Star Trek all the time begins with a set of numbers. Are they random?

QUESTION Star Trek all the time begins with a Captain’s Log and a set of numbers. Are the numbers significant or are they random?

These numbers are Star Trek’s relationship system generally known as Star Dates. These aren’t coherent all through the Star Trek Universe, though later collection have imposed primary logic upon them.

In the unique tv collection, starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, creator Gene Roddenberry tried to impose a imprecise chronological order. But delays in manufacturing of sure episodes and poor enhancing of scripts quickly meant that the dates had been out of sync.

According to Roddenberry: ‘When we started making episodes, we’d use a Star Date similar to 2317 one week, after which per week later once we made the subsequent episode we’d transfer the Star Date as much as 2942, and so forth. 

Unfortunately, the episodes weren’t aired in the identical order through which we filmed them. So we started to get complaints from the viewers, asking, ‘How come one week the Star Date is 2891, the subsequent week it is 2337, after which the week after it is 3414?’

There was a get-out-of-jail card, although, which additionally highlights the issue with Star Dates. In area, the Star Date is a operate not solely of time however of the ship’s place within the Galaxy and its velocity. 

Star Dates progress usually whereas the ship stays in a single place, however warp distorts time, disrupting any significant chronological order.

Nevertheless, later collection tried to impose some order. For Star Trek: The Next Generation, the present’s creators devised a components with an affordable stage of continuity. 

So a Star Date grew to become a five-digit quantity adopted by a decimal level and yet another digit, for instance 42125.9. 

The first digit of the Star Date was all the time 4, which stood for the twenty fourth century. The second determine signifies the season quantity. 

The further three digits had been to progress inconsistently in the course of the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal level could check with a specific day or a part of a day.

The components was adopted by subsequent collection similar to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager with the caveat: ‘Because Star Dates within the twenty fourth century are primarily based on a posh mathematical components, a exact correlation to Earth-based relationship techniques shouldn’t be attainable.’

Andrew Sampson, Dunstable, Beds.

QUESTION Is it true that there aren’t any bridges over the Amazon river?

Despite being greater than 4,300 miles in size, the Amazon has no bridges. That’s although the river flows via Peru, Colombia and Brazil.

In distinction, greater than 50 bridges span the Nile, greater than 100 bridges have been constructed throughout China’s Yangtze previously 30 years and there are 138 bridges over the Thames, which is however a stream in comparison with the Amazon.

However there is no such thing as a specific want for an Amazon bridge, and any such would pose vital engineering challenges.

The Amazon largely meanders via sparsely populated areas, that means there are few roads of any significance to attach. Cities and cities that border the river have already got well-established ferry hyperlinks for folks and items.

Building a bridge would show extraordinarily expensive, because the banks of the Amazon are marshy, with tender soils. A bridge would necessitate a string of entry viaducts supported by a number of arches, every with deep foundations.

Seasonal adjustments within the river’s course and concomitant adjustments in water depth would make design and development extraordinarily difficult.

The Ponte Rio Negro which crosses the Negro River was accomplished in 2011. This connects Manaus and Iranduba, and it’s so far the one main bridge that crosses any Amazon tributary.

Mrs S. I. Freeman, Portsmouth.

QUESTION Why had been Henry VIII’s guard generally known as the Gentleman Pensioners?

The Gentleman Pensioners had been an elite troop of combating males, all sons of the Aristocracy. The title got here from the unique sense of pension, a ‘cost for providers’, particularly ‘an everyday reward or annual cost out of a will or benefice’.

The phrase was used on this means from the 14th century onwards, having been derived from the Old French pension (‘cost’, ‘lease’). 

The sense of a ‘common cost in consideration of previous service’ comes from the sixteenth century, and a common outdated age pension from 1908.

The Honourable Band Of Gentleman Pensioners was first shaped because the Troop of Gentlemen in 1509 when shaped by King Henry VIII to behave because the King’s private bodyguard. 

They accompanied Henry to France in 1513 and took half within the second Battle of Guinegate (higher generally known as the Battle of the Spurs), and had been current on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a summit between Henry VIII and Francis I of France, in 1520.

During the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts, they had been below oath to reside inside 12 miles of the King and labored in shifts, with round 20 Gentleman Pensioners in attendance on the monarch at anyone time.

They final fought in battle in the course of the English Civil War. A troop of fifty Pensioners had been on the Battle of Edgehill (1642) below Sir William Howard. There to watch the battle had been the 12-year-old Prince of Wales (the longer term Charles II) and the nine-year-old Duke of York (the longer term James II).

At one stage a Parliamentary soldier broke via the Royalist line. Sir John Hinton, the King’s doctor minding the boys, was compelled to intercept him. The princes had been saved when Miles Matthews, a Gentleman Pensioner, rode again and killed the attacker together with his poleaxe.

The Gentleman Pensioners continued to function the Monarch’s closest bodyguards till 1834, once they grew to become Her Majesty’s Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms.

They nonetheless present safety to the Monarch on ceremonial events. They had been additionally the primary royal bodyguards to face vigil over Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin as she lay in state in Westminster Hall.

Kenneth Holman, Bath, Somerset.

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