Here's a fun thought: Does the TV show Star Trek exist in the Star Trek universe?
Probably not, but this raises a lot of cool questions to geek out over!
https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/does-scifi-exist-in-a-scifi-universe
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[And yes, that's me in front of the ACTUAL ENTERPRISE MODEL USED IN TOS]
@badastro It depends which Star Trek universe you'e talking about.
We have good reason to suspect that it does in JJ Abrams interpretation. (Which I personally find ridiculous, even stupid, but that's not relevant here.) We can surmise that from the fact that Young Kirk plays a bit of Beastie Boys while cruising around. Beastie Boys had a song, "Intergalactic", which names "Mister Spock" in the lyrics.
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@badastro 2/ It might be more relevant to ask, does anything like Star Trek exist in our future?
There do seem to be some cargo-cult efforts towards that, such as the obviously contrived Space Force logo.
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@badastro 3/ That said, logically Star Trek the show could not exist in the real Star Trek universe, for the reason that, as a wise friend of mine once put it, "The future is ideoplastic." You cannot accurately predict the future, because merely 'knowing' it changes it. The future will inevitably be different from what is predicted, merely BECAUSE it was predicted.
Even if we obtain all the key trappings of Star Trek, whatever we end up with won't resemble it any meaningful way.
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Phil Plait
WesDym