TV is the New Reading

TV magic vs. science, Pt. 2

In my column on Thursday I suggested that Luminol being so pervasive in modern detective fiction is part of the reason it is more easily acceptable as hard science.

Of course, people have been teleporting around in “Star Trek” since the 1960s. They’ve also been traveling many, many times the speed of light, hinting at a fundamental shift in our understanding of physics.

At this point, experiments have confirmed that as an object with any mass at all approaches the speed of light, it approaches infinite mass, and requires infinite energy to add any speed at all. Really, right now it seems like the only way warp speed could work is for the mass experience a conversion to energy – and then only a highly refined sort of theoretical energy expressed entirely of tachyons – and then only much faster than current observation suggests these particles might be traveling – that is, at such negligibly superliminal speeds as to be uninteresting in terms of either space travel or storytelling.

The best thing about teleportation on television, of course, is that it requires almost no effort at all. An actor stands in a location and then steps out of shot, and then steps into shot in a new set. Throw in a capable editing staff, some glitter and a sound effect and the mind accepts that they’ve dematerialized in one place and materialized in a new location.

Actual teleportation would require quite a lot more ingenuity and technical knowhow – including rematerializtion pods at the remote locations, which “Star Trek” has quite sensibly never bothered with, since it would severely hamper the storytelling.

Conversely, in Joss Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” series, all this hard work is done by magic, which fits right in with the nature of the show. The world of the Buffyverse involves mystical energies and higher and lower dimensions and demons and vampires and witches and magic and so forth. And of course, teleportation in the Buffyverse works exactly the same as it does on “Star Trek” – a flash of light and a set change.

Pop physics

Pop physicist Jennifer Ouellette last year released a book called “The Physics of the Buffyverse,” which is a truly entertaining read both for fans of the series or for anyone who is more than casually interested in physics, conventional, quantum and otherwise.

Really, I think any book containing the phrase “standard quantum teleportation” deserves at least a skim. Given that the first successful particle entanglement experimentation confirming action-at-a-distance was conducted in 1997, the fact that a laser beam was experimentally teleported early last year – not a full decade later – feels far from “standard.”

But as Ouellette demonstrates, “Buffy” is a sufficiently accessible take-off point to discuss all sorts of state-of-the-art scientific breakthroughs. Invisible girls open a discussion on cloaking technologies. Sparring with vampires raises a conversation about centers of gravity and effective force transfers. Buffy getting trapped in a time loop opens a well-phrased exploration of the nature of time and its more relative properties. And Ouellette’s discussion of the weird subatomic world of quantum physics is as accessible as any I’ve read.

I won’t go so far as to say if you’re a fan of “Buffy” you’ll enjoy this book, which is basically a breezily written science text. As it happens, while the book references events and characters in the show, it is not “authorized, licensed or endorsed” by anyone involved with the television series. However, in her dedication of the book – “To the fandom” – Ouellette, herself a long-time “Buffy” fan, affirms that the references she draws from the show are ones that “Buffy” fans are going to be very familiar with.

The science itself is well researched and reasonably well documented. You don’t have to be a trained scientist to understand what she’s talking about – although a couple episodes of NOVA and skimming some Brian Greene wouldn’t hurt at all. But a good basic curiosity about the nature of reality and the state of the art in scientific inquiry is a good enough basis for diving into this interesting little book.

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

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