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Whether you love or hate Star Trek, you have to respect its vision. A future in which humanity has transcended money, wealth, and greed in favour of pure enlightenment and exploration. And space battles.
Fresh off the news that universal translators may be a reality in the near future, this is a look at some of the aspirational tech Star Trek gave us which is within our grasp. In some cases, we’ve already caught up or surpassed Gene Roddenberry’s expectations; Kirk’s communicator doesn’t even have apps, and haven’t Federation engineers heard of retina display? If you’re interested, a list of tech we’ve already conquered can be seen here, including the phaser, transparent aluminium, and life sign detectors.
This engaging piece of news got scientists and trek fans pretty excited — warp technology is not only possible but could be more efficient. What’s lacking now is the means to actually carry out these experiments. Let’s not forget that in Star Trek, we didn’t reach warp speeds until we’d been ravaged by a world-encompassing third world war in 2063.
From Space.com. Credit: Harold While
Scientists have actually managed this one! That’s right, in lab testing, researchers have been able to move objects towards the source of a beam being shot at it… The fact that these are microscopic spheres of silica suspended in water over distances of 30 micrometres is irrelevant, right?
From Memory Alpha
We may have lofty dreams about beaming from one place to another in the blink of an eye, (unless you’ve seen The Fly) but the teleportation race at the moment is firmly set on quantum teleportation. That is, the transmission of subatomic particles over space — boring, I know, but a step in the right direction.
From Huffington Post. Credit: Paramount Television
Okay, you’re going to have to be quite forgiving with this one. While we may not be able to walk up to a shiny black hole in the wall and demand our “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot”, we are now seeing tech that can make us what we want in a 3D space. That’s an incredible leap from 2D to 3D.
From Think Science Now
I’m not just talking about the most recent movie here — Kirk performed a space jump in Generations, but it was left on the cutting room floor. Nevertheless, this is probably the one we’re closest to, considering we all saw Baumgartner jump from the stratosphere with some nifty tech around him.
From Startrek.com
Wouldn’t it be awesome to walk into a room and poignantly practice how you’re going to say goodbye to your co-workers? You may be able to do that before some of the other technologies from this list appear, thanks to mighty Microsoft, which wants to turn your living room into a holodeck. Can you think of anything other than gaming that this might be used for? Nope? Yeah, no, totally — me either.
You may wish you could vanish into thin air when you realise someone else is wearing the same Klingon battle-shirt at the meet-up, and soon you may be able to do just that. Scientists back in 2006 figured out the maths to cloak an object, by placing them by a ‘superlens’. We’re waiting, guys…
From Startrek.com
This one’s easy. We’re seeing smarter, more lifelike, more helpful machines everyday, which are either making our jobs and relationships easier, or taking them over entirely. We may be some way from Data’s ‘positronic brain’ from The Next Generation, but let’s remember even he was ahead of his time then, and that was the 24th century.
From Memory Alpha
Tricorders were used in Star Trek as little boxes which bleeped and blooped around your body, presenting the healthcare professional with a readout of exactly where that painful spot is located. The same tech is certainly on its way, and is being tested on the International Space Station. Other than that, wearable technology and diagnostic tools seem to be bleeding into our lives more and more — letting us know how many calories we’ve burned and eaten, and presenting possible reasons for ailments and symptoms.
From Forbes
We all know this is coming, surely? No matter what measures are taken to curb this, genetic engineering is rising, and you can even have your genome mapped if you drop a serious bit of cash on it. As we learn more and more about our genes we’re going to be able to isolate the badd’uns and amalgamate the good’uns until, well, we end up with this tyrant. He certainly has the style gene — though for now we’ll have to settle for stylish jeans.
From Comicbookmovie
I’ll just leave this here.
Somebody Built the Star Trek Academy or a Jedi School or Something
The New Star Trek Is Beaming In Some Serious Atmos(phere)
Star Trek's Going to Come and Totally Destroy London
I’ve had an Android for over 4 years now
I think you mean “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”
Get it right Giz. It’s actually ‘Tea, Earl Grey, Hot’.
Make it so.
Captains log…
When you’re right, you’re right.
Just updated it — thanks!
I thought this article might have been written by Jesus Diaz.
Oh yeah? And why is that, pray tell?
Well, I’m very very familiar with Star Trek and that of current science/technology breakthroughs associated to the function of the tech on Trek.
I thought perhaps Mr Diaz might have got carried away into thinking it (or them) might actually exist/or be in creation when they didn’t. Like the replicator for one, but I read a article on New Scientist a few weeks ago and remembered a similar device in production.
I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to say / prove here, so I’m going to walk away slowly…
Some of the more ‘out there’ trek tech might be running away with Mr Diaz’s imagination.
Not quite sure why you keep on referring to Jesus — he didn’t write this article?
This isn’t the first time I’ve been mistaken for Jesus.
While we’re talking about Giz writers – what a nice moustache you have there!
Thanks! I’m hoping your avatar isn’t a warning about being ‘two faced’.
Oh not at all, it was taken during a rave in an Oxfam shop and I just struck a pose for the photographer
He didn’t write it, I know that. Just the headline grabbed me as if he had written it.
I’m not being particularly clear with what I am saying. Just ignore it as you do.
Oh come on! If you don’t like an article about Star Trek technologies that you might one day be able to actually own, then you shouldn’t even be reading Giz!
Replied to wrong person. And he replied before me anyway
. Ignore me!
This IS an article. If it was Jesus Diaz it would be a Youtube video with the description copied from the uploader of the video as the text.
Unnecessarily snide. Please go and make a cup of tea, and chill the hell out.
The proof speaks for itself. Your attitude of nobody can call Giz out on their crappy articles is getting a bit yawn. As Southern says below, take the rough with the smooth. I defended this article and I’ll bash articles that I see people write more about on my Facebook news feed than Jesus does when linking a video. I await your “If you don’t like it, leave” response, which you seem you have has a keybound shortcut.
Whilst Jesus’ articles are sometimes a bit hit and miss, he has come out with some blindingly good articles as well.
As in life, you take the rough with the smooth.
I wouldn’t say /blindingly/ good. And while Jesus craps out the occasional piece of decent journalism, his journalistic ability is generally on par with that of the least intelligent of my mammalian pets.
Sorry, I just can’t resist a bit of Jesus bashing, a feeling I believe is shared by every Gizmodo UK reader.
Yup, *every* reader agrees with you. On everything. For life.
duhhhhhhh start your own news blog, gain a few mil page hits and subsidiaries across the world, then tell me what a terrible journalist Diaz is.
Ah, my favourite fallacy. The old “you can’t criticise someone because they’re better than you at what they do.”
Are you saying nobody who watches football is allowed to slag off players or teams just because the football players are better than they are? Of course not.
Diaz may be a better journalist than I, but he is still a worse journalist than most (well known) journalists.
that’s not my point. journalism, by nature, needs some sort of public approval for it to be successful. if he was really as terrible as so many people try to make out, then how is he such a prolific journalist? the thing is, it’s always the vocal minority that try and assimilate the opinions of everyone else. just because you and a few other people don’t like Diaz’s writing doesn’t mean that there aren’t many more who do (which there are, re: initial point).
Popularity =/= Proficiency
Just because Jesus is prolific and popular, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he is a good journalist. The same can be said for many fields, for example, Michael Bay in the film industry.
Michael Bay really isn’t that bad. Yes, the Transformers series is utter garbage, but neither Armageddon or Pearl Harbour are too bad. The trolling of Bay by critics is quite uncalled for – people seem to do it because it’s fashionable rather than form their own opinions.
Point is, I accept popularity isn’t completely relative to competence in media, but neither Michael Bay or Jesus Diaz are terrible at what they do or they wouldn’t make a living doing it.
Also with today’s news that “Microsoft Can Convert Your Voice Into Another Language”
You should add Universal Translator to the list!
I popped in into the introduction! That’s certainly on the cards but the other 10 I thought were a little bit more ‘out there’.
I certainly think the Universal Translator is ‘out there’.
A syntax identifier that can translate a language spoken into another immediately. Although it will piss off actual translators.
Imagine being to physically converse with an alien species on instantaneous contact.
I agree that it’s a neat idea – though assuming an alien race would have any common syntactic, phonetic, or morphological similarities with Humans is problematic from the start.
The technology really only goes so far as to postulate that we may one day be able to translate known languages between each other through technology; we’d still need linguistic reference points – a rosetta stone – to base them off of.
Enterprise, for example, uses their linguistic expert (Hashi Sato) when they run into trouble with Xindi languages they aren’t familiar with, and even then they have the benefit of years of passed on extraterrestrial linguistic knowledge imparted on them from the Vulcans.
What we REALLY need is a babelfish. Just sayn’
In the Final Episodes of Enterprise they developed a Universal Translator (Terra Prime) Boo-yah!
No more need for Hoshi afterwards.
Sure — But that technology isn’t within our grasp. Sadly we don’t have the aliens for it.
Icelandic is very very hard language. That can be our Xindi.
A good time to sell your Rosetta Stone shares.
photons have been teleported already right?
Yup.
cool, not long to go!
yes, almost within the grasp of my hands at the ends of my infinitely long arms…