One major fact that Cecil left out of his explaination reguarding the stardates is that when ships in Star Trek lore are traveling at faster than light, they are not traveling in normal space, but rather subspace. This is all explained in the book “Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual” In fact, an explaination of relativistic time dialation is on page 78, but that only has to do with sublight speed.
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In “Star Trek,” what exactly are “star dates”? (18-Oct-1991)
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So GilmourD how does subspace travel affect star dates?
It doesn’t. There has never been any reference whatsoever to relativistic effects in the entire history of Star Trek except for this bit of bafflegab anent stardates, which is, of course, entirely external to the shows themselves.
The real reason for stardates was that Star Trek was intended to be utterly without any anchor in history, so as to avoid all possible political controversy.
“bafflegab anent” stardates? Is that what they’re called in the book to which GilmourD was alluding?
No, “bafflegab” is what people who didn’t sleep through high school call 99% of the soi-dissant “science” on Star Trek. (When they’re not calling it “technobabble”, or, worse, “Treknobabble”.)
It’s sad, really. The original series was pretty damn good, at least for US series TV. Since then it’s slowly degenerated, until it is now nothing better than methadone for trekkies.
But that has nothing to do with my immediate point, which is that the relativity-based “explanation” of “stardates” is purest hand-waving nonsense, considering the fact that Star Trek blatantly takes place in an imaginary universe where relativity doesn’t exist.
Well, relativity does slightly exist, at least. If nothing else, they’ve always acknowledged that in normal space, c is an absolute speed limit, and they hence need to use some unexplained, presumably GR, method to circumvent normal space. They also recognize that going really fast implies time travel, but just got slightly confused on what “really fast” means here (what the heck is the significance of Warp 13???).
At least in the Original Series they occasionally made an effort, though. In NextGen and following, the laws of physics seem to be based primarily on English grammar.
Apologist. The original series couldn’t even handle Newtonian physics. How many episodes hinged on the fact that the Enterprise’s orbit would decay in a matter of minutes if no one was at the helm to steer her around the planet? Eleven million mile wide amoebas? Dilithium?
My all time favorite, though, from the recent shows, is the chroniton, or time particle. I gave up being annoyed when they introduced that gem, and redefined Star Trek in my own mind as a fantasy show.
Yeah, I heard them talking about “chronitons” on ST:Voyager, & while I could figure out what they meant, I thought, “Haven’t those been called tachyons before?”
Oh, wait, you don’t think time has particles? Well, gee, what a shock! It’s a plot device!
“Chronotons”, incidently.
I gave up on ST long before that, though… 'specially when they started inventing all sorts of weird names to label different types of fantastical radiation.
Anyway…
I don’t see how this has to do with Stardates, incidently. It’s pretty much canon to the ST universe that relativistic effects still occur from traveling in warp. The proof for this is the much-vaunted Picard Maneuver, which, through the usage of a short jump in warp space, leaves the target ship with two targets on the scanners (the light particles from where the ship USED to be are still traveling towards the target ship).
The flaws in this maneuver, however, are multiple, despite Worf (or somebody) claiming that there’s no defense against the Picard Maneuver… simply shoot at the second ship.
But the “Picard Maneuver” only requires that the speed of light be finite; it works just fine in a Newtonian universe.
I didn’t say that it didn’t “work” (i.e.- it results in two images of the ship being visible), I’m just saying that it should be easy as pie to counter.
Additionally, it indicates that traveling through subspace doesn’t counteract any sort of time dilation that would normally occur when travelling at very high speeds… if it did have some sort of funky effect on time, the Picard maneuver wouldn’t be possible (they’d experience a time dilation that would keep the ship in warp longer than they actually WERE in warp).
::sigh::
Re-reading that last paragraph, it’s confusing, but I can’t think of any better way to put it. Basically, the point is that stardates aren’t affected by travelling in subspace.
Time dilation wouldn’t prevent the effectiveness of the Picard Maneuver, but it’s pretty useless anyway: The double image would only persist for a maximum time equal to the distance you jumped.
And yes, I realize that the original series had plenty of physics blunders. My point was that they occasionally made an effort, not that those occasions were very often, or that the efforts were successful.
No, no, reverse that: I’m saying that the (supposed) effectiveness of the Picard Maneuver indicates that warp travel wouldn’t have an odd effect on stardates (which is what started this line of debate, anyway). Basically, time still flows as it normally would.
Well, the idea was that you’d only need a couple of seconds to confuse the enemy in order to open fire on them. Which makes one think… “Why don’t they just spend that extra time firing on the enemy in the first place?” Ods bodkins, Star Trek space battle tactics aren’t worth beans…
Yeah, don’t get me started on Star Trek space battles. How much tactics can there be in: “Raise Shields! Fire Photon Torpedoes! Ooops, we’re hit! Fire Phasers! Shields buckling! Look, they blew up!”
Starfleet academy battle manuals must be pretty short. Stand there and blast away with shields on full. It seems to me that the ship with the most power for shields and phasers should always win, no tactics involved.
Lemur, see this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=74576
Scientifically accurate or not, Star Trek and its spinoffs did fulfil the main raison d’tre of any TV show before or since: to deliver viewers to the sponsors. I’m sure the show’s creators were less concerned with good science and more concerned with whether Gillette or Minute Maid would keep buying commercial time. Besides, friends, there’s a reason it’s called science fiction.
Well, not entirely true… in TNG, they tried to make the show seem more “scientific”. Note: This doesn’t mean that they applied ACCURATE science… just scientific-sounding words (that’s why the word “quantum” is repeated twelve times in every episode).
Yer shittin’ me! Really? 
Well, TNG might have seemed more scientific, to a layman, but to anyone who’s taken any science courses at above, say, a fourth-grade level, the Original Series (henceforth referred to as “the real Star Trek”) was much better.
Polysyllabic does not equal scientific.