Tvindy

Great Mysteries #4

Unresolved Plot Points on "Star Trek :The Next Generation"

I was a huge fan of Star Trek TNG when it first came out. Like many people today, I've seen every episode several times. As far as I can tell, there are a few points that the writers took up and then seem to have dropped before they were fully resolved.

The first and most minor one is Picard's history with Boothby, Starfleet's trusty gardener. We know that when he was at the Academy, little Jean-Luc got into trouble. He played some sort of prank on (or that affected) Boothby, and boy, did he get into trouble. What he did was so terrible that the Academy officials were ready to expel him. If Boothby hadn't stepped in at the last minute on his behalf, Picard would today be cleaning toilets on Bolarus IX. After that the two struck up a lifetime friendship. But what did Picard do? Was it so horrible they couldn't say it on television?

Everything else has to do with Guinan. First of all, what exactly is her relationship to Picard. More than once she has referred to the great bond they share. I may not have this quite right, but once she said something to the effect that the bond was stronger than that of lovers or of family. Later she told Wesley that she only met Picard when she came aboard the Enterprise (in the second season). When Picard travels back in time to 1893, he meets a younger version of her who does not know who he is. So what is this bond, and how did it originate?

Also, during the first encounter between Guinan and Q in the series, Q knows her, tells Picard that she is not what she seems to be, and offers to eliminate her. Guinan also clearly recognizes Q, and she takes up what is clearly an offensive (not defensive) stance against him. So apparently she has some hidden power sufficient for Q to consider her a threat. Other than the fact that she can perceive disturbances in the timeline, what are her powers, and how did they arise? Presumably such abilities are not inherent to her race, since her people were gobbled up by the Borg. Guinan was an intriguing and mysterious character that the writers simply abandoned.

I'm fairly certain none of these questions was answered in the series. What I'm wondering is if they were ever tackled in a canonical Star Trek novel or comic. Or at the very least did a writer for the series ever shed light on any of them in an interview?

Great Mysteries #3

A Couple of Physics Questions

I've got a couple of physics questions that have been bothering me for the past several years. The first concerns acceleration and the speed of light. While I understand that we can't currently build interstellar or intergalactic spaceships that can approach anywhere near the speed of light due to our being unable to produce sufficient energy over a sustained period of time, one thing I'm not clear on is whether manned spaceflight at near light speed would be impractical due to the effects of acceleration. In other words, assuming we did have a spaceship equipped with a powerful enough engine, if we stuck a crew of astronauts inside, set a course, and accelerated the ship continuously at 1 G, how long would it take for it to approach 90% of the speed of light? I've never taken physics, so I can't work it out on my own. As far as I know, it could take a week or it could take a thousand years. In the latter case, I think we can just give up on manned missions to other stars. Also, I should say that when I talk about time, I mean the time for the astronauts in the ship and not for outside observers still on Earth.

My second question concerns the fourth dimension. What I want to know is simply this: Is it or is it not time? I've heard convincing arguments for both sides. Some people say that it's not literally time. We only think of time as the fourth dimension because of the convention of using it as a fourth parameter to plot the location of a point in space. First you work out its spatial x, y, z coordinates and then use a fourth variable for time if it's not stationary. But I've also heard that just as a sphere is a two-dimensional plane curved in upon itself in the third dimension, so too is our three-dimensional universe curved into a sort of four-dimensional sphere. And spacetime does affect time, especially around black holes. So it would seem that the fourth dimension may actually be time. If this is the case, then I have additional questions:

• Why four? Shouldn't time be the first dimension or the last dimension?
• Would beings in a two-dimensional universe (flatlanders) not be able to experience time, since they are two dimensions away from it?
• Is the fourth dimension the only non-spatial one, or are there a few higher dimensions that also specify some non-spatial attribute? Is there a dimension for chocolate?

Great Mysteries #2

What's up with helium balloons?

Helium balloons have puzzled me since I was a small child. I actually have several unanswered questions about them. First, I've never understood the concept of helium becoming "tired" and causing three-day-old balloons to start coming down off the ceiling. This is patently absurd. Helium molecules are lighter than the oxygen and nitrogen molecules. What would cause them to acquire extra mass? Yet balloons do seem to lose their rising power over time, even when tied with a firm knot and without diminishing in size. Even if the plastic had microscopic pores allowing the gas to gradually drain, this would still make the balloon observably smaller. When I was in second grade, my class released balloons with messages attached to see if anyone would find them and write back. We were to release them on a Friday, but due to rain, we had to postpone until the following Monday. My teacher expressed concern that the helium, still compressed in tanks, would lose freshness over the weekend and our balloons might fail to rise when they were filled on Monday. So apparently helium becomes tired even when stored under pressure. (Or maybe my teacher was an idiot.)

I'm also curious and have never encountered an answer as to what typically happens to a balloon after it is released. How high does it reach at its highest point? What causes it to descend? (Tired helium?) At first thought, I would expect the balloon to burst at some point as the outside pressure diminished. After all, if you thoroughly inflate a balloon at the bottom of a swimming pool and release it, it will pop before reaching the surface. But my impression is that balloons released outside eventually make their way back down to earth. Perhaps the plastic of the balloon exerts enough tension to keep the helium compressed even as the air outside becomes less dense until it reaches an altitude where it achieves neutral buoyancy and then just floats around until its helium gets tired. If it weren't for weary helium, the balloon should theoretically stay up there indefinitely (or even just stuck to the ceiling). What about hydrogen? Does it get tired too?

And for a related question, how come balloons attached to the wall with static electricity invariably come unstuck after a few minutes? Surely the electrons don't become tired and lose their negative charge. A more plausible explanation would be that the negative charge is gradually dissipated into the surrounding air. So would they stay up if they were in a vacuum? (Obviously the balloons would have to contain far less air.)

Also related, on Farscape Rigel farts helium whenever he becomes nervous. How is this possible? (Obviously it is, because he does it.) Helium is an element and a noble gas. The atoms don't bind to anything, so they can't be extracted through digestion from food molecules (since they never occur in molecules). Rigel's food and drink may be laced with large quantities of helium. This is not entirely implausible. After all, here on Earth we carbonate soft drinks with carbon dioxide; they may do something similar with helium elsewhere. But Rigel eats the same food as his companions, and you never see them farting helium. The only other possibility is that his digestive system can somehow transmute one element into another. But that would be as implausible as the ability to poop gold bricks.

Great Mysteries #1

For a long time I've been planning on writing an entry listing the top ten theoretically answerable questions of my life. The problem is I can never seem to remember all ten at one sitting, so I'll just have to do one per day. Today's question:

What's up with the www?

Yes, I know that it stands for world wide web, but what is it's function in web addresses? Going to www.tvindy.com will take me to the same place as tvindy.com. But tvindy.typepad.com is not the same as www.tvindy.typepad.com, at least not until recently. (In the past, adding the www created a dead link, but now I see that is no longer the case.) A much better example is stylewizard.com vs. www.stylewizard.com. Both addresses are valid but lead to completely unrelated sites, causing great confusion among college students who are trying to access the bibliographic aid but leave out the www. What gives? How can the same domain (stylewizard.com) be simultaneously owned by two separate entities? Just what is the function of www, and what does it do? I personally own a few domains. Does this mean that someone can just swoop in and buy up variants that are identical in every way except for the presence of the www?

Will Got It!

Will once again is a winner! He correctly identified DVD 11 as being the Superfriends. I'm still baffled as to why this one was so hard. I would have thought the image of the army of Bizarros would have tipped someone off. Also, that alligator appears in nearly every episode and should have been familiar. It will be awhile before I post another addition to Name That DVD, because I have to watch all the Superfriends DVDs before I move on to something else. Below are the three giveaway screenshots I was going to use as a last resort if things proved hopeless.

Happy Easter!

DVD 11:

Wouldn't it be funny if no one ever gets this, and I spend the rest of my life posting screenshots from the same DVD?

DVD 11:

Another Clue

DVD 11:

4 Days in a Row

DVD 10:

DVD 11:

Even More Clues

DVD 10:

DVD 11: