“The Physics of My Little Pony” - ? · 9:27pm Nov 9th, 2013
Eighteen years ago, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss wrote, The Physics of Star Trek, an explanation, of sorts, of the speculative science behind warp drives, inertial dampers and matter transfer beams; as often as not explaining why such things just wouldn't work. The book was an unexpected best-seller, which surprised the world of popular science writing. No one expected such a nerdy title to have such wide appeal. But turned out plenty of readers wanted to know about the workings of the warp drive.
The Star Trek script writers, like with most science fiction, tried to make the science behind the technology sound plausible (or at least conceivable), while not letting a minor thing like physical impossibility get in the way of a good plot line. Krauss's book worked so well because the Star Trek universe provided an excellent focus for a wider discussion of physics and cosmology. His previous book Fear of Physics had been a well written account of the subject, and how physicists think, but it lacked anything to really engage the average reader.
Publishers soon realised that The Physics of... - or more often - The Science of [insert name of popular film/book/TV series] was a winning formula. We have since seen a steady stream of such titles, few of which have come close to the quality of the original. The common tactic was for a professional science writer to make a list of all the science topics referred to in the canon (often with a very tenuous link), and write a lucid account of each. The result being a perfectly good explanation of the science for anyone interested, but nothing truly original or inspiring.
As a result many hardcore science fans learnt to avoid such titles. But it would be wrong to dismiss the genre, as it has produced many great ideas. Popular science writing is usually about trying to find a new way to tell an old story. There are no shortage of good books explaining relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology, evolution and such topics. An aspiring science writer has to find a new way to do it... How? Well one starting point is to think, 'how can we mix science with...?'
Often the silliest ideas, based on the least scientific source material, have lead to good books. Hence we have titles on the Science of Harry Potter and Science of Discworld. The confusing, and sometimes inaccurate way in which they present science, is offset by the fact that they can draw in a wider audience and spread the message that science is cool.
Which leads to the question, if any publisher were crazy enough to publish a Physics of MLP, what form should it take?
Nice to see the nod to The Science of the Disc books. Thankfully I think they manage to buck the usual "science of" style books and I can definitely agree, while it can be interesting, many of them are rather sub par.
A science of MLP book to me could work in either fashion though I'd prefer if they took the Disc route and have chapters alternating between a story and science.
As an aside you may enjoy the blog Law and the Multiverse
I just tried the new blogsearchtool and found that under physics, my blogpost about the physics of UnicornTeleportation comes before any of your posts about Physics.
About the subject of this post, the main problem is figuring out magic. Unfortunately, once one figures it out, it is tempting to use it as an explanation for everything. When I wrote about the Physics of UnicornTeleportation, I avoided this trap as much as possible :
Yes, Unicorn cannot teleport without magic, but I framed magic as a way of channeling energy —— ¡whence, I have idea! Mostly, the post is about the limitations Relativity imposes on UnicornTeleportation.