It turns out Jean-Luc Picard was an even better starship helmsman than the writers knew. A physicist has gone through the details of a warp-speed trick from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and found a subtlety the show missed. But instead of a plot hole, the detail he found actually makes the maneuver more impressive… as well as a great opportunity to teach about a lesser-known feature of the theory of relativity.
Níckolas de Aguiar Alves, a physicist at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil, first watched Next Generation as a master’s student. When he got to the episode “The Battle” in the show’s first season, the plot reminded him of his relativity coursework.
