Mission of Gravity.

Geordi:  "Suddenly it's like the laws of physics went right out the window."
Q:  "And why shouldn't they?  They're so inconvenient!"

True Q - Star Trek: the Next Generation

This all started when Christi, one of my co-workers with monstrous geek cred (she’s a card-carrying member of the SCA* and we’ve already seen her desktop Cthulhu idol) marched into my office and pointed an accusatory finger at me.

“The new Star Trek movie?”

"Yes..."

"Where the damaged Enterprise is falling from orbit around Earth?"

"Yes..."

"And they're running on the walls? And everyone is getting thrown around?"

"Yes..."

"WHY. Don’t they have their own gravity???"

First, I’m sorry – not actually my fault, but based on how the conversation was framed, I felt a certain sense of responsibility.

Second - gravity on Star Trek.

Gravity - or lack of it - is one of the great unarticulated elements of television and motion picture science fiction. Issues of fictional technology aside, artificial gravity is a huge convenience for anyone producing a science fiction program - zero gravity involves wires and special effects and, well, money, when it comes right down to it, so producers have generally found a variety of work-arounds to avoid portraying the reality of zero gravity spaceship environments.

However, unlike Star Wars for example, Star Trek has always done its best to document the fictional technology which supports the action, and made at least an effort to pay lip service to the realities of physics.  So, going to the bookshelf and pulling out my copies of The Physics of Star Trek and The Star Fleet Next Generation Technical Manual, let's take a look at what they have to say about gravity.

But first, a little background. Gravity is still the most mysterious of the four weak forces of physics. It's an attribute of mass, and as a result everything possesses a greater or lesser degree of gravitational attraction, but as far as discovery of the graviton, which I think of as the medium of propagation for gravity but which is better described as the "messenger particle", there's been no experimental verification to date.

 

Sadly, Lawrence M. Krauss' otherwise wonderful book on the reality of physics as compared to its treatment on Star Trek doesn't look at the question of artificial gravity on the Enterprise, except insofar as it relates to issues of acceleration. Fortunately, the Next Generation Technical Manual, an astonishing compilation of bafflegab about the technology of Starfleet**, is more informative, dedicating a page to Gravity Generation.

The Enterprise D has 1000 gravity generators scattered around the ship, utilizing the same technology as the tractor beam. The text indicates that this state-of-the-art equipment can generate a graviton field with a short lifetime and range - ergo the need to continually generate the field, and the requirement for a multitude of generators.

Now, admittedly we're looking at the technology of the original Enterprise in the scenario from the movie, but as with replicators, warp drive, transporters and phasers, it's probably safe to say that the underlying scientific framework is consistent across the time span.

Okay, fine - obviously they wanted to play games with the idea of the ship flipping over and red-shirted crewmembers falling to their deaths down corridors turned into shafts.  You could make a case for the gravity generators being off-line, but I'm pretty sure that if that were the case, you'd be getting tossed all over the place rather than just being able to decide whether you were going to run on the walls, the floor or the ceiling.  So, obviously another case of bad fiction winning out over good science.

Again, on behalf of the science fiction community: Christi, my apologies.

I find it interesting that the question of nullifying gravity rather than generating it isn't discussed in the Technical Manual, suggesting that there are still limits to the technology of the 24th century - which may well be a good thing. Gravity is literally holding the universe together in a complex attenuated web of attraction. Anyone with the ability to shut that off with the flick of a switch would have a potential for destruction beyond imagination at their fingertips.

You know, that's not a bad idea for a Star Trek movie...

- Sid

* Society for Creative Anachronism - not to be confused with cosplay or LARPing.

**  No, seriously, just astonishing nonsense:

At Warp Factors 8-9.9, the injector firing frequencies rise to 50Hz, but there is a tailoff of the injector cycle time, owing to limitations of residual charges in the magnetic valves, potential conflict with the energy frequencies from the M/ARC, and input/feedback control reliability.  The longest safe cycle time for high warp is generally accepted to be 53 ns.

Multiply that by 185 pages.  With diagrams.  Sadly, I have to admit that I know that they're talking about the Matter/Antimatter Reaction Chamber.  Or possibly Cycle.