SciFi versus fantasy

D

Dinosaur

Rational Skeptic
Valued Senior Member
The StarGate is Scifi while the Star Trek transporter is fantasy.

While I do not expect the future to provide a Star Gate, it is not fantasy due to equipment at the destination.

There never will be a Star Trek transport technology due to lack of equipment at the destination, making it fantasy.

BTW: Even if worm holes exist, they will not be usable for transportation between two arbitrarily chosen locations.

Time travel to the past is another fictional concept which is fantasy. The past no longer exists.

BTW: The fictional version of time travel neglects the requirement for significant space travel. I wonder what space coordinate system is applicable to this problem.

Perhaps if some form of time travel is invented, it will be more usable as a space travel technology.​

Do others here have similar examples of fantasy versus SciFi concepts.
 
Dinosaur said:
There never will be a Star Trek transport technology due to lack of equipment at the destination, making it fantasy
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Why should equipment at the destination be the deciding factor? You don't need a receiver to make a radio transmitter work.

I'd say that the dividing line between scifi and fantasy is whether or not a scientific explanation - no matter how vague - is offered.
 
sideshowbob said:
Why should equipment at the destination be the deciding factor? You don't need a receiver to make a radio transmitter work.
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True

But then you do not get any results at the designated destination

The radio waves continue until they fade away

Let me know if you invent a radio transmission wave that carries its own radio to be assembled at destination so it can be received

As ex radio tech I would be fascinated

:)
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
You can pick up radio waves on certain naturally occurring crystals.
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You can pick them up on what ever they hit

What are the odds of sending your body down and being picked up by a Acme Sprocket Human Reassembly Cabinet Mark 3 - Batteries included?

:)
 
Michael 345 said:
Let me know if you invent a radio transmission wave that carries its own radio to be assembled at destination so it can be received
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Not much different from a device that creates a receiver at the destination. Destination device or no destination device? *shrug*
 
We already have devices that transmit information without a special receiver being needed, just our ears. Horns, drums, things like that.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
We already have devices that transmit information without a special receiver being needed, just our ears. Horns, drums, things like that.
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Transmitting the information isn't the issue. Indeed receiving the information also isn't the issue if we (or the receiving device) are already at the desired location to receive it.
The issue, as Michael 345 details, is the inability to send information which is its own receiving device.

For example, you can focus waves at a certain point, but how do you get them to stop there and to coalesce into something more than just the information? To do so you surely need a receiving device (such as ears). But if there isn't anything, of if the only receiving device is the information being transmitted... what then?
 
Sarkus said:
A device such as...?
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I'm not suggesting that such a device exists. We are talking about fiction, you know. We can speculate about whether or not a receiving device can be created from information but I don't think it should be the basis for defining genres.
 
From SideShowBob Post 3
Why should equipment at the destination be the deciding factor? You don't need a receiver to make a radio transmitter work.
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Your are correct, but isn't it silly to transmit to a destination which has no receiver?
 
Also from SideShowBob Post 3
I'd say that the dividing line between scifi and fantasy is whether or not a scientific explanation - no matter how vague - is offered.
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I have seen a lot of Star Trek episodes & do not remember even a vague explanation for how the transporter worked.

BTW: While it is true (& silly) that you can transmit information signals to a destination with no receiving equipment, we are discussing the transmission of objects with mass (including human beings) to a destination with no receiving equipment.

I feel safe in claiming that such a technology will never exist. Even if there are wormholes, they will not provide transmission between two arbitrarily chosen locations.

Also Consider the following problems with the Star Trek transporter.

A massive amount of information is required to specify the details of the human body, particularly the brain.

Reconstruction of the human brain has serious real time requirements. When (for example) it is half reconstructed, it would be partially but very likely erroneously functional. This would be likely to cause a much less than perfect reconstruction.
​
The Star Gate claims to transport a complete object rather than sending information for the construction of an object.
 
Dinosaur said:
I have seen a lot of Star Trek episodes & do not remember even a vague explanation for how the transporter worked
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Better look again.:)

Compare matter/energy scrambling/unscrambling with the ??? explanation of how magic rings work.
 
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