Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett - Technology Fortunetellers?
One of my favorite movies of all time is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, from 1986, written by the two men mentioned in the title of this post.
OK. I'm a geek. You didn't know that already?? I loved the original Star Trek series, and I was enamored of several of the subsequent TV shows. The movies Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek IV took the concept to all new levels, including depths to characters many of us thought we knew so well. (I still get teary-eyed when Spock dies in ST2.)
Anyway, in ST4, the crew of the Enterprise (currently piloting a Klingon Bird-of-Prey since the Enterprise was destroyed in ST3) go back in time to find whales to bring forward to 23rd century Earth. Whales are extinct there, but are needed desperately to save the planet. I won't go into more details about all that. See the movie.
Scotty and Bones (the chief engineer and ship's doctor, respectively) find a 20th century scientist that Scotty suspects is the inventor of a product called "transparent aluminum". He doesn't really know this for sure, and the entire encounter brings to life some of the funniest dialogues in movie history (IMHO).
Transparent aluminum (TA - no jokes, please) is supposed to be the strongest metal alloy known to mankind, and they need sheets of it to contain the tremendous amounts of water they need to transport the whales back to the 23rd. However, there's no such thing as TA in the 20th century (again, no jokes, please). So Scotty sells the formula to the guy who becomes the inventor of TA (aargh!) in exchange for five or six sheets of the stuff. Needless to say, the entire scheme (along with several others) works perfectly and they save the planet. (Oops! Did I give something away?)
So, back to the 21st century and reality as we know it. I read lots of stuff online, and last week I ran into an article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25335806/) that reports that a number of scientists have been studying the nature of glass to determine why it flows. Did you know that glass flows? Well it does, very slowly. It takes years, even centuries for good glass to flow enough that our eyes can see the distortion, but it does flow. If you look at windows in very old buildings, you can see it for yourself.
The upshot of all this is, in studying the nature of glass, the scientists hope to be able to apply glass principles to metals, creating (maybe), transparent aluminum!!! "The finding could lead to aircraft that look like Wonder Woman's plane. Such planes could have wings of glass or something called metallic glass, rather than being totally invisible."
Being a geek is fun, because I get to know and understand so many things about how our universe works. Being a geek also means I want to know more, even though I know that in my lifetime, I will never know enough, and scientists will never discover enough. But they, and through their efforts, I, will never stop discovering new and wonderous things.
Just thought I'd share.
The idea that glass flows like a liquid is not supported by careful observation -- this is a common misconception that msnbc seems to be repeating, and is not originating with the researchers mentioned in the article. A quick Google search will turn up many sites debunking the idea.
My favorite article on the subject, mainly just for the title, was "Glass Doesn’t Flow and Doesn’t Crystallize and It Isn’t a Liquid" (J. Chem. Ed., Vol 77 No. 7 p. 846) -- no need for an abstract!
On the other hand, pitch *does* flow, reeeally slowly:
<http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/pitchdrop/pitchdrop.shtml>
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You say that glass flows, but I've heard that's a myth. Here's a reference: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glass/glass.html
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JW -
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Hi Sid
With your brothers recomendation I've dropped by. thanks for the info and your site is now bookmarked.
The info on the 4th movie concerning the transparent alumininum is incorrect. They give the formula to barder for the sheets of acrylic they need. the plant supervisor (owner?) said that it would take him years to understand the formula.
Cheers
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Actually, if I remember correctly, it was implied that Scotty showed them how to make the stuff so he could get the sheets in return. Yes, it WAS a barter. I said in the post that he "sells the formula in exchange for five or six sheets of the stuff". That's the same thing as bartering.
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Hi, I found this via Bad Astronomy.
According to the research I've seen, glass doesn't really flow like that. Old windows are thicker at the bottom because they were installed that way; the old glass-making methods created irregular sheets, and the installers knew that the window would be more stable with the thicker end down. Some old windows were installed incorrectly and are thicker at the top. Antique telescope mirrors and lenses haven't degraded, and ancient Roman and Egyptian glass isn't distorted.
Some calculations show that glass does flow, but over time scales exceeding the age of the Universe.
See the Wikipedia article on "Glass".
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