How Star Trek Changed the World

Finally, trekkies are validated. Even NASA admits that the futuristic musings of Star Trek’s writers provided a blue print for today’s inventions, something we fans have known from the beginning. What’s not to believe about:

• phasers
• transporters
• photon torpedoes
• universal translators
• communicators
• deflector beams
• tractor beams
• hyposprays

Look at this:

Best Of and Worst Of Sci Fi Futures

If you’re interested in an intellectual journey into what could be, this list from the Discovery Channel covers the best futures imagined by Hollywood. It includes:

1. Star Trek
2. Planet of the Apes
3. The Time Machine (the HG Wells version)
4. Logan’s Run
5. Soylent Green
6. Gattaca
7. 2001
8. Fahrenheit 451
9. 1984
10. Blade Runner

For more details, read, Top 10 Sci-Fi Futures : Science Top 10s: Science Channel

Entertainment Weekly made their own list of the worst sci fi futures. There are 21, but I’ll tease you with the first 10:

1. I Am Legend
2. Clockwork Orange
3. Brazil
4. Road Warrior
5. Escape From New York
6. Logan’s Run
7. 12 Monkeys
8. Metropolis
9. The Matrix (that must be a mistake)
10. Blade Runner (best-worst. The movie’s agents must understand that any news is welcome)

Is it Real or is it a Hologram? Star Trek, Here We Come

Star Trek strikes again. Holograms are here, whether we know it or not. Wii is just the start. I predict within five years, holograms will be normal in our world. Whether it’s virtual reality, simulated reality, or the real thing, will we know the difference?

What’s a hologram? Watch this video from Tokyo labs:

The Long Tail of Star Trek in Education

Because of my research into artificial intelligence and my geek habits (see About Me here and My Story here), I’m often accused of living in a sci-fi world. My answer: More of us should. Don’t take my word for it. Here are some facts:

• A 1993 study from Purdue University found that children learn more about science from STAR TREK than from any other source.
• The Star Trek appeal–to explore new worlds–motivates many otherwise non-science folk to get involved and learn. Look at SETI (the organized search for extra-terrestrials)–with over three million users, it’s the largest joint computing effort in existence
• Why is Star Trek so popular? Because people like to imagine the unknown. Curiosity is one of our signature human characteristics. It’s never going away until we become extinct. Star Trek’s presentation of transporters, event horizons, invisibility cloaks, inspire youngsters to grow up and invent them. Invisibility (thanks to metamaterials) is just around the corner of our imagination, coming to a reality near you (read this)
• The transporter effect can be accomplished by a motivated student for his high school science fair. Here’s what you do:
  • Fill a canister with water.
  • Add glitter and shine a light through it.
  • Stir briskly and tape.
  • Film the scene, first with the actor, then without. (Or vice versa)
  • Transfer the scene to tape, and use video technology to matte the glitter over the actor. 4) Use a video wipe to ‘streak down’ the glitter.

One more amazing scientific anomaly that kids can understand.

• The NASA motto is “To boldly go..” as in Star Trek.

My mind is open like a parachute. Try it. It’s not as scary as it sounds.

The Science of Star Trek

I’ve been wrapped up in metamaterials, which are the real-life science behind Star Trek’s cloaking devices. These amazing devices do exactly what allows a Romulan warship to become invisible. More recently, they were used by Harry Potter when he tried to hide (remember the scene where there was nothing but the train aisle until Harry appeared under a carpet-like cloak that looked exactly like… the train aisle).

That’s not the only Star Trek science that’s come to fruition in the 45 years since the human mind dreamt up the future as it could be. Here’s a run down (abridged from US News and World Report) of:

• phasers
• transporters
• photon torpedoes
• universal translators
• communicators
• deflector beams
• tractor beams
• hyposprays

Phasers

Weapons that act like Star Trek phasers have been announced in recent years, but not manufactured. Be patient.

Transporters

Great strides over the past decade or so, but we aren’t even close. Yet.

Cloaking devices

There is so much research into the metamaterials that will make this possible, it’s almost become mainstream. I’ve been studying it as a plot twist in an upcoming novel and now wonder if it’ll be too mundane by the time I get the book written. (see this and this and this post)

Photon torpedoes

…which are torpedoes loaded with antimatter. Still quite far in the future as we’re still struggling with the concept and purpose of ‘antimatter’.

Universal Translators

In a webstore near you. The more you spend on one, the more reliable.

Communicators

Available everywhere. Thank you, Star Trek.

Deflector shields

Every time we figure out how to deflect a missile (or rocket), we figure out a better missile (or rocket). This might be never-ending.

Tractor Beams

Logically, this one sounds simple, but is not yet available. Since most vehicles include metals, it’s reasonable we could tractor them with a strong enough magnet. Just hasn’t happened yet.

Hyposprays

These were patented in the 1960’s, but aren’t widely available. Think of the EPI Pen. Why don’t we deliver more meds in this manner? Your guess is as good as mine.

Star Trek Wins Again–Fiction Becomes Reality

So often, science fiction predates reality. Their whimsical musings become today’s science. Here’s another.

Transparent metal hints at nature of planets’ cores

Transparent aluminum, a sci-fi material brought to 20th century Earth by the crew of The Enterprise in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, turns out to exist after all – if you see in X-rays.

To create this exotic state of matter, researchers at the FLASH facility in Hamburg, Germany, took a thin piece of aluminium foil and blasted it with an X-ray laser that can generate about 10 million gigawatts of power per square centimetre. (more)

Startrek Science is no Longer Fiction

For those of you wow-ed by the invisibility properties of metamaterials, read this. Yet another University is figuring out how to make them not just hide the truth, but a whole lot more:

Device Makes Objects Invisible In Certain Light Conditions

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going, going gone

If you’re a mathematician, here’s your proof:

Mathematics Of Cloaking: New Analysis Improves Methods To Render Objects Invisible

ScienceDaily (Dec. 26, 2006) — The theorists who first created the mathematics that describe the behavior of the recently announced “invisibility cloak” have revealed a new analysis that may extend the current cloak’s powers, enabling it to hide even actively radiating objects like a flashlight or cell phone.

Allan Greenleaf, professor of mathematics at the University of Rochester, working with colleagues around the globe, has announced a mathematical theory that predicts some strange goings on inside the cloak—and that what happens inside is crucial to the cloak’s effectiveness.

In October, David R. Smith, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University, led a team that used a circular cloaking device to successfully bend microwaves around a copper disk as if the disk were invisible. In 2003, however, Greenleaf and his colleagues had already developed the mathematics of invisibility.

“We were working on improving the mathematics behind tumor detection,” says Greenleaf. “In the final section to one paper, we spelled out a worst-case scenario where a tumor could be undetectable. We then wrote a couple of additional articles describing when this could happen. At the time, we didn’t think further about it because it seemed extremely unlikely that any tumor would be covered with the necessary material to be hidden that way.”

This past summer, however, Greenleaf and his colleagues learned about a paper that researchers at Duke and Imperial College had published in the journal Science, which used nearly identical equations to give a theoretical proposal for a cloaking device. Once Greenleaf and his colleagues saw that their results could also be used to show how to “hide” an object, they decided to analyze and improve the proposed cloaking device, using the techniques they had developed in their earlier work. They knew that a crucial question would be: What was going on inside the cloaked region?

(click for full article)