Could planets from Star Trek TNG really exist?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Space. The final frontier. Full of Californian planets. Watch Dr Wakeford and I discuss the physics of Kraofewd on Nebula (link updated March 2023): nebula.tv/vide...
In this video Dr Hannah and I go through every planet featured in Star Trek The Next Generation to establish which ones could really exist. Fortunately for us the vast, vast majority of the planets shown on screen are actually really dull, leaving just a handful that we can sink our teeth into.
Oh, and we show you our own episode of the show, featuring a planet you've never seen before....
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REFERENCES
1. This is a rough estimate using exoplanet.eu/
2. For a fascinating resource, see neutrinos.fnal...
3. Tom Scott's video: • Why sci-fi alien plane...
4. arxiv.org/abs/...
5. For notes on this see www.e-educatio...
6. www.nasa.gov/p...
7. • Where does the atmosph...
8. See e.g. sci.esa.int/do...
9. www.nature.com...
10. www.newscienti...
11. www.nature.com...
12. science.scienc...
13. www.nature.com...
Scientists review planets! Hannah Wakeford and Simon Clark use their PhDs in exoplanetary science and atmospheric physics to review every planet shown in Star Trek The Next Generation. Star Trek TNG is one of my favourite TV series ever, and one of the great sci fi TV shows, but some of its planets are very boring. So boring that we created our own episode to show them how it's done!
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Man the artwork and creativity in this is phenomenal, love that you made a new 'episode' 🤩 but I'm still overwhelmed by none of the ice planets lending themselves to you being able to make a "make it snow" joke
The giant fucking OSHA violation that a warp core you can WALK into and die is incredible.
I saw this video and subscribed...
Star Trek: our planets are either boring earth clones or completely scientifically inaccurate because we got a few stars wrong.
40k: heehoo what if a fat man was a planet.
heehoo, man I miss Unus Annus
@@Marc-jk2xo did I accidentally reference it or are you just moping?
@@lamarepository248 they had the whole section about Mark being Heehoo or however they wrote it. The outdoor camping stuff. And reading that just reminded me
Star trek: What strange new moral dillemas might present themselves in the vast unknown of the galaxy?
Warhammer 40k: OK hear me out here, what if we made a sword that's also a chainsaw?
@@roguepsykerhaaker4813
Star Trek: “What would the world look like if humans were fundamentally decent and enlightened?”
40k: “what if the Nazis were the good guys?”
"...the amount of energy that would be required is astronomical..."
Well...I mean...well...
So true lmao
Well yes, but also yes. :P
Given that Star Trek is around exploring the lives of humanoids, it makes a lot of sense that all planets are somewhat similar. We don’t live in uninhabitable places, mostly.
Just like almost all species they meet are 1.8m tall and with 2 arms and 2 legs.
Yep, exactly!
they had an episode covering that in next gen
@@meewec2091 Yeah, “The Chase” has them seeded by humanoid precursors Stargate Style.
We see a couple of aliens from outside the galaxy in a different episode, and they look nothing like humans. Which also fits with that. As does the founders being disgusted by the abundance of solid humanoid life.
Yeah, it makes sense.
After all, filming an episode with jellyfish based life happening in the depths of the ocean would make for a very costly and probably utterly boring episode.
I like to think the reason Star Trek's planets are so mundane is because the show has never been about spectacle or even fantasy, it's always been rooted in the human experience. What unites us, what divides us, what makes us unique, what brings us great joy and what brings us great sadness - it's other people. Star Trek has always consciously chosen to focus on that in a fantasy setting, to give a medium to convey messages of hope and warnings about the positive and negative impacts our interactions can have on others, ourselves and society.
To convey that, the writers never needed a new fancy planet every week, they needed an easy to achieve setting for their story about humanity.
In other words, Star Trek was in large part a warning?
+
And this is exactly why I find it so boring. It's more soap opera than SF.
Simon don’t listen to the haters, I thought your Picard impression was perfectly serviceable
Awesome work Simon
Loving the numbers at 1:42
A-113 is the Pixar number
301 is the TH-cam number
1729 is the Ramanujan number
Considering how 90% of the planets on the original Star Trek were literally earth clones right down to the cultures they encountered the fact that there is ANY diversity at ALL on TNG is progress 🤷🤷♂️🤷🤷♂️
The fanfic episode was fantastic! As many other commenters have pointed out the planets were mostly dull because they usually weren't the focus of the plot, though yes, budget constrains wouldn't allow frequent deviations from that.
Stargate next? I think the only interesting ones are on "Universe" though.
Yeah Hannah and I discussed this it turns out there's only so many ways you can dress up Toronto lol
@@SimonClark Vancouver! Same with Battlestar Galactica
Loving the Greatest Gen Kevin Uxbridge impression :)
Right? Pretty bang-on.
Came for the science, stayed for the fan fiction
Drema IV from the episode "Pen Pals" would have been fun to see. Trying to push through the technobabble, it was being put under stress by big crystals focusing heat. Realistic? No clue. Fun topic? Certainly. Enterprise also added a few interesting planets; Dakala was a rogue planet with some interesting life and both Vulcan and Andoria/Andor from season 4 had some interesting characteristics. Either way, love the work and that new episode was great! It even stuck to the classic "it keeps getting worse until it is all solved in a minute" formula.
I was surprised that the planet from Pen Pals wasn't mentioned. "All TNG planets are boring. Oh, also there was a planet with piezoelectric generator strata vaguely analogous to natural nuclear reactors, with many geological layers of crystals being in aligned lattice patterns, that was trying to rip itself apart because of planetary scale harmonic resonance. Literally no interesting planets in TNG."
Can't believe that Qo'nos isn't included in the interesting list - if only for the pollution allegories created by the Praxis disaster.
Still a great episode Simon, absolutely love this series and how high the production values are!
Yeah, it's weird how it wasn't featured considering how it has a lot of weird atmpospheric stuff, as well as the giant caves, apparently.
@@nakenmil We never really saw any outside locations of Qo'nos in the series except for cityscape exposition shots, and the whole situation with Praxis was in the TOS films, not TNG.
You should explore if planets from Dr.Who could exist.
I agree, but I fear for the sanity of our poor researchers Simon and Hannah.
...I can't wait to find out if quarries near London (and in Wales in more recent years) make more interesting planets than Callifornia. (OK, I'll be fair. There's been a far higher proportion of interesting planets since 2005...)
Make it so.
I loved this video so much!! I'm not surprised most are fairly dull. But to be honest the best things about Stat Trek are the stories with the seemingly plausible science. And the memes. The memes are great.
I hope this does well and you can do the rest of star trek. Yes, even Enterprise (it's not that bad)
As a fan of star trek and someone who grew up with TNG...
Yes most of their planets are just so damned boring. Doesn't help in the thirty years since we ACTUALLY discovered planets and it's terrifying st how batshit they are.
As an avid star trek fan, the episode you made is what I believe star-trek episodes should be, barring all the existential and morality and relevant and..... stuff.
That is, it's awesome.
There is no punishment to fit Kevin's crime. I'm gonna go party on the Hood.
I'm more Wars than Trek, but this was great!
riker: squints, into commercial
You've outdone yourself Simon! TNG and Simon Clark is definitely a dream team
Simon - never try doing a Picard impression ever again. Yours, the Internet.
Wouldn't mind hearing your attempt at Kirk though.
TNG's planets ARE interesting, just not over-the-top theme parks. They are cultures and nations that developed in isolation and now interact via their scientists, military vessels and diplomats. This is part of the appeal of space opera to many; parallel cultures building social infrastructure differently.
I love the fact that you've arranged everything in the LCARS design, you nerds. I love it so much.
Edit: The art in this ist awesome!
Nice to find another Friend of DeSoto in the wild. Excellent content.
Can you do an episode of the planets in the Mass Effect series? The Trilogy and Andromeda?
The whole show is nothing but empty jargon dropping and earl grey tea. None of it should exist.
The Planet Risa is based on Gene Roddenberry's salacious vacations in Thailand and the Philippines
This explains so much about Riker
A FoD in the wild, huh? If you know the best boss you've ever had, pipe up
Been one since near the beginning. Best boss I ever had.
Hood crew in the house!
I missed my piano lessons because of this video. Had me glued to my chair. Beautiful work guys!!!!
I really enjoyed this TH-cam! Loved the graphics and the TNG story!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Irrespective of the science...
"The award for best use of Patrick Stewart in a TH-cam video goes to......"
Ah, Westley, the self-insert we all could have lived without.
A wonderful video, really should have more views.
28:20 you _really_ need glasses because there is a very, very obvious decimal point, meaning the planet is roughly twice as old as earth and formed over 6 billion years after the big bang.
There is a decimal point, after the decimal point there are some letters and numbers that move that decimal point down ten places, which makes the number 72 billion
Hey Simon, I just wanted to let you know that this was an awesome video, but is not a "viral" video by any means. Much like your other "Which planets from X could really exist?" videos, this will accumulate a _lot_ of views in the long run. In fact, given the popularity of Star Trek in general, I believe this might at the very least achieve a million views. Just not very quickly. But I want you to know that it's great, and the views will avalanche in slowly.
Here's a suggestion next. How about planets in stargate? I know there are 3 movies and 3 series but MOAR planets!
honestly, that doesn't sound like a bad idea
i think some Planets from Stargate do appear interesting.
just commenting for the algorithm
28:32 mistake here, there is a tiny decimal point that you missed, thus the planet is actually 7.2 billion years, not 72 billion
Also the mass of the planet is fine if it is in gigatons, as the unit is undefined in the same frame and seems to be assumed to be tons? May be odd to measure in gigatons when you have an exponential anyway, but also seems odd to be measuring a planets mass in individual tons. Or perhaps it is a typo where 12 should have been 21.
Less than 0K, no argument. That's the average, lol! It goes lower?
Another excellent video. From a Trekkies stand point, a bit "Blasphemous" but Trek got full of itself with the technobabble. It's good to see qualified scientists reviewing the "science" on the show and pointing out what they got right and wrong. I enjoy your videos. Keep up the great work.
Since Star Fleet searches out new life, it makes sense that their crews focus on terrestrial planets--perhaps they could add in a few iceshell moons.
Yes I was surprised there were no iceball planets, similar to Earth in global glaciations! There were at least two in the original series but none shown in TNG!
a "failed star" ? that sounds harsh!! the poor thing is doing its best !
You censored Q's bulge? 🤣
The editing is **chef kiss** on this episode!
Hi. I would be interested to know what coding platform do you use, and what sources did you use to learn to code? I have been trying to learn to code, and I would interested in how did you learn it.
0:52 in generations, Viridian III is an earth clone with an atmosphere that prevents transporters for no reason, which we cant really speak on the realism of
in first contact Earth is in fact real
In Insurrection the Ba’Ku planet is an otherwise realistic earth clone with rings that make you immortal. Unrealistic
In Nemesis, Kolarin III is another desert planet and Romulus is another earth clone
I'd love to see a follow-up to this video, but analyzing planets shown in Voyager. It had some really interesting ones, like the Demon Planet and the Borg homeworlds.
to be fair, while we only see planets Colonized by the Borg, their Homeworld isn't mentioned, all we know is that they came from the Delta Quadrant.
@@titan-1802 Hence why I said "homeworlds," as in plural, since I'd assume the Borg would geoengineer every planet they assimilate to be as similar as possible with regards to surface temperature, pressure and atmospheric gasses. Much like how their ships pretty much mostly all look the same with very little variation.
@@AceSpadeThePikachu ah ok.
Inserting an algorithm fighting comment that is probably as useful as the average redshirt.
Star Trek: Planets are basically earth or some made up technobabble.
Star Wars: planets are basically one biome all around either Desert, Jungle, Ice & so on
Doctor Who: Planets look a whole lot like Welsh quarries & BBC sound stages.
These videos are incredible! I would love to see you do this for planets from Star Wars the Clone Wars (the show which has many more interesting planets than the movies).
Sounds quite juvenile to call inhabitable planets boring. But then I remind myself from what country this video comes and everything gets quite clear. ;p
with that mindset they would probably pass the next inhabited planet with a 'boring' on their lips and move on. Well...not after ravaging the planet of all natural resources of course. ;p
The planets of Stargate...why every planet except for Abydos looks like a British Columbia...
10:28 "light skins if vitamin D didn't come in their diet"? i LOLed.
but to explain - its not just very unlikely that some poor aliens would suffer from the exactly same evolutionary mistakes as the Hoomans.
One more thing to add when criticizing the "atmospheric interface" is that atmospheres (to my knowledge, which is highschool education at best), that the closest thing we have to a barrier is something called the exosphere. This layer basically is where some of the upper atmosphere is stripped away due to a type (if there are any) of diffusion.
To visualize this, think of dry ice fog, and how it's diffused close to the ground.
Simon, if you're reading this, feel free to correct me since you have more knowledge about atmospheric physics than I.
Don't mess with the climate, geoengineering is dangerous. So are, like, most things. There was that time that we didn't geoengineer Earth to have less megafauna and more high calorie crops and the human lifespan remained around 35-45 years. There was that time cyanobacteria didn't geoengineer Earth and remained a crust of rock with an oxygen poor atmosphere.
Yes oxygen did kill a lot cyanobacteria but the plans of bacteria, understandably for microscopic organism, are not thoughtfully managed.
*Clark:* Your planets suck, Star Trek
*Fan:* I just wanna go FIVE DAYS without reality fucking my favorite franchise.
TNG was great, but there are tons of scientific inaccuracies throughout. One instance - Data carrying off a drawing of the Enterprise from a holodeck and showing it to Geordi in the corridors outside. The drawing should have disappeared the instant they walked out of there. Sometimes Star Trek even breaks it's own rules.
Also Star Trek is based on personal interaction with aliens. I think it is likevreal life in this way. That is why we see much more dramas set in populated places and not Antarctica, so in Trek we see a shit ton of "Class M" planets, they have people on them usually. Not so on a gas giant-unless they may have Carl Segan's Ballon creatures. 😉
I appreciate that you said "civilization" is ruining our atmosphere, not "humanity".
It's worth noting that "humanity" ruined much of the megafauna long before there was any "civilization".
@@fromnorway643 Debatable. In any case the mass of "humanity" today is less responsible for global warming than a handful of corporations.
@@LisaBeergutHolst Yes, but we encourage the corporations with our dollars!
@@zrk03 I doubt they need much encouragement.
The reality is yes any could exist. We only decide if they can or can't based on our current, limited, knowledge.
They obviously meant 7.2 billion years, someone either just decided 10 looked cooler than 9, or forgot how to count decimal places.
You could do on the worlds of Starfinder, although there is some crazy stuff, there is a lot of cool planets.
Also 4546B from Subnautica seems pretty plausible
There's no real need to have two people presenting this. It's just distracting. There's a reason why documentaries don't switch narrators every 20 seconds. Pick one, and run with it.
“The planets in TNG are boring”
Of course it’s a tv show from the 80s with a limited budget and I will fucking fight you!!!!
The Kalons were MUCH more interesting in The Orville, another show you could analyze.
Q had his junk blurred? LMAO 🤣🤣🤣 Really fun episode. Thanks for this.
How would using shuttles evacuate more people than the transporters especially when cargo transporters could transport over 30 people at a time. They've evacuated starships in a few minutes with transporters before. Now had they said that shuttles needed to be used in addition to the transporters than maybe but they don't carry a lot of shuttles onboard and the shuttles tend to be very small, the increase in evacuees by shuttle would be slim compared to their cargo transporters capacity.
You should do Mass Effect next, it’s normal similarly to Star Trek but there are some interesting worlds to look at.
Boraal II might have a cooled down iron core, so which will stop generating the magnetosphere that was protecting the atmosphere from getting stripped by solar winds like how Mars may have lost its atmosphere.
Those episodes you call "bad" are fun, character driven and awesome. Stop being mean to my friends.
But hey, we have a rare chance for humans in a ship approaching the sun with distance looks like just two inches away and ship still fine in the first 5 minutes and you can trigger the tongue with beams to slap the alien warship 😂😂
Have you done Crematoria, the prison planet from "The Chronicles of Riddick"?
After the past planet videos i clicked this immediately, love them!
Very nice work, but i didn't even know you posted anything until you posted a community post
I'd describe this as 39:17 minutes of good shit if you'll excuse my profanity.
How dare you say "Fistful of Datas" was awful. That episode seeded so many great senor data memes.
all we need to do is dream up new stuff and put it out in any form. nature will have them ready for when we start travelling in deep space inside of tubes.
3:27 L-dwarf and T-dwarf are switched, not a major problem, just wanted to let you know.
I think you would wear a blue Uniform as Science Offices..
If you want interesting planets I would suggest looking at Farscape.
Watching Star Trek in my childhood is why I am an activist right now.
Also, the planets depicted in the movies can be pretty bizarre and interesting too, like Sha Ka Ree, Ceti Alpha 5, Genesis, Nimbus III, Rura Penthe, Ba'ku, Romulus and Remus, and Vulcan (even though it debuted in TOS the movies showed a lot more of it).
it kinda disappoints me that they skipped out Ni'Var (aka Vulcan), but hey i'm guessing that they are saving those for later, well.. i would hope so.
Good content
There are at least few good ones sprinkled throughout the rest of the Star Trek franchise.
Am I the only one now wondering what warp core fried chicken taste like?
Love to see one of these for Doctor Who, lots of meterial there.
Wild love a Metroid episode!! Even if it’s just the prime series
Next do 'which planet in real life could really exist"
Would love to see a Riddick universe planets episode! 🙂👍
woah woah whats with the hate on Fistful of Datas?
Any plot hole in start trek can just be explained as Q did it
that was an amazing episode, thank you
We already discovered climate change too late lol
8:53 was that guy without clothes over there because he has clothes everywhere else?
no, that would have made sense. the reason for the pixellation is far worse. the character 'Q' played by John de Lancie has been [almost] nude in another TNG ep and the station was fine with it back then. would be nice to know why Simon feels the need to pixelate him here today. have we regressed in the past 30yrs somehow?
I get your disappointment with the 'Californianess' of the Terrestrial planets, but really there's only so much you /can/ do and still have the place habitable by unmodified unprotected humans. More than was shown, granted, but not a /lot/. I think there's probably a lot more room for diddling star size/number, period and shape of planetary orbit, and moons/rings/parent planets than there is for mucking with atmospheric mix and climate.
Love your Videos another great Sci-fi universe you guys should look is the Mass effect Trilogy. They have alot of planets in game you could look at like Palaven, Thessia, Tuchanka, Illium and Feros.