"Star Trek has always had a million mistakes," said Sylvanie Wallington, a third-year graduate student in astronomy.

Grogin agreed.

"A lot of the problems you could cite are problems that have plagued the series from early on," he said.

Foremost among these problems, professors said, is that of traveling faster than the speed of light. In the Star Trek movies, the Enterprise routinely soars through space at unrealistic "warp speeds."

Professor of Astronomy John P. Huchra said the series has always encouraged a willing suspension of scientific disbelief.

"We don't believe anything can travel faster than the speed of light, but I would love to think we could," he said.

Travel beyond the speed of light is not compatible with known laws of physics, Grogin said.

"All we can say is whatever is known now," he said. "Our best frame-work does not permit travel faster than the speed of light."

Not only is such rapid interstellar trekking impossible, but the Star Trek characters' reliance on molecular transportation must also be taken with a grain of salt, skeptics say.

And when Captain Kirk says "Beam me up," the device Scotty uses to carry out his order is not only scientifically unfounded but hazardous, graduate students said.

"We know you can't really transform every particle into energy," Riess said. "You could never be able to break a person apart and put them together again because you would lose information."

Naysayers say even one of Star Trek's most fundamental ideas--the existence of aliens--is grounded in potentially faulty scientific reasoning.

"Of course, we haven't found any alien life yet," Grogin said, "and alien life that is out there would have to be light years away."

Still, all scientists are not spoil sports. Despite its inaccuracies, the Star Trek series is overall scientifically sound, professors said.

"It has a good scientific flavor," Riess said. "It definitely has some scientific impossibilities to it, but you have to be pretty picky to pay lot of attention to it."

The terminology used in the movies is accurate as well.

"They use a lot of scientific terminology and give a scientific feel to the movie," said Ian Dell'Antonio, a third-year graduate student in astronomy. "The movie just wouldn't fly if they had to stick to scientific fact. It would be a lot more dull.