Written by: Christine Roberts (SoSF Staff Reporter)

Star Trek has been around for 40-years and, as a scifi television series and movie franchise has come up with a variety of ideas that pass for science and technology within its universe. What is remarkable however, is what works in that make believe world has great potential and possiblities in our own. Here are just a few gizmos and gadgets that have moved from Star Trek’s world into our own.

THE CLOAKING DEVICE

This marvel of technology could hide or shield a ship’s presence from other ship’s sensors and from the naked eye. At one time it was considered such a threat to the Federation they altered Captain Kirk’s appearance to make him look like a Romulan just so he could hijack this device off of a Romulan vessel and bring it back to Starfleet for study.

In our universe two mathematicians, Nicolae Nicorovici and Graeme Milton, have offered conceptual proofs suggesting a cloaking device such as that seen on STAR TREK may be a possibility.

A research paper by Nicorovici and Milton published in an UK Royal Society journal suggests that when objects are placed close to a resonating super lens, “they will appear to vanish” due to a phenomenon they call “anomalous localized resonance”. The phenomenon is analogous to a tuning fork which rings with a single sound or frequency. “The sound can be heard when placed next to a wine glass which will start to ring with the same frequency it resonates” explained BBC’s science reporter Paul Rincon, noting that light waves work much the same way as sound waves. The resonance effectively cancels out the light bouncing off the speck of dust, rendering the dust particles invisible.

Scientist are proposing experiments with specs of dust, not objects the size of space ships, using materials to construct lenses that stop light from scattering as it normally would when it strikes an object. Nicorovici and Milton believe that the cloak will not work for every shape or at every frequency of light. Perhaps they should try calling on the Romulans for assistance.

THE TRACTOR BEAM, TRICORDER and STELLAR CARTOGRAPHY

Two other forms of technology made popular by STAR TREK are now closer to becoming reality. Scientists are using a beam of light with similarities to STAR TREK’S tractor beam to trap protein molecules, a technique developed to allow the separation and analysis of proteins in DNA among other things.

Scientists at Protein Discovery and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed the technique called photoelectrophoretic localization and transport. “It’s kind of like a tractor beam in STAR TREK but this is science, not science fiction,â€? said California Institute of Technology Professor Nathan Lewis who co-authored the study.

It has been reported that a form of micro technology that tries to mimic the way molecules work in nature is under development. It’s a technological trajectory in which the components become so small that extremely complex devices, -say a STAR TREK like tricorder, – may not be too far awayâ€? Mister Scott would be proud.

Also on tap is a recent report about the development of a 3-D holographic suite, or holodeck for astronomers. This technology has already been refined within the field of medical imaging with the three dimensional fusion of Positron Emission Tomography, Computed Tomography and Nuclear Single Photon Emission Tomography images. Japanese researchers are on the verge of creating a medical holodeck in which a physician can gear up with a sensor suit and enter a grid like room where 3-D computer images are fed into the radiologist’s visor and with sensors in the suit and gloves the physician can be inside the visualization of the human body and its organ systems.

ROCKET POWER

While it may not be as quick as Trip’s WARP engines…yet, New Mexico’s Positronics Research, LLC plans on building an antimatter-fuelled rocket that can take astronauts to Mars in less than three months.

This energy source that enables the starship Enterprise to boldly go where no one has gone before has moved much closer to reality. Scientists have completed early studies of the rocket which would be fuelled by bringing particles and their opposites into contact resulting in an enormous but contained explosion producing gamma rays.

Positronics Research, LLC took it’s name from positrons which are the anti matter twins of electrons. It has already been theorized since the 1950’s that positron-electron interactions can be used to power starships, but positrons can only be stored in a vacuum sustained by a magnetic field because any contact with matter will trigger an explosion. Because positrons are charged and repel one another, storing them would require millions of tons of repellent electrical force in their fuel tank.

Gerald Smith of Positronics research, a former Penn State Professor, proposed that positron atoms called positronium could be sustained to prevent instantaneous matter-antimatter annihilation. “It’s not uncommon to find that the lifetime (of enhanced positronium) is (practically) infinite.” The US Department of Defense has expressed a strong interest in this research.

THE REPLICATOR/COMMUNICATOR and SYNTHEHOL

At the Win Hec conference in Seattle, WA, Intel presented a device that is a STAR TREK-Like PC. It features a LCD navigation screen and a voice-to-text navigation interface.

This device would work similar to those on STAR TREK but instead of replicating food a person would order up a television program, movie or song to be played simply by voice activation without physically touching anything.

This too is going medical! Medford News highlighted a STAR TREK communicator-like device that helps bedridden patients contact nurses, doctors or staff without needing to know their address, phone numbers or any other kind of information. It is called Vocera. Surgeons have already used it. It is as closer to the STAR TREK Communicator than anything else that has been created to date. The only thing it can’t do is call Scotty to beam you up.

Scientists are working on developing a form of synthehol — STAR TREK: The Next Generation’s hangover-free alcohol substitute.

Psychopharmacologist David Nutt of the University of Bristol explained that because alcohol affects the brain mainly by latching onto signaling molecules, it should be possible to develop a form of alcohol that binds only to weak subtypes of the molecules, maintaining the pleasant effects of alcohol without nausea or headaches. Nutt also believes that cirrhosis of the liver could be eliminated if the alcoholic composition is altered.

General Electric has introduced a notebook sized ultrasound scanner. The scanner allows a technologist to resolve an image at an emergency room or crime scene. Watch out CSI! Remember how Bones on TOS would wave a device over a patient and he got all the information he needed? Well companies are working harder and harder to make it a reality!

With the cloaking device, synthehol, antimatter rockets and so many other great technological and scientific breakthroughs here now and on the horizon (and let’s not forget those STAR TREK cellphones already on the market), the scifi of STAR TREK remains closely linked to real scientific breakthroughs and mind-melds our two universes closer together each day.