futurama, delivery impossible...

[on:]

Sorry folks, but this is the hard fact of reality, you can't travel to other galaxies in a weekly of yearly basis for that matter. they are just too damn far away.

in the show, this is where they got it really wrong, 99% the speed of light is just too damn slow. it takes eight minutes for light to get to earth, and weeks for it to get here from the nearest star (alpha-centary). when you see those pictures of galaxies and stuff out there you are looking back in time, because it takes time for those images to get here. what you see is what that place looked like when the earth was a massive molten blob in space. yes that is right billions of years ago.

also, according to scientific laws speeds above that of light by just moving through space not only take a hell of alot of energy and fuel, but you cannot excede that speed.

for this in a scifi show mind you that is meant to be based loosly on given scientific principals, you have to somehow defy that law either with warping space, going into the fifth dimensional tesseract (Hyperspace), or somehow converting matter into neutrinos and rematierializing them somewhere else (stargate/subspace).

That is what is all comes down to, so sorry folks, for people as smart as the futrurama producers, that is where they get is way wrong, as far as science today knows it. and, no, just because we don't know that you can't go faster than light does not mean that you still have a chance. as stated in the show, the ship can go up to 99% the speed of light, crap speed in astrological terms.....

too bad, oh well, remember, it is just a cartoon show.....


GHT

[Reply #1 on:]

It's explained that the speed of light was (somehow) increased to quadrillions of times its current speed.  Therefore it's possible to travel across the universe in a short time without going faster than light.  Of course it still must be difficult, though physically possible, to get a ship to move so fast, but it is the future.  It's a joke explanation, but it works in the context of the show.

(The increase of light speed can also explain why, in "Time Keeps on Slippin'," Fry couldn't just move the ship a few light minutes away from the black hole and show Leela his message.  But the writers probably didn't think about that.)

And it actually takes light four years to get here from Alpha Centauri.

   

when you see those pictures of galaxies and stuff out there you are looking back in time, because it takes time for those images to get here.

That's true, and it relates to a scientific error on the show.  In "Love and Rocket," the ship tries to fly itself into a quasar.  But all quasars are billions of light years away, meaning they existed billions of years ago.  There are none that still exist.  But I suppose that in the future they might have found some.

[Reply #2 on:]

And the engines don't move the ship, they move the universe around the ship.

[Reply #3 on:]

And repeat to yourself, "It's just a show, I should really just relax."

[Reply #4 on:]

Shh, that just makes the geeks even more cranky, Kryten.

[Reply #5 on:]

Ooh burn!
Got you buddy!

[Reply #6 on:]

wouldnt a faster speed of light do something to relativity?
make the time dilation even more huge?
so they go away for an hour and come back and the earth is gone?

dont know what I am talking about?
google "Special Relativity theory"

[Reply #7 on:]

I posted about that on a thread you were just on Grim.  I don't know how to link things, so you link it. :P

[Reply #8 on:]

how can engines move the universe around it, that would mean that only one ship can fly at the same time  because you can't all be moving the universe at the same time

[Reply #9 on:]

Its in the future and technology has advanced a lot. Think about how mankind Advanced in the 20th century, let alone 1000 years

[Reply #10 on:]

i am not asking how they did it, meerly stating that they should have made something better up, so that geeks who don't already know some astrophisics will end up searching all over the net for info on "trans warp fourth dimensoinal neutrino implosions tesseract engines" and die trying to figure out what the hell all that actually means.

relax folks, it's just a cartoon show, not a show like stargate-sg1 where they try to get astrophysics as right as we know how with out feeble puny human minds....I WILL CRUSH YOU!!!!

[Reply #11 on:]

In the immortal words of Matt Groening, "It's a cartoon."

[Reply #12 on:]

Am I the only one loving all of the "flaws" of their system?

[Reply #13 on:]

 

Originally posted by slimmyCGEF:
how can engines move the universe around it, that would mean that only one ship can fly at the same time    because you can't all be moving the universe at the same time

Only the Planet Express ship is like that.  I guess others just move normally.

[Reply #14 on:]

It only moves the specific universe the ship is in. Its location in its universe is transferred to the location in all universes.

So there.

[Reply #15 on:]

 

Originally posted by getak2003:
i am not asking how they did it, meerly stating that they should have made something better up, so that geeks who don't already know some astrophisics will end up searching all over the net for info on "trans warp fourth dimensoinal neutrino implosions tesseract engines" and die trying to figure out what the hell all that actually means.

relax folks, it's just a cartoon show, not a show like stargate-sg1 where they try to get astrophysics as right as we know how with out feeble puny human minds....I WILL CRUSH YOU!!!!

Then explain how the "realistic" star-trek works? You take things too seriously, the way the combatted the speed of light problem was ingenious, new and funny!

[Reply #16 on:]

Uhh, getak2003... your argument has been defeated.  you complained that they couldn't go faster than the speed of light (163000miles/sec?) and the very next post told you that the speed of light had been increased. 
You lose.  Thanks for playing.
And while I'm at it, i'll explain the ships moving the universe.  There are 3 ways this could make sense
1.) The professor said he invented the engines, so he could have the only ship that moves space around the ship
2.) Each ship that moves space, just does it, moving the whole universe, including all the other ships that are also moving the universe.  I don't like this explanation
3.) Hubert just got a huge bang on the head that should have killed him so when he immediately wakes up and says that the ship moves the universe, he could be nuts.

[Reply #17 on:]

Increasing the speed of light would not have any effect on time dilation--at 99% of the new speed of light, you'd get the same dilation you do at 99% of the current speed of light.

But it would screw up all kinds of other things. Basically, the universe as we know it wouldn't exist in the same form if the speed of light were quadrillions of times higher.

Besides that, changing one of the fundamental constants of the universe is "impossible"--meaning that anyone who could do such a thing could presumably also do all kinds of other things that would be impossible in our most speculative current physics. Attempting to guess the limits on a civilization that could do such a thing is ridiculous.

As for moving space around the ship, there's no difference between doing that and moving the ship around the universe. You don't even need Einstein for that; Newton knew it hundreds of years earlier. The obvious interpretation is JDHannon's 2.), but since it doesn't cause any new problems or solve any existing problems, who cares?

Meanwhile, if you've discovered "chronotons" that control the flow of time, any speed limit issues become irrelevant. And the existence (and easy measurement of) "graviolis" implies (at least) that there's another layer of symmetry and that they're comfortable working at the relevant energy levels, so presumably they can play with gravity--and therefore, given Mach's principle, inertial mass--and go as close to light speed as they want with no relativistic effects.

In other words, their science ought to be incomprehensible to us--in other words, indistinguishable from magic. (But isn't that already true of even our present science for nearly everyone?)

By the way, the character Cubert was created specifically to make fun of people like getak2003--but only because they knew that doing so would only encourage such people to think about the show even more....

As for Star Trek, it's been explained quite clearly. Unfortunately, it's been explained in three contradictory ways: 1. The warp drive warps space around the ship, so they can travel at sublight (in fact, subrelativistic) speeds but effectively go faster than light. 2. The warp drive moves the ship into "subspace" or "otherspace," which has a higher speed of light. 3. The warp drive creates a bubble  of "fast time" around the ship. And "warp n" means 2^n-1 times c, and/or it means n^3 times c, neither of which ever gives you the right travel times. And why would slingshotting around a star send you back in time, given any of those possibilities (or even speed you up at all, given any but the first)?

Is this better than Futurama's explanation?

P.S., to Action Jacktion: We have no way of knowing whether any quasars still exist or not.

[Reply #18 on:]

Well, the current theory is that there aren't any more quasars, though Science does tend to change its mind a lot, so who knows.  And anyway, as I said, they may have found some more in the future, when they can actually fly around the universe looking for them.

[Reply #19 on:]

THAT WAS AN INSULT!

Also, what would a person from the year 1000 AD think of us? just put that ihto perspective, also, i never meant this thread to be about how in the hell it can happen in real life, but how they could have come up with sometthing a little better that what they said. to which you explained to me, so this thread is irrelevent, Good bye!

PLEASE CLOSE

[Reply #20 on:]

Wow, some people are so touchy.... Saying that Cubert was designed to make fun of people like you was not an insult.

Guess what: The AL2 "codebreakers chat room" was designed to make fun of people like me. So what?

Yes, David X. Cohen is calling you a dork. But only because he's probably far dorkier than you (I'm sure he's had plenty of discussions about the physics of warp travel in Star Trek).

They're having fun with their fans--and they expect that we'll have just as much fun in the process as they do, and spend even more time thinking about the show (as I said)--because they'd love to watch a show that did the same thing to them.

As for what a person from 1000 AD would think of us, plenty of sci-fi comedies and even space operas like Star Trek have tried to show that, but I think it's rather silly.

Why? Because the real 3000 will probably be much more different from 2000 than 2000 was from 1000. A better question would be to ask what a homo erectus would think of us. Or maybe what the first mammals hundreds of millions of years ago would think of us.

Technology and society progress exponentially, and it's been that way since the dawn of the human race. Add to that the fact that "knowledge-assisting" technology like computers (which also increase at an exponential rate) allows us to increase the pace of technological innovation even faster, so we may now be on a doubly-exponential curve.

Changes that used to take centuries now take place in under a generation. Not far from now, they'll be taking place faster than anyone can track.

In Vernor Vinge's terms, we're heading toward a "technological singularity;" the idea is that life in 2050 will be so completely different from life in 2000 that it's not just impossible to predict the future, it'd be impossible to explain the future even if someone came back in a time machine.

This gets dangerously close to the extropian idea of "transcendence" where we all become effectively gods. But even without going that far, the typical SF convention of showing people as basically the same as today, with problems basically the same as we face, solving them with science that's only one breakthrough ahead of what we understand today, is ludicrous.

Which is why the far future (meaning a few centuries out) can make for great comedy, as in Futurama, or cheesy space opera, as in Star Trek, but it can't tell us much about what life (or even science) is going to be like.

P.S., If someone wants to hear my "but what about the Dark Ages?" answer, go ahead and ask.

[Reply #21 on:]

Yeah that is true with all the double exponential growth thing, that is, if we don't turn our backs on science and head to the dark side. by that i mean naure and herbal medicines using good chi and shit like that.

i am all for using herbal medicines and think that tribes and medicine men of these shit hole rain forest places have alot to tell us about how herb mixes work and stuff, but i say take it to the lab and tell me EXACTLY what is the active ingredient and how we can use it to make money. none of this all natural medicine that doesn't do crap and keep people from going to actual phecisians and doctors.

did you know that if we didn't have those damn dark ages full of the inquisitian and death to thinkers that we could have the year 3000 today? shakespear would have been typing up his works on a computer and columbus could have gone to the damn moon. we lost like 1000 years of advance ment and for what? to burn people at the stake for saying the earth is round? like a priest will know anything about science. GOD gave us our abilities, so unless he comes down to tell us not to do something in science that doesn't already break one of his laws, than let's damn well do it. 

Also, as for technology, you are right on the money with you ideas there. just look at 100 years ago compared to today. everything exponential and going double exponential. soon the technology discussed at a board meeting will be obsolete before the boards rulings can ever take effect.

seriously now, we are now getting to the point of classinfying aging as a desease everyone has and not just a part of life. we are beginging to understand things about ourselves that we never knew before, like how aging is caused by the slow decay and fraying of DNA as cells divide, that is what turns your skin wrinkly and you hair white, your DNA is breaking down, slowly but surely. and by my guesimtion we may live to see the year 2150 if they find a way to fix that.

Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

GHT

[Reply #22 on:]

Wow, quite a rant there. It's adverse to my mental health, but I'll step into the fray.

There's a reason things turned out the way they did. There's a reason that men like Copernicus and Galileo got shot down. There's a reason why the religious leaders kept them down, and there's a reason why the general public let the religious leaders do whatever the hell they wanted. The same reasons that apply to that apply equally well to the modern world: have you ever asked why the world is in a constant state of war, why the governments of the world keep their people neurotic by pumping them full of fear, why businessmen cheat, why politicians lie, why the world runs on capitalism - a system where to thrive one must be selfish, greedy, deceptive and merciless, and why in many parts of the world women still have their clitorises forcably removed to reduce their sexual pleasure and keep them from cheating?

We haven't advanced at all from the Dark Ages, or from the dawn of humanity for that matter. Our technology is more advanced and our social structure is more complex, but the things that drive us and the inherent faults of the human race always have and always will be the same.

At the core, there are two things: greed and lust for power. This is what drives our progress. Idealists are the ones who invent and create, but those who have power and money are the ones who let those idealists bring their creations to light; and if they find it more beneficial to themselves not to, then the idealists invariably fail despite all their efforts. The reason religion had an obscene amount of power for so long is because it is an inexhaustable goldmine for nearly limitless control. The priest was always more powerful than the king, and in many cultures, the religious leader had (and still has) direct rule, without any figurehead wearing the crown. Religion started at the dawn of humanity because people immediately realized that it was a way to control and benefit from the fears of the masses. The masses are inherently stupid, guillible, and fearful. "There's a big invisible man out there in the sky who sees and knows everything, and if you don't do what he says, he'll kill you and torture your soul in a pit of fire for all eternity. Now, here's what he wants to to do..." Can you think of a more perfect way to control the masses?

Granted, things are a little different in the modern world, but the inherent evil is still there, only it wears a different face now. Now that the power of religion has been nearly exhausted, money is used to control people. EVERYTHING that happens in the world, happens to the benefit of some mega-giant corporate conglamorate; a few greedy, power-hungry men who sit at the top with an obscene amount of money and control the world. Why do you think we still drive around in cars that burn fossil fuel - fuel that pollutes our air, fuel that we fight wars over? We already have a better source of fuel. Electric energy and solar energy are both at the ready; the idealists who wanted a better way have already thought of one. The trouble is, the capitalist elite still sees a lot of money to be made from fossil fuel, and is afraid of losing power if they let the idealists get their way and let sciense progress. This is the EXACT same thing that happened in the Dark Ages, with people who said that the world is round and that the religious teachings are not necesserily correct and should by no means be taken literally. Back then, they were burned at the stake. Now, they are simply shut out, rendered completely powerless to change anything, and turned into corporate slaves. The effect is basicly the same, except now they've made it more efficient.

What will the future bring? Nothing. There will be no light for humanity.

[Reply #23 on:]

WOW, that is dark man.

you atheist?

Also, communism was made to combat that sort of thing, but you have to know, everything is a part of human nature. humans are inherently greedy and only lust for power and pleasure. it is true, give a man, no matter how noble and he will go insane with power. sadam, stalin, krustiev, hitler, napoleon, EVERYONE. the only hope for that not to happen is to have that man replaced before going insane like that, and force him to constantly worry about the consiquences of his actions in the constant spotlight of his people.

that is what makes democracy what it is. however with democracy comes a free economy. and do you know why a free economy is so great? because it feeds off what ever person on this planet wants, Power, Riches, and a chance to get them. that is what it is all about.

now onto the power thing, hydrogen fuel cell power is already here and has been for the past few years, it is just that the oil giants bought all the patents and will not sell them. my brother lives in the US and works as a patent clerk. he sorts and files all sorts of patents all day long, and he has told me himself that it is incredible what is pattented and ready to be made, but is not because the giant corperations coose not to. hydrogen fuel, super computers, even cold metal working. it is incredible.

you may call this the dark ages, but as long as technology advances, im down. so long as i can get comeputers and technology at a compeditively good price, and am stil free. i say to hell with it, go ahead.

not like we can do anythig anyway.

[Reply #24 on:]

[Bender]Oh no, nerds![/Bender]

[Reply #25 on:]

Nix: And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Getak: Yep, I'm an atheist. Been one practically all my life. I'm also an anarchist, as you may have guessed from my name. I am against rigid sructure of any kind, be it in society, belief system, or way of thought. All rigid scrutcture does is stagnate the flow of progress and corrupt everything it touches. Power is at the core of all evil, and should not ever be allowed to take root. This would explain my rather cynical view of the world, I think.
As for communism trying to "correct" capitalism - well, it just doesn't work that way. Communism was a logical mistake. Working for and giving all you have to a totalitarian government and then relying upon them to distribute resouces fairly and evenly is not only idiotic, it's slavery. If capitalism is ever defeated, it will be through an anarchic system that abolishes both the idea of ownership and the idea of control. How this can be done, I have no idea. Can it be done at all? I'm not holding my breath.
One thing keeps me from shooting myself, though: progress CAN'T be stopped completely. In the end, idealists do get their way; even if it is long past their time. The beautiful thing about patents is that they expire...

[Reply #26 on:]

Just making sure you keep these things in perspective.

[Reply #27 on:]

alright mankind evolves ² or maybe ³ you see it happen to be millions of years for man to invent the wheeel then some thousand to make great piramids and stone constructions, 1000 years after existed the middle ages and so on and on and on.
we evolve faster each time and 1000 years i think is enough to do these sort of things.

also getak you are doing your arguments with thecurrent phisics knowdlege maybe the people discovererd new kinds of stuff troughout the years so there is a posibility of going past the speed of light.
------------------

"Thats going to bleed when my heart beats"
thanks to Daniela Lavarne (the lesbian Leela) for the sig

[Reply #28 on:]

Here's what I think will happen in 1,000 years:

Perhaps the show forgot to mention that phase differential gates were invented, making it possible to travel thru "shortcuts" in the universe. It's based on the theory that our universe phases in and out of existence, blinking on and off every 1/48^6th second. According to the hypothesis, our entire existence disappears every 1/48^6th second, to be momentarily replaced with another dimension, known as Phase Difference Space. Since Phase Difference Space is 1/48^6th the size of our own universe, it is possible to travel 48^6 times as fast within it, assuming that one can both enter and exit the new dimension at the appropriate times. You gotta pay a fee of several thousand woolongs to use the gates.

[Reply #29 on:]

I dont't get it, do I stop to exist every 1/48^6th second, only to be replaced by my self?

[Reply #30 on:]

[Bender] Sure, why not [/Bender]

[Reply #31 on:]

Stop trying to make sense of a show that has an evil robot, one-eyed alien and a really awful doctor who is a giant talking crab for a character. Just enjoy the show instead of disecting all it's logic to pieces. It's a cartoon - since when did cartoons make sense?

[Reply #32 on:]

You do realize that this only encourages them right? just let this thread die in peace man!

[Reply #33 on:]

Only encourages them? Weren't you the guy who started the thread in the first place?

[Reply #34 on:]

 

Originally posted by getak2003:
You do realize that this only encourages them right? just let this thread die in peace man!

My solution:

"Behold! Script logic!"

Print out the line above, wrap it around a baseball bat and hit everyone who tries to see any kind of logic or else in this show.
That should teach them no to do this.

Everyone confused? Great, another job well done.

[Reply #35 on:]

You can find all these flaws in a cartoon but yet you can't see the flaws in your own lives.

EDIT: Getting quote right (I think).
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[Reply #36 on:]

 

Originally posted by BarneyBurnham:
You can find all these flaws in a cartoon but yet you can't seem to see the flaws in your own lives.

Those faults are the reason we turn to cartoons for logic in the first place.

[Reply #37 on:]

That means  the universe phases 
12230590464.00000000000000000 00002 every second. I'm guessing its cyclical could be described using a function. Scientists doing anything with this info? or is it just a interesting fact.

[Reply #38 on:]

You're way off, the universe phases 12230590464.00000000000000000 00003 every second.

[Reply #39 on:]

I just read this topic, and had to go take an asprin and lie down...