It’s real life, Jim, exactly as you knew it
The fictional technology used by Captain Kirk in Star Trek was uncannily predictive of the devices we rely on today.
Before hurtling into space aboard the Blue Origin rocket ship, actor William Shatner packed some extra luggage: the childhood doodlings of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon tycoon and owner of Blue Origin, his private company that will soon offer space tourism.
Bezos is a Trekkie and as a child he copied some of Captain Kirk’s gizmos on to paper: “I made these tricorders and a communicator to play with my friends when I was nine years old and my incredible mum saved them for 48 years.”
The Amazon founder’s ego may represent the final frontier of narcissism, but Bezos is only one among a host of inventors and entrepreneurs inspired by Star Trek to boldly go where science had not been before. No other fiction has had quite such a profound and varied impact on the real scientific world.
Back in 1966 the Starship Enterprise first set out “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations”. In the 55 years since, much of Star Trek’s technological make-believe, inconceivably outlandish at the time, has become our everyday reality: flat-screen televisions, laptops, video conferencing and portable communication devices.
In 1973 Martin Cooper was working for Motorola and watching an episode of Star Trek in which Captain Kirk summons help for the injured Spock using a cordless, flip-top, handheld communicator: it inspired the first viable mobile phone.
In the television series crew members speak to and receive logical responses from a device that understands human speech, is able to respond in language and has the answers to most questions: Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.
Whenever he encountered alien life forms, Kirk needed to communicate with them. Star Trek’s “universal translator”, deployed by Ensign Hoshi Sato, was supposedly developed in the late 22nd century to provide instantaneous translation of Earth languages, before being expanded to speak Klingon and other extraterrestrial tongues.
Microsoft Translator supports more than 65 languages and can translate video calls between English, French, German, Mandarin, Italian and Spanish. Google is also developing an instant voice-recognition translator: “You can have access to the world’s languages right in your pocket,” according to a spokesman. “The goal is to become that ultimate Star Trek computer.”
The Star Trek “tricorder” (sketched by the young Bezos) was an analysing machine, supposedly developed for the Starfleet in the 23rd century, a handheld black box with rotating hood and leather shoulder strap that combined the functions of sensing, recording and computing. It was, in effect, a pocket computer capable of scanning alien landscapes and their inhabitants for information such as mineral deposits, heat signatures and other data. The medical version, deployed by Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy, is used to diagnose diseases and monitor vital signs, or lack of them. “He’s dead, Jim,” is uttered by McCoy no fewer than 25 times across all series.
The PalmPilot, iPhone and Android are all, in effect, tricorders. Portable mass spectrometers can analyse compounds in ambient conditions. A handheld DNA lab capable of molecular investigation can provide disease diagnosis in under 15 minutes. There’s a handheld device for spotting Ebola, and machines in development to detect and measure the airborne Covid virus in a room.
The Tricorder X Prize was a $US10m incentive to develop a mobile device capable of diagnosing patients as well as, or better than, a panel of board-certified doctors. While no team won the prize, the doctor-beating tricorder is almost here: the real McCoy.
The Star Trek “replicator” was a gizmo capable of producing exact copies on demand, initially of food and water (eliminating the need to stock provisions) but also larger objects in later series, including space parts and uniforms. “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot,” demands Captain Jean-Luc Picard when in need of a space cuppa.
And we have the 3D printer, which can replicate a physical object from a digital model, typically by laying down many thin layers of a material in succession. Lab-grown meat is a reality. Nestle is reportedly working on technology to make food tailored to individual nutritional needs.
Lieutenant Uhura, Enterprise’s communications officer, uses an earpiece similar to a hands-free Bluetooth device to follow communications inside and outside the Starship. The phaser (“set to stun”) has been in use since the 1970s in the form of a Taser using electric energy to incapacitate without killing.
Kirk needs “warp drive” to get around the universe faster than the speed of light. Some scientists believe a form of warp speed may eventually be achievable, despite the theory of relativity. Even NASA’s website does not dismiss the idea: “For the near future warp drive remains a dream, but there are many ‘absurd’ theories that have become reality over the years of scientific research”.
The idea of the teleporter was introduced in Star Trek because the series budget was insufficient to stage repeated landings and takeoffs from exotic planets: the transporter dematerialises an individual into energy, before rematerialising him or her elsewhere, thus avoiding the need for expensive special effects.
No one has yet found a way to move physical matter from one place to another. “Quantum teleportation”, however, copies the precise quantum state of one particle, such as a photon, to another that may be hundreds of kilometres away, so it does look as though the photon has been transported. Einstein referred to it as “spooky action at a distance”.
Physicist Michio Kaku predicts we will have invented human teleportation within a century. Another group of scientists has calculated it will take 4850 trillion years to transport a single human cell this way. Mind you, many once regarded the mobile telephone as an impossible fantasy dreamt up by over-imaginative television producers.
Kirk never actually said “Beam me up, Scotty”. But one day we will.
The Times
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