Star Trek Tech
How much of the technology in Star Trek could become real some day?
This was the question posed to a group of faculty members here at Carnegie Mellon Computer Science recently. Why? Because CMU Drama alumnus, Zach Quinto, starred as the character Spock in the recent Star Trek movie, and so naturally CMU’s media relations people wanted to know…
Anyway, here is a video showing some of our answers to the Star Trek question. Besides me, the video shows Adrien Treuille (graphics and physical modeling), Jessica Hodgins (humanoid robotics), Chris Langmead (computational biology), Seth Goldstein (claytronics), and Golan Levin (interactive media). The piece actually does a nice job promoting the field of computing, by describing some of its far-out, sci-fi possibilities.
Peter Lee @ June 26, 2009
Nice..
What a great idea for an article. The video was very interesting. Thanks for thinking of something that everyone thinks about at some point but really asks the question!
Reminds me of a documentary I once watched 10-15 years ago on the science behind Star Trek. Regarding the transporter, there is a “Heisenberg Compensator” that enables the matter-to-energy-to-matter transfer. Apparently, someone once asked the man in the documentary “How does your Heisenberg Compensator work?” to which he replied, “Very well”. :)
we can’t imagine about it
That was really cool. It’s amazing how far we have come. SciFi has always been a glimpse at what is to come with true science.
I’m still waiting on the transporter.