# How would Star-Trek style sensors work, exactly? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 21, 2006, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303 "2006-10-21T00:16:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/1 "2006-10-21T00:16:01Z")
I’m currently watching a show on the History channel devoted to explaining the connection between ST tech and real-life (and extrapolated future) tech. I always wondered how a starship’s sensors worked precisely. Are they passive and broadband (wide sweep IOW), and/or active and narrowband? In other words, do the sensors scan wide sweeps of the sky looking for whatever, or do/can they zoom in on suspected targets (with like a very high-powered telescope-like device which can scan all wavelengths)? What would be the limit on sensitivity? Since electromagnetic pulses travel at the speed of light, even if the ships can warp around at translight speeds, long range information might tend to be rather useless (“Yes captain there was a Klingon ship there 5 hours ago but obviously it has moved on.”). Perhaps you could devise little sensor pods which can detect and then trans- mit, via subspace radio, the locations of enemy vessels. Otherwise unless something is VERY close you simply aren’t going to get much relevant information at ranges beyond a few dozen light seconds: a Klingon ship might hit you hard before you even knew it was there. Guess that’s two considerations then: how the sensors work and how they deal with the vastness of space (as compared to naval battles which comparatively are VERY intimate). ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/2 "2006-10-21T00:23:35Z")
[QUOTE=John DiFool] I’m currently watching a show on the History channel devoted to explaining the connection between ST tech and real-life (and extrapolated future) tech. [/QUOTE] I love it. Watching the **History Channel** to learn about something that never existed. Amazing. No, nothing against you, **John**. And nothing against your question. But since such things don’t exist, I don’t see any factual answers being possible. Moving this to The Sci-Fi Chan…er, uh, IMHO. **samclem** GQ moderator ---
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/3 "2006-10-21T00:45:30Z")
[QUOTE=samclem] I love it. Watching the **History Channel** to learn about something that never existed. Amazing. No, nothing against you, **John**. And nothing against your question. But since such things don’t exist, I don’t see any factual answers being possible. Moving this to The Sci-Fi Chan…er, uh, IMHO. **samclem** GQ moderator [/QUOTE] Sam, in the shows defense, it really seems to be more in the History vein… they find a current or near future tech, and find out how Star Trek influenced the guys that made it. Since most of them are hard core geeks, they had something to say. Funny show, and it’s good to see Shatner taking himself about as seriously as I take the threat of nuclear strike from Tibet. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/4 "2006-10-21T16:57:38Z")
[QUOTE=John DiFool] Since electromagnetic pulses travel at the speed of light, even if the ships can warp around at translight speeds, long range information might tend to be rather useless (“Yes captain there was a Klingon ship there 5 hours ago but obviously it has moved on.”). Perhaps you could devise little sensor pods which can detect and then transmit, via subspace radio, the locations of enemy vessels. Otherwise unless something is VERY close you simply aren’t going to get much relevant information at ranges beyond a few dozen light seconds: a Klingon ship might hit you hard before you even knew it was there. [/QUOTE] Ah, the OP should read up on the [Picard Maneuver](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maxia) 😉 ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/5 "2006-10-21T18:03:10Z")
The “Picard Manuever” is what the cast called it when they pulled the uniform down near the waist. (I was bored and rewatching an episode the other day… during the scene where the Enterprise first sees Locutus, they’re supposed to be dramatically shocked - and Riker stands up… and tugs on his uniform. It stuck out for some reason) ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/6 "2006-10-21T18:56:01Z")
That’ll be the two piece uniforms they had, during either the second or third they changed from the original lycra uniforms. Patrick Stewart recounted how the old uniform pulled down on him so hard his doctor advised him to quit the show or else have a bent spine. Pulling down the uniform usually meant they were coming too after some shocking news or they wanted to stand up and say something dramatic and sweeping to an alien on the view screen. Although when Spock did it in TWOK it was a touch moving, face scorched by radiation he still wanted to look presentable to his captain 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Harmonix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Harmonix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonix)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/7 "2006-10-22T04:56:53Z")
I imagine that the only way sensors would work is if physical objects in regular space had some sort of effect in subspace and thereby have a signal that could be detected faster then the speed of light. I imagine then it’d be like radar, but for subspace. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/8 "2006-10-22T06:37:27Z")
At least on the Enterprise D it’s contemporaries, there seem to be a variety of scanning methods used. They seem to have some sort of passive scanning used for navigation based on the relative positions of stars (as seen in Stellar Cartography, one of the cooler parts of the Enterprise D), and in First Contact, we see the Enterprise E use the same system to determine the year, presumably comparing the position of stars around Earth to what they would have been in the late 24th century, and calculating the amount of drift. There also seems to be an active sweeping scanner, alerting them to things like approaching ships and such, though this could also be a passive system detecting energy emissions (warp drives, impulse engines, etc.) On occasion, the ship also initiates a scan of a specific thing, this is presumably a much more focused, presumably more intense scan, often capable of detecting things inside of their targets, so not your typical radar. And then there are the scans for specific purposes. Starfleet, banned by interstellar treaty from developing or using cloaking technology, seems to have become rather capable at countering it instead. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, they essentially rig up a heat seeking torpedo, fitted with sensors specifically designed for scanning for gaseous anomalies in space, and homing in on the plasma exhaust of a cloaked Klingon ship’s impulse engines. Earlier in the same movie, they were able to detect the general proximity of a cloaked ship by picking up neutrino emissions (though this didn’t relaly help them figure out WHERE the cloaked ship was). By the TNG era, Starfleet used networks of Tachyon beams strung out between ships to act as tripwires for detecting cloaked ships (this would presumably only work for specific occasions when you could muster a fleet of ships just to fish for Romulans, or if the need was serious and long-term enough to establish a network of monitoring platforms (apparently not economically or politically feasable along the Romulan neutral zone, and unnecessary along the Klingon border). During the Dominion War, Jem’Ha’Dar warships use similar technology to track cloaked Klingon warships. So, that’s what I can think of off the top of my head. _adusts glasses and straightens bow tie_ ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/9 "2006-10-22T20:42:37Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] The “Picard Manuever” is what the cast called it when they pulled the uniform down near the waist. [/QUOTE] I think that was a ship manuever that caused the bad guys to see the good guys traveling FTL for a short period of time…I should hope so…and hence see more than one image. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/10 "2006-10-22T20:51:08Z")
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant] I think that was a ship manuever [/QUOTE] This is [embarassing.](http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/library/ships/article/70494.html) ---
**Author:** ![spingears](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@spingears](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spingears)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/11 "2006-10-22T23:30:16Z")
[QUOTE=John DiFool] Guess that’s two considerations then: how the sensors work and how they deal with the vastness of space (as compared to naval battles which comparatively are VERY intimate). [/QUOTE] Ask “Scotty” the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/12 "2006-10-23T00:10:25Z")
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant] I think that was a ship manuever that caused the bad guys to see the good guys traveling FTL for a short period of time…I should hope so…and hence see more than one image. [/QUOTE] Yeah, the uniform thing is just an in joke by the cast. Mr. Worf [dramatic tug] Fire. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/13 "2006-10-23T01:20:09Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] The “Picard Manuever” is what the cast called it when they pulled the uniform down near the waist. [/QUOTE] See, for the longest time, I always thought the Picard Manuever was a highly successful (and highly studied by Starfleet officers) means of picking up the ladies. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-star-trek-style-sensors-work-exactly/377303/14 "2006-10-23T01:40:14Z")
[QUOTE=Raguleader] I always thought the Picard Manuever was a highly successful means of picking up the ladies. 😃 [/QUOTE] You are thinking of the _Kirk_ manuever. Turn to face the woman on the next bar stool and say, slowly in case she is somewhat the worse for wear, “I’m not really this tall. I’m sitting on my wallet.”