Theatre physics

Originally posted by adam warlock
This is fun. 😉

[b]"All stop" is clearly for the engines
Really? I didn't know that. 😳 And I'm not being sarcastic. I thought that all stop was equivalent to say full stop. But are you really sure this is the correct interpretation? And don't try to throw any sand into my eyes Mister.

He cannot know if it stopped or not if t ...[text shortened]... guish both types of movement in [b]this case.

Apple pie is good enough for ya? 😛[/b]

Why do you need any of that BS to see whether you stopped or not? All you need to do is check doppler shift of stars ahead and behind, you will clearly see the doppler shift and can deduce your relative velocity with respect to the star background. Especially at relativistic velocities, you can see it with your naked eye, stars in front blue shifted, stars in back red shifted.
Good spectrometers can do that at regular velocities, no big deal.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Why do you need any of that BS to see whether you stopped or not? All you need to do is check doppler shift of stars ahead and behind, you will clearly see the doppler shift and can deduce your relative velocity with respect to the star background. Especially at relativistic velocities, you can see it with your naked eye, stars in front blue shifted, stars in back red shifted.
Good spectrometers can do that at regular velocities, no big deal.

So, Doppler spectrography is easier than to drop a ball and see what happens?

😕 😕 😕

Originally posted by Penguin
[b]Just imagine Data letting a ball drop when the engines are on. Due to the spaceship acceleration the ball would drop not only vertically but also with a backwards (relative to the direction of motion of the spaceship) component. When the engines are off Data would drop the same ball and it would fall in a perfect vertical way

No, the ships anti-gra ...[text shortened]... Is the apple falling down to the Earth or is the Earth falling up to the apple?[/b]

The anti-grav mechanism is a nice point and I feel like like a shmuck for not thinking about it. But that doesn't invalidate my thought experiment because there can always be a room in the spaceship for that experment to occur. One room with no people and nothing too fragile in it. If data let a ball on the floor room and one camera attached to a wall was filming all the action we could study what was happening.

And even if you could see the stars, you would have to frame your 'stop' command relative to [b]one of them, since they are all moving relative to each other. In the absense of an external frame of reference, such as a star, 'all engines stopped' is just as good as 'ship stopped'.
[/b]
I totally disagree with this. Totally. I don't think engines need to know what is their frame of reference when you press the stop button,m or do they? They just stop.

Is the apple falling down to the Earth or is the Earth falling up to the apple?
They're both falling into each other, but the apple's acceleration is much greater than the earth's one.

Explosions without sound would be boring as hell. And if heroes didn't survive the building exploding behind them as they are running away, even though the blast is scant yards behind them, well that would be a boring story too. Cinema is escapism. Real life is a pain in the arse.

Originally posted by PinkFloyd
Explosions without sound would be boring as hell. And if heroes didn't survive the building exploding behind them as they are running away, even though the blast is scant yards behind them, well that would be a boring story too. Cinema is escapism. Real life is a pain in the arse.

Oh I don't know have you seen the new Battlestar Galactica Series. They have no (well minimal) sound in space and it adds a disconcerting and immensely entertaining dimension to the giant space battles.....

Also their ships move reasonably realistically (although Babylon 5 really deserves a credit here) I think.... And they had various instances needing oxygen to discharge munitions (One in firefly too).

These funnily enough are arguably the best Sci-Fi series of the last few years.... Certainly critically although none had the popularity of the entertaining if mostly filler Star trek and Stargate.....