To bodly go ….
“To bodly go … ” is probably the best known example of a split infinitive that there has ever been. English teachers around the world have probably been cringing over it ever since, back in 1966, our television screens went black as a disembodied voice announced, “Space … the final frontier … ” and launched the first episode in the adventures of the crew of the Starship Enterprise.
Although it is now seen as a cult, with several films, four spin-off series, animated series, books, comics, computer games and other associated merchandising … it almost never happened. The original pilot, (true, with a different cast), was rejected by Paramount. I bet they were glad that they changed their minds … however, although the opening credits stated that the crew had a “five year mission … to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”, the series was cancelled after just three seasons.
They must have realized, however, that they may have been premature and re-runs of the series on numerous stations helped to create the cult following which led to the spawning of those numerous spin-offs.
When I was teaching, the successor series, “Star Trek, the Next Generation”, was being shown on satellite television. Unfortunately it was screened at five o’clock, which was far too early for me to get home from school in order to watch. However, it was also shown again at ten o’clock, and I usually got see each episode in this later time slot.
It’s funny, but it became a bit of an obsession, even though I felt that it wasn’t as good as the original series. The plots and the acting were just as outrageous, the science and special effects were better, (even if the script simply called it “technobabble”), but there was something groundbreaking about the original series.
I have similar feelings towards the Star Wars series – and even towards Dr. Who.
The Next Generation was followed by Deep Space Nine. I didn’t think that this series stood much of a chance of success, based as it was on a Space Station, orbiting a planet, rather than scouring the myriad of star systems in the galaxy. To be fair, however, the writers were imaginative and employed a number of techniques to introduce twists and turns in the plot to keep the viewer’s attention.
One of these involved the discovery that near to the space station was a stable “wormhole”.
That’s got nothing to do with little creatures that burrow through the soil, and magically regenerate themselves if you accidentally cut them in half. A wormhole is a topological concept, (a branch of Mathematics), which arises out of Einstein’s theory of Relativity. Now, no matter how many times I read up on the subject, I never seem to be able to get my head round more than the main “headlines” of the subject. A wormhole is basically a compact region of space whose interior has special characteristics which enable it to act as a sort of shortcut through the curved multi-dimensional space-time of the cosmos, rather like a bridge or tunnel, with the two ends in different places allows the traveler to pass over an obstacle without having to travel much further in order to circumnavigate it.
It’s a bit the magical wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” which acted as a portal between Earth and the land of Narnia. What’s more, just like in the Narnia Chronicles, it could warp time itself so many months could be spent in Narnia whilst just moments just passed on the other end of the portal.
If all this sounds fanciful, and there is no actual proof that such a phenomenon exists, then there are mathematical equations which back up the idea, which I won’t even pretend to understand.
I mention this because over the weekend I came across a report on the UPI newswire about a team of scientists working in Bishkek who have been working on some of these equations. Led by physicist Vladimir Folomeev, their results suggest that pairs of stars could be joined by such wormholes full of an exotic material known as “phantom matter.” The existence of this “phantom matter” is purely hypothetical, it just happens to make some of the equations work providing a possible explanation for the accelerating expansion of the universe. As a corollary, it seems that, (if it does actually exist), then its properties could also enable a wormhole to be kept open.
As with the whole subject of wormholes, the idea is not without controversy and sparks debate. Even Folomeev admits that the team’s analysis is not complete and there is apparently a lot of calculations and other work to do in order to to either find support or to disprove the speculation that they have made.
Bishkek