November 7, 2016 8:42 pm

Tomorrow, the StarTalk All-Stars boldly go where they’ve never gone before

Astrophysicist Charles Liu has been our guest on StarTalk more often than anyone else. (FYI, Mike Massimino is second.)

So it is with great pleasure that we welcome Charles, a major Star Trek geek, to his first time in the host seat tomorrow night, for StarTalk All-Stars at Star Trek Mission NY – The Science of Star Trek.

His “Number One” for the evening (hey, it is all about Star Trek, after all) is an equally experienced StarTalk veteran co-host, also enjoying his own “first”: believe it or not, Chuck Nice has never appeared live on stage at a StarTalk event before. (He’s also a lifelong Trekker.)

Sticking with an evening of firsts, we’ve got returning guest astrophysicist Summer Ash, who is appearing for the first time since becoming our newest StarTalk All-Stars host.

Joining these veterans on stage is Andrew Fazekas, an astronomy journalist and the author of Star Trek: The Official Guide to Our Universe: The True Science behind the Starship Voyages.

They all came together for our panel at the Star Trek: Mission New York 50^th anniversary convention, to a packed room filled with eager Trekkies and Trekkers, to celebrate our favorite science fiction franchise, and to separate that fiction from science fact.

With three self-proclaimed Star Trek experts and an extra astrophysicist, just for fun, it’s all on the table to dissect, analyze, and geek out over: warp drive, phasers, transporters, replicators, subspace communication, stardates, the “galactic barrier,” cosmic strings and quantum filaments, gravitons, and even excess baryons. And our panel uses Star Trek’s science, and our attendees’ questions, to also explore the real science that pervades the show: from the location of the Alpha Quadrant, to the physics of artificial gravity, to the eventual fate of Voyager 1. You’ll hear about the Alcubierre Drive, first described in Miguel Alcubierre’s 1994 paper, which propose the idea that something in an “asymmetric bubble” could move through space faster than the speed of light. And of course, you can bet that any panel about a show about “seeking out new life and new civilizations” will explore Proxima b, the exoplanet in the goldilocks zone around Proxima Centauri, a star that’s about 4.25 light years from Earth.

In other words, even if you’re not into Star Trek, this episode of StarTalk All-Stars is filled with the kind of science we know StarTalk fans like you love.

Please join us Tuesday at 7pm EST for StarTalk All-Stars at Star Trek Mission NY – The Science of Star Trek, right here on our website, or on iTunesPodcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher and TuneIn. And of course, subscribers can watch or listen commercial-free on Star Talk All-Access.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simons