Star Trek

Celt

here's a good one -

How much of star trek is science fact (or at least theoretically possible) and how much is science fiction?

Kali

Transporters:

Hmm theres a hella lot of research being put into transporters at the moment, with limited success (mostly 3d scanning and reproduction rather than actual molecule diosplacement as per the series). Whether actual molecule transportation is feasibly possible would be a good debate (i mean where is say a persons body stored between its source and its destination and where does the actual matter at the source go?)

Holodecks:

VR... I haven't looked into or read anything about this in the past two/three years so don't know what developments are happening, but complete submersion into a video game or other scene is fully possible with specialised equipement.
Its not quite holodecks and their projected 3d images but close enough.

Replicators:
Would probably need some sort of matter/anti-matter knowledge to create energy/matter and therefore a substance of any mass out of nothing.
Vending machines will have to do for the time being

Communicators:
mobile phones + gps.

err what else..
cloaking, warp drives, tricorders, i'll let someone else tackle those

DeVore

Remember in the 70's doors that swooshed open and closed when you approached them were fantastic. Now we look at the StarTrek ones and giggle...

Tricorders? My iPaq looks and acts similarly (I can connect to the net from it, look up facts and store information. Ok it doesnt scan for life signs but its only the 32mb model )

Microwaves would have been "magic" in the 70's.


DeV.

Hobbes

Transporters

Wired did an article on this. There are experiments currently ongoing. Currently it would be possible to completly disassemble a person however putting them back together is the other issue.

Also if teleporters were to work then there would be serious religious implications as were would the soul go if you could recreate a person right down to the sub-atomic level.

Holodecks

If they do ever create them it will wipe out most of the population before they destroy them.

Some of the VR stuff I've seen is pretty cool, ranging from an enclosed bubble that you walk to full screen room with tactile response, however moving in the room is still done via some kind of interface.

Probably the best thing to do is have some kind of suit with biofeedback which can mimic touching stuff, and then prehaps some kind of nitrogen curtain to create objects in the room.

Communicators

My Palm VII is like a tricorder It's got wireless and I can do thing like ask for weather or nearest resturant and it automatically knows where I am and relays information back about my environment.

Ok, not really a PADD but it's getting there.

Warp Drive

IBM actually created a warp jump in the lab however I think they only moved one 1 atom or molecule or electron (really can't remember).

Some of the stuff IBM is doing it pretty trekky too. They have a techTV here and they had some guy from IBM demonstrating a CPU they are working on which works by switching atoms. Still years away from being in a computer but still pretty impressive.

Cloud

Two books on this (only one of which I have [Metaphysics]):

The Metaphysics of Star Trek (by Richard Hanley)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465045480/o/qid=994007445/sr=2-4/ref=aps_sr_b_2_1/102-4855334-8778505

The Physics of Star Trek (by Lawrence M. Krauss, Stephen Hawking)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060977108/o/qid=994007470/sr=2-1/ref=aps_sr_b_1_1/102-4855334-8778505

J.
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[This message has been edited by Cloud (edited 01-07-2001).]

TwoShedsJackson

That Lawrence Krauss book is pretty good. As regards Transporters, he does point out that the problem is that you would have to disassemble the person atom by atom, then store the data of each atom and how every single atom relates to another at that point in time.

Then they would be reassembled at the other end. Simple eh? One drawback - assuming hard drives have a capacity of 5Gb, you would need a stack of hard drives from Earth to 1/3 the centre of the Milky Way to store the data for one human

Hendrex_Ivy

I saw an episode where there was a perfect(ish) race that had cool things. One was a musical instrument that played anything that you thought.

This means that we're getting nearer!

Bard

There's quite a good book by Lawrence Krauss called "The Physics of Star Trek" which goes into quite some detail about the scientific possibilities and impossibilities of certain features of the series, from the transporters and replicators to the way that the computer always patches comm-badge calls through to the correct person from when the comm badge is first touched...

ISBN number 0 583 51149 X - if you're interested...

Oh by the way... the computer does that comm badge thing as follows:

Let's say Picard calls Riker... well the computer listens to the first words he says, hears him say "Picard to Commander Riker" then sends that sound back in time (???) to Riker's comm badge...

Well that's how Paramount explained it... apparently...

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Bard

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Níl aon tóin tinn mar do tóin tinn féin.

Fidelis

They do include a huge amount of ambiguous terms, temporal mechanics, quantum flux, spacial anomalies and the likes.

Although they always seem to find a way around any proper physics by utilising the tachyon emitter

_CreeD_

The underlying problem with Teleporting is not whether we will eventually have the technology to scan matter/energy completely, or even the titanic amounts of power needed to re-assemble them. All this will come with time. However what you're basically doing is not transporting anything but recording, destroying and building again. The original dies, and a perfect copy that believes itself to be the original pops up somewhere else. All may seem normal to everyone else, even the copy, but the basic fact is the original bites the bullet when it's done.

Much more probable, since we're likely to have this up an running way before we can pass the speed of light, is to use it as a transmitter system. ie. You send out a ship equipped with the components to build a receiver and energy source/regenerator. When it arrives at it's destination it links back to the home-base, who then send it recordings of the people needed for the mission (This is more efficient than sending copies with the ship as much will have changed in the time such journeys will take), these are created and the mission served without need to kill the original hopefully. Basically remote instantaneous cloning.
As for the need for the originals to be somewhere relatvely nearby SAP I think again it's more likely you'd have built a synthetic form (I hate to say robot since chances are we'll have bypassed pure mechanics by then) that you can plug into from afar and use it to interact with the world at a distance. The ultimate VR.

I think the warp-jump referred to was the discovery of seemingly instantaneous travel of an electron between to points separated by a new material. It's not warp, seemingly instantaneous just equates to we don't have anything fast enough to track it, or can't identify the energy patterns that were involved in the transfer.
Warp, wormholes etc. are interesting ideas but I think they don't have much merit at the moment. There was a program on discovery a few nights ago about all this and it tried to explain just how wormholes would work, it was so stupid. They maintained that just because they could form a 'hole' on space that forming and what they thought of as an identical hole somewhere else would let you pop through. Voila.
I think if we were to map Phsyics as we first mapped the world such topics will have to have 'Beyond this hole there be Star Trek (and maybe the odd dragon)'.


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Ps. To observe Devore's request, these are jusy my own ramblings.

[This message has been edited by _CreeD_ (edited 01-07-2001).]

Bluehair

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Let's say Picard calls Riker... well the computer listens to the first words he says, hears him say "Picard to Commander Riker" then sends that sound back in time (???) to Riker's comm badge...

Well that's how Paramount explained it... apparently...

[/B]</font>

The version i heard of this (and somewhat more realistic!) is that the computer *records* Picard saying "Picard to Commander Riker" then plays it back to Riker. It would result in a slight delay in response but would be much more easily implimented!

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When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges.

Kolodny

I saw a BBC show a couple of years back about how science fiction has influenced current technology. They showed a version of the 'hypospray' from Star Trek - predicting that it will eventually replace the needle as a safe and more hygenic way of injecting into the bloodstream.

Also mentioned was prototype for a kind of medical 'tricorder' that can help to determine a patients condition using some kind of radio wave/gamma technology (can't really remember how it was supposed to work - sorry) - It would be used for example, to get the right medical assistance prepared for people trapped in car wrecks etc.

As Spock would say: "Fascinating".

SweetBirdOfTruth

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Kolodny:
I saw a BBC show a couple of years back about how science fiction has influenced current technology. They showed a version of the 'hypospray' from Star Trek - predicting that it will eventually replace the needle as a safe and more hygenic way of injecting into the bloodstream.
</font>

there was a thing about this in one of the papers over the wkend, the absurder i think, an injection-device that doesn't pierce the skin. they reckon they've still got a couple years developemnt ahead

SweetBirdOfTruth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4213573,00.html

Kaidos

I read there is some experimentation with Tractor beams at the moment, although they are only able to move atoms or some such small amount of matter

Hobbes

Oh and phasers are also have been in test for some time now.

It fires a laser beam which ionizes the air and then fires an electric current along the beam. Supposed to be able to stun people and knock out cars.

anichon

Phasers!

where?

I want one

have you any links to anything about this...

satchmo

With all those fancy gadgets, why do consoles on the bridge explode with such regularity? You'd think they'd be able to fix those plasma conduits too, they're always rupturing.

_CreeD_

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Jazz:
With all those fancy gadgets, why do consoles on the bridge explode with such regularity? You'd think they'd be able to fix those plasma conduits too, they're always rupturing. </font>

Conclusive Proof that OEM PC companies survived the nuclear winter.

Gerry

lol creed.

Cerberus

Do you know whats funny,
when ever something doesn't work in voyager they first of all try to "reverse the polarity". Doesn't that just mean turn the batteries the other way around?

Hobbes

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by anichon:
Phasers!

where?

I want one

have you any links to anything about this...</font>

http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05675103__

DeadBankClerk

i could swear that i saw a 'hypospray' on tomorrows world working in the mid 90's. It shot the atoms throw the skin.?.!.?.