So what else is there to do when there's sub-zero temperature outside? Go back and watch some of your favorite episodes of Star Trek on Netflix (a shameless plug, one for which I'm not getting paid. C'mon, Netflix!).
I am watching the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation which is called "All Good Things..." and I noticed a glaring mistake. Now, to be honest, I noticed this when the episode first aired, but I didn't have a blog at that time, and I forgot about it until just now watching it again. If there are any theoretical physicist out there, I will need your help to tell me if I am making sense, or making too much out of nothing.
Here's the break down of the episode...and no, I am not giving anything away because it's been available to watch for a few decades. Captain Picard is in three different time streams thanks to the help of Q. Picard is in his past, when he first began command of the Enterprise, his present, and his future, when he's retired. The whole episode gets all three Picard's in each timeline to travel to a specific point in space, and they all fire a tachyon pulse at this one specific spot. This creates a spatial anomaly that grows bigger as it travels backward in time. There's the very short and sweet.
Here's where i found the problem. So the anomaly is able to be seen in the past and the present, but in the future, they don't see anything. When discussing "why" they discover that they helped create the anomaly by all three timelines firing a tachyon beam at the same point in space. They figure that if they go back to the spot that they had just left, they would see the "birth of the anomaly," which they do...but they shouldn't be able to see it.
The whole episode stresses the fact that this anomaly gets bigger the farther back in the past you go. After firing the tachyon pulse into this one particular point, the anomaly would begin to grow moving backward in time. After firing the pulse and leaving this specific point in space, the Enterprise moved forward in time. Turning around to see it's birth should not have been possible because they were moving forward, the anomaly would be moving backward. Does any of this make sense?
Like I said, I might just be making a lot about nuffin' but hey, it bothered me then and it bothers me now. Let me know if any of what I just said makes sense. Leave me a comment in the section below and let me know your thoughts. Until next time!
