June 21st, 1993, "Descent Part One"
I can finally catch up on DS9 S1 after this...
Fiver by Zeke
The Episode
HAWKING: But then I said, in that frame of reference, the perihelion of Mercury would have precessed in the opposite direction.
EINSTEIN: (laughing) That is a great story!
DATA: Quite amusing, Doctor Hawking.
First, let's have a
YouTube link. Secondly, here's some vocab:
Perihelion-the point in a planet's orbit when it is closest to the sun. For Earth this happens in early January after the solstice.
Precession-the change in orientation of the axis of rotation of an object. Imagine how a top wanders back and forth between "leaning" toward one direction and the other. For Earth it takes 26,000 years to complete one cycle. In astronomy the term is more specific, the apparent difference in direction of a star or planet in the sky caused by the precession of the planet you're on.
The joke is actually more subtle than general technobabble. Newton derived the first laws of planetary motion purely in terms of gravity. Einstein built upon the work specifically in terms of Mercury by using the laws of relativity to show how there's a component of precession that's explained by the warping of spacetime caused by planetary gravity wells. You can read the scientific paper yourself
here.
By the way, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit is a hundredth of a degree per century. It really only matters to hardcore astronomers.
Don't ask me where this ties into Hawking's work, I have no idea.
HAWKING: Not the apple story again.
DATA: That story is generally considered to be apocryphal.
NEWTON: What? How dare you!
The apple story was invented by Newton biographer William Stukeley. Consider it on the same level of history as Washington's apple tree.
EINSTEIN: Perhaps we should return to the game. Let's see, where were we? Yes, you raised Mister Data four, which means that the bet is, er, seven to me?
NEWTON: The bet is ten! Can't you do simple arithmetic?
The "Einstein was bad at math" thing was also a myth. At best it took him a little longer to learn how to read and talk, but even that is possibly apocryphal. When confronted with this rumor Einstein refuted it.
EINSTEIN: The uncertainty principle will not help you now, Stephen. All the quantum fluctuations in the universe will not change the cards in your hand.
I was surprised to learn that the uncertainty principle covers more than just position and velocity. Another example is the "waveness" and "particleness" of a phenomenon that exhibits characteristics of both waves and particles.
The Heisenberg Compensator exists to avoid this problem.
DATA: Could you describe feeling angry without referring to other feelings?
I'm not sure you can describe any emotion without referring to other emotions.
NECHAYEV: There will be fifteen starships in this sector by the day after tomorrow. The Gorkon will be my flagship.
The Gorkon is an Excelsior-class? Why wouldn't the Enterprise be the flagship of the fleet for this mission?
This is the first Starfleet ship named after an alien.
NECHAYEV: You'll take command of task force three, consisting of the Enterprise, the Crazy Horse and the Agamemnon.
The Crazy Horse is also an Excelsior-class. Being a Midwesterner I'm most aware of the guy in relation to the controversy of the monument being built in his honor near Mount Rushmore. You can read the
Wikipedia article if you want. Personally my biggest problem is that it won't even look like Crazy Horse as there aren't any photos or paintings of him from the time.
For that matter, he wouldn't want to be the namesake of a warship any more than Gandhi would've. He would've been on the Maquis' side.
PICARD: When Hugh was separated from the Borg collective he began to grow and to evolve into something other than an automaton. He became a person. When that happened, I felt I had no choice but to respect his rights as an individual.
NECHAYEV: Of course you had a choice. You could've taken the opportunity to rid the Federation of a mortal enemy, one that has killed tens of thousands of innocent people, and which may kill even more.
Nechayev makes many appearances in the novels after this, but I don't think she ever directly interacted with Section 31. She would certainly be someone they would keep an eye on.
DATA: Anger is a negative emotion. I wanted to concentrate on something more positive.
TROI: Data, feelings aren't positive and negative, they simply exist. It's what we do with those feelings that becomes good or bad. For example, feeling angry about an injustice could lead someone to take a positive action to correct it.
Oh boy, is this not a simple issue. I don't care to write a screed about this one, I'll just say that Deanna is being overly simplistic again.
LAFORGE: It's crazy. There's got to be another way. Can't you think of something other way to make yourself angry.
DATA: I have tried other stimuli, but they have been unsuccessful. I understand your objections, but it is my life and I have a right to risk it if I choose.
This is a dangerous and very slippery slope. The moral implications are numerous, so I'll skip them. I will say that Data asking to turn off the safeties in this case is not the same as Worf doing so. What is the hologram going to do, rip off Data's arms? Arms that can easily be repaired?
DATA: We are being pulled inside.
(and Enterprise disappears into a Whovian/Stargate style wormhole effect)
Tardis wormholes and Stargate wormholes aren't really that similar.
RIKER: This is another change in the Borg behaviour. They left their dead instead of vapourising them.
That's another screed that I'll skip.
CROSIS: If it meant that you could feel emotions again the way you did on Ohniaka Three, would you kill your friend? Would you kill Geordi?
DATA: Yes. I would.
Clearly this is manipulation, but I wonder why Data doesn't find it odd later once he's out of range.
LAFORGE: Our current theory is that the Borg have established several transwarp conduits through subspace. A ship, when entering the conduit, is immediately accelerated to an extremely high warp velocity. It's like falling into a fast moving river and being swept away by the current.
PICARD: How fast would a ship travel through one of these conduits?
LAFORGE: We don't know. Normal subspace limitations don't apply to transwarp variables. But I'd say based on the distance we covered during our trip through the conduit, the speed would have to be at least twenty times faster than our maximum warp.
Just twenty times maximum warp? Seems rather slow. Voyager traversed half the galaxy in a transwarp conduit in a matter of hours.
LAFORGE: The Borg ship emitted some kind of high energy tachyon pulse just before we saw the subspace distortion. It seems as though the conduits are keyed to respond to tachyon transmissions of a specific frequency.
How? What's responding to the transmission? These things aren't Babylon 5 jumpgates, ya know!
PICARD: Assuming that they're still together, how far could they have travelled in three hours?
LAFORGE: Well, Data can move pretty fast even over rough terrain, but based on what we know about the Borg, I don't think they should be able to move any faster than you or I.
I have trouble believing that Data would be that fast on rough terrain. By all means he could move pretty fast on level ground, but rapid changes in gait and trajectory would slow him down quick.
PICARD: If the Borg should attack, don't wait for me or anyone else to return to the ship but take the Enterprise to the transwarp conduit. Return to Federation space.
CRUSHER: Got it. Good luck, Jean-Luc.
PICARD: Good luck, Captain.
Come to think of it, she should've been in command of the saucer section back where they started this trip. And Picard should've commanded the stardrive section, not searching down here.