[DarenR]

Tractor beams are now coming to life. If youi ever watched Star Trek, which since this is a coding forum full of nerds, I would assume you have, there is a company who actually invented a small version of a tractor beam. Next I hope they make teleporters because I am tired of driving.

Besides the cell phone which was modelled after the tricorder can you name any thing else from the trek universe that is currently used today?

I for one cant wait for more technologies to become available.

Story follows:

here

[modi123_1]

I hate to be the first to point this out - tractor beams and teleporters are largely different things.

http://en.memory-alp...ki/Tractor_beam
http://starwars.wiki...ki/Tractor_beam

http://en.memory-alp...iki/Transporter
http://starwars.wiki...m/wiki/Teleport

[jon.kiparsky]

Quote

Sadly for sci-fi enthusiasts the technique, detailed in the Nature Photonics journal, has only been proven to work on a particle five microns wide, and can not be scaled up to suck in spaceships because too powerful a laser would be required.
Dr Tomas Cizmar, who led the study, explained: "The problem is that this is based on the transfer of momentum between photons (light particles) and the object, and unavoidably there is also a transfer of energy.
"If you imagine you would like to attract a football, the amount of energy it would transfer would be huge and it would immediately burn up the football.

cite

Quote

Rather than gently catching a spaceship, as the tractor beams in Star Trek do, such a device would probably burn it to a crisp.

cite

This post has been edited by jon.kiparsky: 28 January 2013 - 09:15 AM

[modi123_1]

Side note - Wang and his buddies had a nice paper on this in 2011.

Quote

Received 7 March 2011; published 10 November 2011

Usually a light beam pushes a particle when the photons act upon it. We investigate the optical forces by nonparaxial gradientless beams and find that the forces can drag suitable particles all the way towards the light source. The major criterion of realizing the backward dragging force is the strong nonparaxiality of the light beam, which contributes to the pulling force owing to momentum conservation. The nonparaxiality of the Bessel beam can be manipulated to possess a dragging force along both the radial longitudinal directions, i.e., a “tractor beam” with stable trajectories is achieved.

http://prl.aps.org/a...107/i20/e203601

[DarenR]

modi123_1, on 28 January 2013 - 11:13 AM, said:

I hate to be the first to point this out - tractor beams and teleporters are largely different things.

yeah I know that's why I said other technologies from the Trek universe

[WolfCoder]

They're making an actual tricorder.

[Codey09]

Tech that came from Star Trek:
Laser Beams came from the idea of phasers
Bio Beds were actually developed and used by the US Army
Mobile Phones came from the idea of the Communicator not the tricorder
There are a lot more tech that has been developed that were just futuristic ideas in start trek.

[modi123_1]

Quote

Bio Beds were actually developed and used by the US Army

Citation?

[WolfCoder]

Codey09, on 29 January 2013 - 03:22 AM, said:

...Laser Beams came from the idea of phasers...

The first laser was invented six years before Star Trek, and Einstein knew lasers were possible even before then.

[jon.kiparsky]

Facts? But it's so much more fun to just make stuff up!

[WolfCoder]

Humans can survive underwater- but not for very long.
The billionth digit of Pi is 9.
A nanosecond lasts one billionth of a second.
Honey does not spoil.
The atomic weight of Germanium is 72.64.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Rats cannot throw up.
Iguanas can stay underwater for 28.7 minutes.
The moon orbits the Earth every 27.32 days.
A gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds.
According to Norse legend, thunder god Thor's chariot was pulled across the sky by two goats.
Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal, at 3,410 degrees Celsius.
Gently cleaning the tongue twice a day is the most effective way to fight bad breath.
The Tariff Act of 1789, established to protect domestic manufacture, was the second stature ever enacted by the United States government.
The value of Pi is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean space.
The Mexican-American War ended in 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
In 1879, Sandford Fleming first proposed the adoption of worldwide standardized time zones at the Royal Canadian Institute.

[h4nnib4l]

Billy likes to drink soda.

Miss Lippy's car is green.

[Bort]

The Replicator has already been invented (Kind of).

This was the best news link I could find for it, but I recall reading an article about it a few years ago that suggested they had found a way of using something like this to replicate water.

This post has been edited by Bort: 30 January 2013 - 09:32 AM

[magius96]

Hmm...replicating water...so if we put two parts pure hydrogen into a sealed container with one part pure oxygen, wouldn't that produce water via the natural atomic fusion processes? I'd be more impressed when they create a replicator that can produce something a bit more complex, like a banana split complete with cherries.

Of course, if they can manage that level of replication then I'd have to say that physical teleportation wouldn't be very far off from that. Though I'm not saying that we'd be alive at the end of the trick.