Physics of Star Trek

A detailed Summary of Physics of Star Trek

Star Trek is a show that has been fascinating audiences for years with impressive devices like holodecks, transporters, and warp drive. But could any of these things ever really be used? According to physics, some of the devices are theoretically possible, but probably not practical. Scotty understood that physics is a rule that can't be broken, even if the shows producers did not. He told Captain Kirk numerous times "But I canna change the laws of physics, Captain!".

One of my favorite things about Star Trek has always been the holodeck. In the show, the holodeck works by using tons of holo-diodes in the walls, ceiling, and floor of the holodeck. The sense of touching an object is created by force fields, and a replicator is used for creating things like food and smells to perfect the experience. In reality, a holodeck would work in much the same way. In fact, a very small version of a holodeck has already been created by researchers at MIT's famous Media Lab. It's about the size of a sugar cube and can create fully animated, high quality pictures. A couple of students even threw in a force field, so that now using a small pen, you can actually touch and manipulate the hologram. There are now ideas about how to bui

The Science of Star Trek. 24 April 2002. http://www.exn.ca/mini/startrek/startrek.cfm

ld a holodeck style room, very similar to the one on Star Trek. Rooms like this would be invaluable to simulate dangerous or difficult situations. The rooms probably wouldn't be used for entertainment anytime in the near future because they would be way to expensive.

Another one of my favorite things on Star Trek is the transporter. Cast members are able to travel large distances instantly. They simply step on the teleported pad then a couple of switches are turned on, some sparkly light appears along with bad 60's sounding special effects music, and the next thing you know the character is magically at their destination. But the really cool thing is that scientists are already experimenting with teleportation and talking about whether a human could actually be transported somewhere. Scientists have been able to transport a photon from one place to another. They were able to accomplish this by using the theory of quantum teleportation. But of course, transporting a human would be much more complex than transporting a piece of light. In order to transport a human, they must be completely scanned and recorded. You have to do that to make a perfect copy of something. But there is an uncertainty principal gets in the way. The uncertainty principle says the closer you observe an object, the more you disturb its state, so you can never get an exact measurement or make an exact duplicate of anything. But scientists even think they've found a way around this problem. Humans wouldn't have to be copied down to the quantum state to be exactly dupli

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Category: Science