barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) (10/27/84)
In article <183@ttidcb.UUCP> cushner@ttidcb.UUCP (Jeffrey Cushner) writes: > How do stardates work? The explanation that I have always heard from Roddenberry has been that stardates take your location in the galaxy into account, and there are also supposed to be corrections for relativistic effects. Why are people asking questions that have been answered in "The Making of Star Trek." Can you really call yourselves Trek fans if you haven't read this? All the other ST information books ("The World of ST", "The Star Fleet Technical Manual", etc.) are useful, too, but "The Making" is the bible. -- Barry Margolin ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar
acsgjjp@sunybcs.UUCP (Jim Poltrone) (10/30/84)
[Captain's log, stardate 6935.2. We are in orbit around the planet Schwartz.] > > How do stardates work? > The explanation that I have always heard from Roddenberry has been that > stardates take your location in the galaxy into account, and there are > also supposed to be corrections for relativistic effects. (This time I have received Barry's reply before I add my two cents.) The reason that stardates are confusing is because there is no fixed reference (with respect to anything else besides the starship). I had always thought that the stardate was a count of how many "time units" have elapsed on the ship. Confusing? Let me put it another way. I'll use the example of earth days as the basis for star dates; the .1 represents 2.4 earth hours. The Starship (damn! what else can I use besides Enterprise? ... Aha!) Asimov leaves UFP Starbase at stardate 1000.0. (earthdate: Nov. 1, 1984, 00:00 GMT). Now, if Asimov goes to Andromeda at Warp 7 (343 * 8.0 E+8 m s -1) ... aw, heck, how far is Andromeda anyway? Let me say 500 light years (I know it's wrong, and Debbie Byrd of net.astro fame is not here to help me with this) ... it should get there around 1.46 years from now (earthdate: around Apr. 15, 1986). Now, if the crew thinks that the journey took 200 earth days, the stardate upon reaching Andromeda would be 1200.0. From there, they make the Kessel run to Cygnus X-1 (3.14 parsecs, whetever that is :-)), which is, oh, say, 1200 light-years. They proceed at warp 8 (512 * c), getting there in what seems to be 180 days. (Stardate now is 1380.0). Back on Earth, the date is 2.35 years from the time they left Andromeda (somewhere in August, 1988). Now, the crew of the Asimov heads home; a distance of 1300 light years. (Oh wow, a Pythagorean triple!) Proceeding at warp 6 (216 * c) because the engines "canna take any more", the crew spends 400 days (to them) going home. Stardate is now 1780.0. Estimated earth-date of arrival to Starbase is somewhere in the neighborhood of September 1, 1994. The net result is that the crew thought their mission took a little over two years, but it really lasted for about ten years. My figures might be off a bit, but this is the best way of explaining what I understand the method of calculating the stardate is. The conventions I used were: Warp factor n = (n**3 * c) Speed of light c = 8.0 x 10 E +8 m/sec Light year = distance light travels in a year = c * 86400 sec/day * 365.25 days/yr. = ? Now, according to Einsteinean physics and the Lorentz transformation, as one approaches the speed of light (asymptotically), mass becomes greater, length (in the direction of motion) decreases, and time slows down. At the speed of light (which requires infinite energy to travel at), mass is infinite, length is infinitesimal, and time stops. At FTL (faster-than-light) speeds, time goes backward, and I don't know what else happens. So why can the Enterprise (or any other Federation ship) travel at such impossible speeds? The answer is that Star Trek is Science Fiction, and Science Fiction does not have to obey the laws of Physics. On an related note: if the Enterprise was capable of time travel, I wonder if they would be able to use the same system. Comments are welcome. -- From under the smogberry trees.... Jim Poltrone (a/k/a Poltr1, the Last of the Raster Blasters) uucp: [decvax,watmath,rocksvax]!sunybcs!acsgjjp ARPAnet, CSnet: acsgjjp%buffalo@CSNET-RELAY "But someday soon we'll stop to ponder What on earth's this spell we're under We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are..."
herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong, Computing Services) (10/30/84)
For those that are interested, Andromeda, or M31, is about 2 million light
years away. Some people have postulated that the warp factor is the
effective speed if the Enterprise had been travelling in real space.
It actually moves slower than the speed of light at all times in some
other ``dimension''. As for stardates, Gene Rodenberry's explanation
was that stardates were deliberately vague so as not to tie the series to
a particular time using our year counting system. In the Startrek universe,
this is not the case. A reasonable system for interpreting stardates
would have account for the way stardates are used. One way of getting
around the problem is to assume that the order of release of the shows
was not the order of the events in the Startrek universe and only the
order that they were released to the public. I seem to remember that for
each show, stardates were always increasing through the one show. This
implies a chronological order the corresponds to increasing stardate.
There are a few shows that don't have this, but only two or three.
Stardates can't only be dependent upon position of the Enterprise and
time (relative to some standard, say Earth) because an unambiguous stardate
could be worked out by knowing the positions of some
reference stars and their motions. There should never be a ``stardate unknown''
entry in any log unless position and time are not the only factors upon which
stardates depend.
Herb...
I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....
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