Physicist does the math on Star Trek’s “Picard maneuver”
The trick from Next Generation would be even more effective in real life.
The trick from Next Generation would be even more effective in real life.
The short version
- It turns out Jean-Luc Picard was an even better starship helmsman than the writers knew.
- A physicist has gone through the details of a warp-speed trick from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and found a subtlety the show missed.
- But instead of a plot hole, the detail he found actually makes the maneuver more impressive… as well as a great opportunity to teach about a lesser-known feature of the theory of relativity.
What happened
Níckolas de Aguiar Alves, a physicist at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil, first watched Next Generation as a master’s student. When he got to the episode “The Battle” in the show’s first season, the plot reminded him of his relativity coursework.
Why it matters
Later in the episode, Riker mentions that the trick had been immortalized in Starfleet textbooks as the “Picard maneuver.” As it turns out, it’s also not that far from what you can find in some physics textbooks.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.