If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Bistromaths: "The Physics of Star Trek" by Lawrence M. Krauss“The curvature of spacetime is determined by the distribution of matter and energy in the universe, but this distribution is in turn governed by the curvature of space. It is like the chicken and the egg. Which was there first? Matter acts as the source of curvature, which in turn determines how matter evolves, which in turn alters the curvature, and so on. Indeed, this may b...

Smart reading! STAR TREK TECHNOBABBLE You have to give attention to a book when Stephen Hawking does the foreword!In this reference book, Lawrence M. Krauss, the author, engages into the area of topics that Star Trek always has been a pioneer in the media field......the presentation of science-fiction in way that you may very well think that eventually it will be possible......even more in account when you think that some of the "futuristic" technololgy presented, not only in the Original

This is a short, enjoyable read for anybody who loves the Star Trek series, as I do. The book describes how most of the concepts and technologies in Star Trek are possible but quite implausible. My favorite chapter was actually the last one, describing the things that are absolutely impossible, that one might call "bloopers".Krauss really does get to the heart of each issue related to Star Trek concepts and technologies. But, do not read this book with the intention of learning about physics. Yo...

As a physicist and a Star Trek fan I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I never took the fantasy parts of the television show so seriously so I never dwelt on the inconsistencies and glairing errors. The TV shows are a good get away when you want them. That said it doesn’t surprise me in the least that others have taken the series with a bit less forgiveness. Beyond being a Star Trek critic I think this book is an excellent educational resource for the layman about the basic physics involved about th...

This is a "fun" book with a sound scientific foundation. The fun is in experiencing the hard work Kraus has done to provide a foundation for the imaginative devices and phenomena that any Trekie knows intimately. If you are looking for something like Astrophysics for Trekies you may be disappointed that you won't be able to pass astrophysics 101 after reading this book. If you are looking for the basic plans for building a transporter, you too will find this book lacking.On the other hand, if yo...

Target audience: Mainly, people passionate about the Star Trek universe, and secondarily people passionate about sci-fi and science.About the author: According to Wikipedia, Lawrence Krauss is an American-Canadian theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and a former professor at Yale University and Case Western Reserve University. He founded ASU’s Origins Project to investigate fundamental questions about t...

Lacking in whimsy and excitement. Half-hazzard. Under-developed.I picked this up randomly in the library, because it looked short and interesting... but eh. It was only slightly worth the effort. His language is too much a mixture of trifling observational comments about Star Trek in general, along with elevated science vocabulary that is not very well explained.Most of the topics he explores barely have anything to do with Star Trek. Chapter eight, for instance, about the Big Bang and evolution...

I don’t believe you have to be a physicist to understand this book, but advanced high school or undergraduate levels would definitely help. I had to refresh my brain of these concepts presented here often, and that can be frustrating and not as accessible as one would hope – but, like, it’s called “Physics of Startrek.” It’s in the title! So, uh, I sucked it up because I love Startrek. It’s ok to feel stupid now and then. That’s how we learn, right?Regardless of my poked and prodded intellectual...

A serious romp through the cosmology of Star Trek?The Physics of Star Trek is a light-hearted, informative, thoroughly entertaining and yet, paradoxically, entirely serious overview of the physics of Star Trek - arguably the longest-running, most popular, and most famous franchise in the history of television and movies. Dr Krauss regales us with essay after essay on what the writers got right, what they got wrong and how their imaginative brilliance sometimes made them look like prescient scien...

Fun little pop science book the main drawback of which is it does not require you to watch any Star Trek. Superficially mentioning couple of names and episodes it delves mainly in standard stuff of black holes, anthropic principle, alien life, time travel, string theory etc making it just another popular physics book.

Cool book if you like physics and star trek. It explains a lot of the scientific phenomena often mentioned in the show, as well as some things the show also gets wrong. Some of it is kind of dense to read, but i think the author does his best to explain it in a way that’s easier to understand.

A simple to read science book written from a 'Star Trek' stance. Educational and entertaining, Krauss has a skilful way of setting out complex concepts.

This book can be very interesting for someone who loves Star Trek as well as Physics. On several occasions episode titles are referenced to, and it could be interesting to pay attention to the matter dealt for that episode while also viewing it. These can also be directly navigated from within the index at the end of the book; I would certainly be doing the same.Section One deals with Inertial Dampers, Tractor Beams, Time Travel, Warp Speeds, Deflector Shields, Wormholes, and other Space-time St...

This is one of my favourite popular science books of all time. Unless of course time travel one day becomes possible and I travel back in time and discover a popular science book I like better before I read this one.Of course, The Physics of Star Trek is not really about Star Trek at all, and I was puzzled to see comments from reviewers who thought it was aimed at sci fi fans, or about what physicists like to watch on TV. Krauss is simply using the much loved (and often lovingly derided) series

One could almost believe this book is contemporary, with the recent Star Trek reboot movie bringing Trek back into popular culture, but alas, this book is from 1995. (It would have been really interesting to see what Krauss would have done with all that black hole sloppiness in J.J. Abram's movie.) But I finally got around to reading this, partially thanks to the TBR pile and Science reading challenges. It's not good to let books sit ignored for so long!Reading this book, as with most popular sc...

This book gives a good overview look at each of the major physics-oriented aspects of the Star Trek universe. Just how likely is it that we will develop transporters, food replicators, or (probably of greatest interest to most of us) holo suites? The answers are here in this well written layman's guide. This book is best suited for the curious, for those who wonder if these things will one day be possible. The authors take us down each path, sometimes determining that it will be possible, someda...

There's an interesting discussion of the physics of transporter beams in section 23.9 of Penrose's The Road to Reality . Among other things, Penrose points out that teleportation is, in principle, achievable by sufficiently ingenious use of quantum entanglement. It requires, however, that the original is destroyed, since an ability to create perfect copies would violate Heisenberg Uncertainty: by creating enough copies, you could pin down the quantum state as accurately as you wanted, an impo...

Sciency FictionRetracing the hundreds of episodes of the TV series, the authors explain the science behind the big and small gizmos (from the warp engine to the tricoder) known to any Star Trek fan. More than a scientific legitimation of the show, this book finds the good excuse to talk and vulgarize hard science in a very accessible and enjoyable way. “Trekker” (or “Trekkie”) knowledge may be useful to get the hidden episode reference, but it is not a strict requirement: any Science enthusiast

About sixteen years old, some of the commentary here features the present absence of later advances on exoplanets, etc. However, it is still an enjoyable romp through science-related plot points of Star Trek movies and series including Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Much of the focus is on relativistic realities around distance and time (the universe is bigger than even this cinematic universe suggests) as well as electromagnetic properties such as no one would really be able to see a phase blast

I really enjoyed getting this book for Christmas. I learned a lot about physics and what is possible in the Star Trek universe.

I've never seen before reading this book! I chose to watch two episodes whe I began to read it! Now I want to watch them all. Very well written and clear

Quite an enjoyable read, but somewhat inconsistent.The topics addressed in this book are very promising, but in order to actually get to the point you either need to have some previous knowledge or do a small research. As I am the former one, some explanations mentioned in this book really got on my nerve, for example, folding spacetime, which seems to be present in any book I read. Some topics were more advanced, some were basic, so it's not actually obvious for whom this book is intended. Plus...

I read the 2007 “fully revised and updated” version of The Physics of Star Trek. On the back cover of the paperback are these two sentences which clearly describe the book.“How does the Star Trek universe stack up against the real universe? Find out what the series creators got right — and wrong — about science in this fascinating guide.”One of the things that they got wrong was the holodeck. Yes, such things as holograms exist, but they are just images, not physical people and objects. This was...

This is an interesting read. Krauss hits on a lot of the main science from the shows and whether those are plausible at all. It's refreshing to know that a lot of it isn't that far from possibility. Our technology is just not there yet and may not be for a long time, but it's interesting to know how these things may be put into effect. He touches on subjects like transporters, food replicators, warp-drive, anti-matter, phasers, alien life, and more. The only thing about this book is that it is o...

I loved reading this book. It is perfect for a Trekkie who loves and appreciates science! Dr. Krauss (who we were fortunate to hear speak earlier this year) is an excellent writer and communicator of complex science to the casual "armchair" scientist. He covers many of the basic foundational technologies portrayed in the universe of Star Trek, and explains them and their implications in terms of proven laws and practices of physics and the the scientific method. A great read for even the casual

Readers know that today’s science fiction often becomes tomorrow’s science fact. But how does “Star Trek” stack up against the real universe? As readers explore the concepts, they will discover what science the creators of the series got right . . . and not so right . . . in the “Star Trek” future. Written by a theoretical physicist, readers will find much to ponder in the discussion of physics as it is known today and the suggestions of what it might one day become.For fans of the series as wel...

A fun and interesting book about how Star Trek physics might work. Or not work. Or require a black hole's worth of matter and energy to implement. Most interesting are perhaps the things one takes for granted: such as the crew not being crushed to strawberry jam when the Enterprise accelerates; or being able to scan someone on the planet surface with sufficient resolution to beam them back up again - as if sending them down in the first place were not hard enough. It also brings home just how bi...

While this book was interesting and described various phenomena in the field of physics, the title is misleading. The author used concepts from the Star Trek universe, in some cases only the word itself and then proceeded to explain in detail where Star Trek was either wrong or the concept couldn't be accomplished. In the few cases where Star Trek got something right, the author then went into detail as "not really".If the author wanted to explain various concepts in physics, I'm sure it could'v...

While I barely understood much of what this book contains, I did glean something from it: Star Trek writers were not making it all up. Roddenberry evidently had highly educated consultants right from the beginning. Some things, like transporting physical and organic matter, are difficult to fathom especially for a physicist. Krauss covers pretty much everything from sound unable to travel in the vacuum of space down to minute neutrino particles small enough to pass between atoms that make up our...

The various Star Trek series, with their science fiction setting and tech-heavy dialog and plot lines, provide an ideal jumping-off point to discuss the scientific principles illustrated - and often mangled - in the shows. That is precisely what Prof. Lawrence M. Krauss did in this book. In some instances, he would have been better off simply describing Albert Einstein's thought experiments, as his illustration of the same principles using Star Trek lore sometimes are less clear and incisive tha...