A recent story on Space.com caught my attention. The headline says
Warp Speed Could Kill You. That was the message delivered by Johns Hopkins University physicist William Edelstein to the "American Physical Society conference in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 13", according to the article.
Dr. Edelstein is an eminent radiology scientist who helped developed Magnetic Resonance Imaging technology that is widely used today.
Apparently, Dr. Edelstein has concluded that if you can manage to propel a ship to a speed near the speed of light, hydrogen atoms in space will kill everyone aboard the ship with radiation. Dr. Edelstein reportedly compared this kind of speed to Star Trek's Warp Speed. Some members of his audience apparently objected to his comparison on the grounds that Star Trek ships have "magnetic shields".
Here is the problem with Dr. Edelstein's comparison and the points his audience made: they are not talking about Star Trek's Warp Speed. In fact, it was originally known as Warp Factors and the pseudo-science behind the concept was not really fully developed until decades later when
Star Trek: The Next Generation and subsequent shows had to explain how the techology worked.
Warp Factor speed is used by Star Trek ships to cover vast distances in space in Earth-standard time frames (that is, relative to time on Earth) in less time than it would take light to travel across those distances. In other words, a ship using Star Trek's fictional Warp technology could position itself at point A somewhere in space, travel at Warp Factor whatever to a point B where it could then take a picture of itself at Position A. Then, again jumping into Warp, the ship could travel to point C where it could take a picture of itself at point A followed some time later by a picture of itself at point B. Finally, the ship could then travel via Warp speed to another point D where it could capture images of itself in reverse sequence from points C, B, and A.
The point of Star Trek's Warp Drive technology is to allow ships to travel between stars at faster-than-light speeds without obviously violating the known laws of physics. Scientists should not be restricting Star Trek Warp speeds to the limits of Einsteinian theory. That's equivalent to saying supersonic jets cannot travel across the ocean faster than 200 knots because there is too much resistance from the water.
I don't know what the maximum achievable physical speed in ocean water is for a vessel, but I'm pretty sure it cannot match the speed of a jet-powered air vessel -- nor the speed of a much faster spaceship. We don't have to know how to make Star Trek's Warp technology in order to avoid saying something stupid like traveling at Warp Speed would kill you.
Scientists are generally respected for being careful in what they say. Sure, there are plenty of examples where previously held scientific ideas have been discarded as new research has unplugged them from our knowledge base, but occasionally someone in science or engineering just says something monumentally stupid for no apparent reason other than ignorance.
For example,
NASA struggles with the concepts of UFOs and aliens in part because at least some of its people say some really stupid things, like real aliens would try to land on the front lawn of the White House (in order to make contact with the most powerful leader on Earth). Why would real aliens do that? Maybe they just have a passing scientific curiosity in other life forms and occasionally scoop up random specimens to study -- rather like a field biologist does today, right?
We don't know anything about what a real alien civilization's priorities or mores would be. To assume that they would or would not do anything is pretty stupid. To postulate that they
might or
might not do something is simply speculative, and therefore more scientific. Assuming that real space aliens would (or would not) single out the White House as the perfect place to make a historic first landing on Earth without knowing anything about an alien space-faring civilization is not scientific -- it's just foolish.
Scientists are often quick to point out
dumb things other scientists have said. One of the basic tenets of our scientific process is that we teach scientists and engineers to question all statements, to challenge the observations and conclusions that each other put forward. By forcing ourselves to defend, explain, or clarify what we say, we work toward a better understanding of all things natural.
However, science still has a long way to go in acknowleding "all things natural". Take God, for example. Ask any random scientist from any discipline if God is real and you're likely to hear some variation on "science doesn't address the question of God's existence". Why is that? Probably because in centuries past the forebears of today's scientists were tortured and murdered by religious authorities as heretics. But that's hardly a suitable reason to ignore the question of whether God exists.
If God exists, he is completely natural rather than supernatural. Scientists and atheists use the word "supernatural" to label anything they don't want to believe in. Ghosts, imps, demons, leprechauns, witches, werewolves, and God are supernatural because these are concepts that are "outside the (realm of the) natural". In other words, these things cannot be part of nature.
But why? Either they are imaginary things or they are real things, but either way they are
natural things. An imaginary idea is completely natural given that we humans imagine things all the time. Flying cars like George Jetson's little zip-about are completely imaginary, but no one calls them "supernatural".
Supernatural things don't have to answer to natural laws, we are told. Okay, but what does that have to do with the existence of God, Yeti, and were-wolves. We know that animals can and do transform themselves from one type of creature into another (moths, butterflies, and other creatures
go through metamorphosis). The fact that natural metamorphosis occurs does not prove were-wolves exist; it merely proves that you cannot disprove were-wolves on the basis of saying a creature cannot turn into another creature.
In other words, science is usually at its worst when it seeks to dismiss belief in things which science has not categorically shown to exist. For example, modern scientists dismissed the existence of creatures like Disney's giant squid from "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" but finally had to acknowledge that Colossal Squids approaching that size in nature do exist (they have been filmed and a few dead bodies have been examined).
The difference between the Colossal Squid and something so-far uncategorized creature like Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster is that science has yet to acquire a body that can be examined. Photographic evidence won't suffice unless it's captured by established scientists in an environment other scientists will trust has not been tampered with.
The chief problem with these so-called cryptids (creatures that have not been proven to exist in a scientific investigation) is not the lack of evidence for their existence but rather the volumes of fake evidence that have been put forth by fraudsters and posers. Every time someone tries to pass off a Halloween costume as Bigfoot, scientists take a step further away from any desire to investigate the hundreds if not thousands of reports of creatures resembling the Yeti or Sasquatch (by up to 20 or more names around the world).
Humanoids of diminutive size had been the subject of folklore and fiction for centuries, but only a few years ago scientists discovered the remains of 3-foot-tall humanoids on a small island in Indonesia. Whether representatives of Homo Florienensis could have made their way around the world to be recorded in mythologies and folklores is highly speculative -- but at least now we know such small people did once live. How much other peoples might have been aware of them 12-15,000 years ago and how long those memories could have been preserved in folklore is a subject for debate, not dismissal.
In fact, linguistic analysis has proposed some interesting things for ancient languages through which we glimpse how our ancestors viewed and understood their world. To them, the natural world was very different from the natural world we live in today. Some things they may simply have not understood very well. But now we know there were some things that really did exist -- cities, lands, peoples -- that were once dismissed by science as imaginary or "supernatural".
That kind of raw dismissal is not acceptable science. We need to expect better of our scientists. Otherwise, they'll never learn enough to explore some of life's more challenging mysteries. It's doubtful a scientist shaped in today's educational system will come face to face with God and return with empirical evidence. But maybe one day we'll understand the ways of the universe better and be able to explain why so many people feel a connection to a higher power (outside of the present theories of psychology).
Maybe...or maybe not. We'll never know until we make the effort to find out the truth. Unfortunately, we retreat from the truth each time we dismiss scientifically unbelievable ideas for lack of scientific evidence. The lack of evidence does not justify the dismissive or derisive attitude some people cultivate toward ideas in the popular belief. If anything, it should inspire a stronger yearning to know more about the details that gave rise to the belief in the first place.
We don't learn by making assumptions but rather by challenging them.
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