it's about 20% this isn't a big number if you bolt equalities three things together you got something like 40 milli all right so a billion he is a thousand times more than a million so dr. McCoy was way off in his s he was off by a factor of over 10,000 but we can forget bones because I see with love to remind us denim Jim I'm a doctor not an astrophysicist all right so let's talk a little bit more about what it means to be an earth-like planet this is our solar system our sudden with the three largest personal planets events Venus Earth and Mars and generally what we talk about when we talk about birds like world's expressible planets within the so called Goldilocks zone this is the range of distances from star for which they trust will include helplessly circuits get too close to the SAR fetus and the water way too far away like Mars and your water with freezing ice now scientists can also calculate what is called a title walking radius this is a distance from the star within which your clinic will be titled aloft and in general what that means is that the planet will have a permanent space are permanent hemisphere that all these phases fun and together hemisphere will always face wet for pets moment so it turns out that our Sun is a slightly larger SAR than ours most of the stars in our galaxy are smaller dimmer and brighter than our Sun and you can calculate how the title log even is in the Goldilocks zone change with stellar sides so as the star gets smaller and less massive that's less rather to do it's kinda Lux Aeterna locking radius if it's closer to the truck also as far as our get smaller they have must luminosity their temperatures are lower so the Goldilocks zone also moves closer to the Sun and in fact these two quantities Rossi such that if you are a terrestrial planet in the Goldilocks zone around one of the smallest dimmest reddish stars you are almost certainly tidally locked there's an example of a tightly locked women sparkling it's man is Venus than the Riemann's who have habits this world can't live on the day side because it's far too hot sugar we can't live on the surface of the night side either because it's far too cold so what the Ravens do is they build their cities down into the ground to take advantage of geothermal heat are all totally logical and it's going to be doomed to be like Grievous to be uninhabitable on its surface and only the only possibility for life to be peeking out in existence in the subsurface not necessarily work we gave Remus or even better an atmosphere and emotion what about the Sears do want to find out let's go back to earth the planets have you noticed it turns out that atmosphere is in terrible circulate peace redistribute the earth it's more somewhat by its equator than by poles now the officer in charge to create these front convection cells to take excess heat from you Aaron talk about the poles making the poles warmer than they was the other points well the poles may be very very frigid in in a suitable for you and me but they are still extremely habitable environments just ask the polar bears and penguins turns out that scientists are able to apply the same physical laws above the sand computer models for atmospheres other planets including around highway loggerheads and it turns out that atmospheres were totally loved also a certain from the bright hot day side to the cold nights first time a title to our clinic the atmosphere and ocean be little bit with this we call it at I all earned with a hemisphere and date with temperate climate plenty of clouds to reflect the Sun writes back in the space of its get too hot and announce you're an ocean that will bring each to the right side room will still be cold but not uninhabited consultum I feel I'm thinking adapt to those conditions well somehow Remus lost attached and indeed this may happen for a great number of try the new Lost Worlds huddled close to their home socket and it's the job the next generation of telescopes including the James Webb Space Telescope to find out characterize whether these highly lots dress no planets do indeed have atmospheres perhaps you promotion per second we distribute their heat around and make their services so going back to Ravens even though they are subsurface colors they still venture out into space and we have made an alliance with their Rob Yulin cousins and form a vast star compact the poses an existential threat to humanity but in order to overcome this threat we must make alliances with other spacefaring civilizations galaxies create the United Federation of Planets this is an alliance between humans Balkans and Dorian's and others so literally in Dorian's bunker well they come from a majority not this world but this what's right and Doria is a mood for the gas giant planets very unlike our Moon which is basically a hunk of rock in space when were Ken to the real life icy moon of Jupiter being Europe but we know that Naropa has a massive subsurface ocean of liquid water in fact if you took up all the water on the surface of our planet to Boulder up into a ball it wouldn't be smaller than if you took the water and the subsurface ocean of Europa and pulled that up this is an astounding fact how can you develop and sustain a liquid water oceans so far away from the Sun the answer that will take a closer look at the system that Europa is in is one of the quartet of satellites orbiting too large to us that we called the Galilean so I know Europa Ganymede listen it turns out these satellites do their dance around - they were continuously squished and squashed by Jupiter a strong magnetic strong gravitational field and this swishing and smashing deposits heat into their sub surfaces we call this title here it turns out that I hope being the closest student experiencing most of this fisherman's washing it seems too much tidal heating to be habit it doesn't make I'll be most volcanically active out-compete hearts ellipsis canter they didn't solicit on the other hand received far too little time opt to be astral biologically relevant but you're welcome yes just enough this is like a new Goldilocks zone if you will to maintain or liquid water so when we say Europa is a good place for life when you ask us all spot what does life do what it's like feet luckily I have all of you in front of me Plus find examples of living creatures to remind me what life does you're all breathing now you're also a light dusting your food and drinks and our metabolisms connect with food and drinks and we'd drink to be oxygen to the air that we breathe that is how we gain energy cross slip so are their food sources and when we pump air sources on turns out that we think there are deep wonder Europa's ocean we suspect that there are hydrothermal vents by studying the vents on earth we know that they are a looks chemical energy like some of the most productive areas of our biosphere is located at some submarine party thermal vents completely devoid of some good food Europa it turns out doesn't have an atmosphere or not very substantial one but it does have this ice shelf that is constantly being bombarded by radiation radiation from the Sun radiation trapped in Jupiter's magnetosphere some radiation vents originating from the volcanically active sister Nehemiah and then what this radiation does is it processes device creates temples of oxygens temples that act like oxygen and because the title pushing them tweezing creates cracks and breaks and perhaps even subduction in the outer shell these oxidants could flow into the ocean where they might be consumed by life so this process makes rope an extremely potentially habitable environment and similar processes good you making and Rory from Star Trek have the gold as well now I got last story to share with you my favorite science and Star Trek story because it concerns a real-life scientist named Carolyn Porco she is a planetary scientist and one of the some the imaging lead for the Cassini spacecraft which spent over a thousand years orbiting Saturn in addition to being a very prolific excellent scientist dr. Bruno is a very passionate speaker so she was given your TED talk once when she was approached by a man it was curly dark hair thick glasses man said hello dr. Berkoff my name is JJ Abrams and I need your help and dr. Parker said sure how can I help you JJ said I am writing a script for a reboot well this passage frame fiction show called starts Carolyn said I love Star Trek how can I help Jake they said okay but god problem with the plot you see I've got the wrong Island he's attacking Earth they're about to create a black hole where earth it's and destroy Earth so the enterprise leaves the smooth back into the solar system save the day but they can't let the Romulans know that their company where can I hide a starship in the solar system Carolyn just smiled and she said Gingka I have the perfect place for you and this is the result whatever the case we need to get a four carat shape with the Technic just go in there guns blazing there's some mutant animals we have to go stir coffee would based on what I've discussed from woken I could predict it that's it like I said you don't want this noise if mr. Scott can get this to work better for EM if we don't want to work you had one sentence would say title it's a magnetic distortion trance of limits things will make us invisible can your senses from sin as long as the veil is not actually can be shaped by that my luck wait at home 17:17 doctor mr. Chekov is correct I can't confirm this telemetry mr. Sulu is able to do for us in a position I can be before they worship steal back the black hole device I've been possible bring back equipment or lie Romulans and Vulcans share a common ancestor our cultural similarities will make it easier for me to access the ship's computer or located the device also my mother was human which makes us the only con that [Music] I'm coming I would cite regulation but I know you listen we ignore see [Music] prepare the truck [Music] I'll stop [Applause] [Music] we're really well-balanced okay so that is the story of how taking a parent asks for help from dr. Carolyn Porco and how we have a real-life mentor a scientist to thank for the enterprise swooping in to Saturn's moon Titan atmosphere to save the day sniffles brilliantly written into the script as an idea that was concocted by the health Pavel Chekov now if you I have one time to be put like Carlton with what happens here of course sharp up Vincent's heightened and then he goes on to lab or something about how Saturn's magnetic fields will get distorted by the Rings the Rings don't actually do that we can forgive him because he's only 17 so what makes Titan's atmosphere such a great place to hide a starship well it all starts with the fact that Titans happens here is full of this molecule of methane which is a molecule composed of one atom of carbon and four arms I turns out that have you shine holds about sunlight on methane you can pop off on abba hydrogens creating what is called a methyl radical and hydrogen will float out from the space because it's so much now if two methyl radical is find each other they may notice that each other is missing a crucial link and they may inch closer man's clothes and clips and form a new molecule called epic and it's this process repeated over and over and over again that creates longer and longer chain molecules of 10 times your appropriate benzene proteome that drop they've all been observed and they creates this organic phase the completely shrouds tightening and makes it a fantastic place to hide a starship so I'm pretty happy in general with how science is portrayed in starts there is though one little thing that bothers me sometimes and inside often the science officer prints in Star Trek or portrayed as being a little I think like in order to be a science officer in charge at you either need to have suppressed emotions or being right all the time or Rito through the robotic or a cyber perfectionist or to be a symbionts with the 300 year old creature into account don't get me wrong all of these traits make these characters extremely endearing to watch but they can also make the surface a little bit hard to relate to us an average human being so to end this talk by reminding you about another very important character in Star Trek a character is not generally associated with being a science officer but who is definitely still a scientist at heart that character is Kathryn Janeway after Gateway was born in Bloomington Indiana her hobbies include drinking coffee fine tenants going skiing and learning new languages and her Starfleet record shows that she went on to become one of the greatest officers in the entire Federation she was the chief science officer aboard the USS help attorney before assuming command at the starship Voyager leaving her crew home 70,000 light-years back to earth where she was then promoted to vice admiral of Starfleet Command after Midway it's just a horrible human being her story can be any of your stories so I'm gonna now speak to the younger folks in the audience if you haven't had a chance yet maybe go watch some started maybe you like it maybe you'll connect with one of the characters maybe you do inspire maybe you'll even feel inspired to pursue a career in science because as we have seen today the power of science plus the power of imagination to take you anywhere your captain's chairs wait the future is your [Applause] question James has accounts here so is there a chance for life on paper and also is there water he answers this lots of water but Satan is so far away from the Sun and it must receive signs but all of the water is frozen solid rock does have liquid methane and ethane seems and so you can imagine a wildly different kind of biochemistry it could exist in the BOCES what if I'm to go into all the details but is a very exciting place rocks reality the creepy life there mainly different from the life you know what is the possibility of non-carbon-based life so you may be a thin enough word out and the crystalline entity yeah so that's a great question I would say like from silicon-based life is an impossibility but not at the temple to their personal achievement we are used to you know first reason is because if you think of the way that silicon waits upon two things for instance we'll just take two types of carbon that is accessible to biology right now carbon dioxide [Music] sports so that's rockin it forms these long chains and basically the polarity of the silicon silicon pipe design is reversed from the carbon hypervisor which makes silane extremely reactive and is back to combusts spontaneously which makes it also be the testator's so yeah so it's like mad our normal purchasing countries request yes absolutely so what drives worms or basically are made when water evaporates right and so that is receiving constant sunlight it's cleaner right beneath where the suckers it's the most direct line of sight for some and so there will be a huge have you simulates the clouds on that land we realize it because the clouds pile arcs at that point well actually is it electrical instance and get away it's that side the clinics are not being too hot the clouds are extremely important to have the ability of those runs very close okay great thank you all