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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, February 3, 2014 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

David Batchelor

"The Science of Star Trek"

ABSTRACT -- "The Science of Star Trek" was the title of an article written by the speaker in 1993, just after the inception of the World Wide Web. Because of the popular topic and because the article was hosted on a NASA educational web site, it became well-known, widely linked, copied, illustrated, and translated into other languages. Journalists have cited it and interviewed the author in numerous media (Star Trek Communicator magazine, Wired On-line, The Economist, Fortean Times magazine, Geek Le Magazine, IstoÉ – Brazil, National Geographic On-line, the San Francisco Chronicle, PBS's fund-raising special "Science Trek," Smithsonian Channel's "The Real Story: Star Trek"). A web search for "star trek science" usually finds Batchelor's article as the top-ranked non-commercial result. It is currently hosted at http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/star_trek.html

In the Engineering Colloquium talk, Batchelor will engage the scientific credibility of the key technologies in the Star Trek shows and movies. The Star Trek writers made an array of predictions of future technologies, from today's cell phone communicators, medical advances and emerging artificial intelligences to debatable transporters and warp drive. Batchelor regards these technologies as devices to uplift the viewer's vision of what advanced engineering might achieve within a story Universe with structure informed by valid laws of physical science. The ultimate value of Star Trek lies in the encouragement that viewers experience about a future of progress that we can build.

SPEAKER -- David Batchelor earned his undergraduate BS in Physics from MIT and his Ph. D. in physics from UNC-Chapel Hill. The Ph. D. dissertation was based on work he did investigating solar flares as part of the science team for NASA's Solar Maximum Mission spacecraft. He later was hired by NASA and has been employed at Goddard since 1988. He has performed scientific research in astrophysics, medical physics, radiation physics, and elementary particle physics at NASA. He also served as a manager of educational web software development for GLOBE.gov. From 2006 to 2012 he was a member of the Radiation Effects & Analysis Group.

In January he joined the Earth Science Data & Information System Project as a DAAC Engineer. He is also an experienced lab teacher in physical sciences and astronomy at the University of Maryland University College, and has supervised many students at Goddard. His first science fiction novel, The Metalmark Contract, was published in 2011.


Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov