After watching the original Star Trek series and the Next Generation, I wanted to discuss some of the technology that inspired a generation and helped to innovate some of the technology we have today and will soon see in the future.
1 – The producers of the show had to come up with the idea of how the crew of the Enterprise could get up and down to each planet they visited. They couldn't afford to have the crew board a shuttle and fly down n land on each surface, it wasn't practical with the technology that was available. In essence it was a plot saver for the first pilot episode. Beaming technology has appeared in Sci-fi literature for over 50 years before star trek, and in an interview with Gene Roddenberry who discussed the cost of landing on a planet was too expensive, simply said. 'Lets beam them down' after watching the original 'The Fly' movie. And thus helped set star trek firmly in pop culture history.
Today, scientist have tried to figure out how to 'beam' an object from one location to another. Turning matter into energy and back again.
Move on another 50 or so years, scientist are starting to understand how this could be achieved. In July 2017, a group of Chinese scientists successfully teleported a particle from the surface to a satellite in space. Only a photon which is a light emitting subatomic particle was teleported from the Gobi Desert to the Chinese satellite Micius over a distance of 320 miles. This set a new record for teleportation distance. And the first to transport to space.
But to teleport a full person is light years away. (yup. That was a pun). The amount of physical memory needed to do this is astronomical. In Star Trek the next Generation. Its explained that a million kiloquads (about 1million terabytes) of memory storage is needed to achieve this. When in reality that number would be closer to 20 million, trillion terabytes, more memory and storage ever made on earth, including ram, SSD, HDD, floppy drives. Everything. So until I can by a yottabyte drive for my pc. We are along way off the ability to do this.
2 – In school we are told that nothing can go faster than light, yet in star trek and similar space born sci-fi shows it shows us that light speed is a barrier similar to the speed of sound that can be broken just like a jet fighter.
After scientist leaned about the existence of gravity waves, they discovered it is possible to expand and contract space its self. In the sub atomic world we can achieve speeds near the speed of light and in some instances beyond. This has been done at the LHC in Geneva, but in the Macroscopic world, cars, planes, shuttles, we are pathetically slow. Given enough energy and a powerful enough electromagnet, it is possible to contract space ahead of an object and expand it behind. Pushing and pulling it through space and cancelling out light speed altogether.. we wouldn't be travelling faster than light per-say. We would simply be altering space to go beyond light speed. The problem being the energy requirements. In Star Trek they use a matter and Antimatter combustion through dilithium crystals to create a high energy plasma which is funnelled into the nasals and thus creates the warp bubble. We don't have dilithium crystals or able to produce antimatter on a scale needed. But energy concerns aside. Mathematically, a warp drive is possible.
To this end, NASA's brainiacs have been working on how this could be achieved, to the point that there are now several papers released by NASA showing us how, as well as renders on what a ship would look like if it could create a warp bubble.
Until we learn more about antimatter / negative matter and dark energy, how to harness it and do it safely, it's estimated it would be another 100 to 200 years before this can be done.
3 – In the episode 'Balance of Terror' we are introduced to the Romulans. And when you view their ship on the screen, it appears to vanish. Throughout the Star Trek TV and Film series we see this a lot. From the Romulans, Klingons, and even The Enterprise. This cloaking technology could have huge advantages. This has even been used in other Sci-fi and Fantasy shows and movies such as harry potter, Predator, Avengers and forbidden planet. In 'the Undiscovered Country' it is shown that this tech is not without its flaws. But how could this be achieved.
Today scientist are experimenting with something called meta materials. Unlike fabric, it is a man made material similar to plastic/metal which in turn effect a narrow band of light waves and micro waves. But without heating up your dinner. An object is placed in the centre of this material and when observed the object appears to be gone when all that has happened is the light has been shifter around the object, rendering it invisible.
At the University of Rochester in New York, have also made a cloak called the Rochester Cloak. Using readily available materials it uses lenses to bend light around any object you put in the middle.
A long way off from cloaking a federation ship, but it is a step in the right direction.
4 – Imagine having a hand held device that could scan your surroundings, tell you if a person is close to death or what disease they have, be able to map an unknown cave system or scan the composition of the rock wall in the cave... sounds cool right. We are talking of course about the Tri-Corder.
Star Trek loves to use this tech in their shows, from the medical ones to the regular ones when figuring out the unknown.
Today, we have similar items in use thanks to Roddenberry idea of this nifty hand held tech.
We now have heart monitors, pacemakers that read tell you what is going on, abnormalities, rate and so on. This information can be read real time by a Wi-Fi connected computer. (I have one. Its awesome how they do it). There are search and rescue drones that can map a collapsed building and send that information back to a user and even ones that can read material composition. But there isn't one yet that has all of these combined.
Dr. Paradiso from MIT, inspired by the Tri-Corder has gone and built one in 2012. it isn't as sophisticated as the shows but it can map, tell you the air quality, tracks movement, temperature and more. Modern day phones can do similar things as well but much more limited.
So in another 30 – 50 years, the modern smart phone will become even more smarter and will help us even further with exploration, and health.
5 – In the Next Generation show, we see in the first episode the Holodeck, or the Holographic Environment Simulator to give it its full title. Where Riker finds Data trying to whistle in a tree.
Just as the Games we play today, the Holodeck is designed to help entertain, train and help the crew unwind when shore leave isn't an option. It works on a principle of volumetric holographic images that are indistinguishable from the real thing, then that it surrounded by an invisible force field that you can touch. It can also fool your depth perception, smell and even weather.
We are seeing a boom in Virtual reality products you can buy for as little as £10 that is used with your phone, up to £5-600 for a complete headset. In the gaming industry VR is now the new goal for game developers. Creating super realistic environments to explore with a VR headset. In the mid 90's Nintendo attempted such a device for the consumer with the virtual boy, but failed to live up to expectations. Now however games like Alien Isolation are created with VR in mind so you can immerse yourself into the game and then go and shit your pants too as an added bonus.
A Company called Euclideon have made what is essentially the worlds first hologram room. Current computers use polygons to create an image, which in older games is more obvious, ever thought that object always seem to look flat when there supposed to be round? That's polygons. What Euclideon have done is use something called 'Point Cloud Data' Floating atoms, which decreases graphic power needed dramatically and makes in game object look as if they would in real life. So the Graphical power can be almost limitless. Using a system similar to the Xbox Kinect, it can monitor your body movements, and using a holographic system similar to that of the Voxibox but using PCD instead of polygons creates images you can walk round and use. You need to check it out..... its fucking awesome. All they need is a force field and we have a holodeck.
impressive huh?
A bonus thing. Without the comunicator in the original series, we might not have had mobile phones.
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Thanks for reading
@TechMojo
Images...
http://www.manic-expression.com/top-5-craziest-star-trek-transporter-malfunctions/
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/164326-nasa-discusses-its-warp-drive-research-prepares-to-create-a-warp-bubble-in-the-lab
https://thescopepopculturescience.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/seeing-our-way-to-invisibility.html
https://trekmovie.com/2017/07/19/star-trek-discovery-tricorder-teased/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a8813/why-dont-we-have-holodecks-15306311/