Speaker 1: Technology with tech Stuff from dot Com. Hey there, and
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to look into something that is
Speaker 1: near and dear to my heart. You see, way back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, NBC began airing a television series
Speaker 1: called Star Trek. This was the dream child of Gene Roddenberry,
Speaker 1: and it's a show that featured the crew of the
Speaker 1: starship Enterprise as they explored the galaxy. So their mission
Speaker 1: was to be one of science and discovery, although they
Speaker 1: frequently found themselves drawn into various conflicts throughout the series.
Speaker 1: Star Trek has been called a space opera, and while
Speaker 1: it's in the realm of science fiction, the science bit
Speaker 1: of that wasn't always absolutely least solid. However, over time,
Speaker 1: various writers, editors, and others have fleshed out the world
Speaker 1: of Star Trek and attempted to ground as much of
Speaker 1: that technology to the real world as possible, and at
Speaker 1: least a few cases inventors have actually turned out to
Speaker 1: uh create stuff based on things they were inspired by
Speaker 1: from the show itself, so it became sort of a
Speaker 1: self fulfilling prophecy. It wasn't that the technology was necessarily
Speaker 1: based in reality, but rather that inventors in reality began
Speaker 1: to base their ideas off the Star Trek. So today
Speaker 1: I want to take take a look at some of
Speaker 1: that technology, not all of it. We're just gonna look
Speaker 1: at a few different technologies that were very prominent in
Speaker 1: Star Trek and see how they relate to the real world,
Speaker 1: how realistic or unrealistic they may be, given what we
Speaker 1: can do today. And I should say I was inspired
Speaker 1: to do this episode from a few different sources. First
Speaker 1: of all, interest a full disclosure, my parents wrote for
Speaker 1: the Star Trek book series for young adults. They wrote
Speaker 1: several books in that series, and so I grew up
Speaker 1: watching a lot of Star Trek, both the original series,
Speaker 1: the next generation series D Space nine, never got into Voyager,
Speaker 1: never really watched Enterprise, so okay, so I kind of
Speaker 1: left off after D Space nine. But that was one
Speaker 1: of the reasons. And the other was that I received
Speaker 1: a an advanced copy of a book called Star Trek
Speaker 1: Treknology by Dr Ethan's Seagull, and it's a pretty cool book.
Speaker 1: It goes into a lot of this stuff, like the
Speaker 1: various technologies that were shown in the series, and how
Speaker 1: do they relate back to stuff that you can find
Speaker 1: in the real world. So a lot of the information
Speaker 1: I'm covering today is information that's also in that book,
Speaker 1: although I should also point out some of it is
Speaker 1: from a series of podcast that I used to do
Speaker 1: called Forward Thinking. You may remember if you had ever
Speaker 1: subscribed Forward Thinking, that I would appear on there with
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and Lauren Voge Obama and together the three
Speaker 1: of us, we'll try and suss out the future. And
Speaker 1: we talked about Star Trek technologies on more than one
Speaker 1: occasion because the the series introduced a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: ideas over the course of its run and the course
Speaker 1: of its various spinoffs, so it's tough to figure out
Speaker 1: where you should actually start. There's so many different technologies
Speaker 1: that were featured in Star Trek. It's filled with amazing
Speaker 1: technology and gadgets, from the mass of starships in the
Speaker 1: series to the personal tech that was carried around by
Speaker 1: away teams. But I figure one neat place is with
Speaker 1: warp drives. So the Star Trek series had a big problem.
Speaker 1: They needed warp drives to get around because space, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, is big, you know, like like I said,
Speaker 1: and Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guy into the galaxy. You might
Speaker 1: think it's a long trip to the chemist down the corner,
Speaker 1: but that's just peanuts compared to space. The enormity of
Speaker 1: space means that would take us generations to travel between
Speaker 1: some stars. So if you hear that a star is
Speaker 1: four light years away, what that actually means is that
Speaker 1: it takes light four years to travel from that star
Speaker 1: to us on Earth. So the light we are looking
Speaker 1: at is technically four years old from that star. So
Speaker 1: in a way, you could say that whenever we look
Speaker 1: up into the night sky, we're actually staring into the past,
Speaker 1: and everything we're looking at has already happened, and in
Speaker 1: some cases it happened thousands or millions of years ago,
Speaker 1: which is pretty crazy when you think about it. We're
Speaker 1: looking at light that might come from stars that no
Speaker 1: longer technically exist, but it's because it takes so many
Speaker 1: years for the light to travel across the universe to
Speaker 1: get to us that we don't know that that star
Speaker 1: died out maybe half a million years ago. Well that's
Speaker 1: really cool to think about here on Earth. But if
Speaker 1: you're talking about a science fiction series, where people are
Speaker 1: traveling through interstellar space, it creates a huge problem. How
Speaker 1: do you get from point A to point B? I
Speaker 1: mean light? It turns out it's the fastest stuff in
Speaker 1: the universe. According to Einstein, nothing can go faster than
Speaker 1: the speed of light. Light is the upper speed limit. Now,
Speaker 1: to be more specific, I should say that light traveling
Speaker 1: through the vacuum of space hits that speed limit. As
Speaker 1: lights speed is somewhat dependent upon the medium through which
Speaker 1: it travels. So if light is passing through water, it's
Speaker 1: traveling at a slightly different speed than if it were
Speaker 1: through the vacuum of space. But unrestricted in empty space,
Speaker 1: light runs wild and sets that upper level of how
Speaker 1: fast we can go. So, for the record, that speed
Speaker 1: is two million, seven thousand, four hundred fifty eight meters
Speaker 1: per second, or if you prefer about six hundred seventy
Speaker 1: one million miles per hour, which is pretty darn fast.
Speaker 1: But as fast as that is, it's still way too
Speaker 1: slow to make the journey between distant stars in a
Speaker 1: reasonable amount of time. So Alpha Centauri is a great example.
Speaker 1: It's the closest star to Earth outside of our own son, obviously,
Speaker 1: and it is four point three six seven light years away. Now,
Speaker 1: that means if your ship could travel at light speed,
Speaker 1: and it couldn't, but we'll talk about that in a second,
Speaker 1: it would still take you nearly four and a half
Speaker 1: years to get to Alpha Centauri. That would be a
Speaker 1: very long episode of Star Trek, the original series. You
Speaker 1: don't want to spend four years just to get from
Speaker 1: Earth to Alpha Centauri only to find out there's nothing
Speaker 1: there and that you've got to turn around, come back
Speaker 1: and there'll be four more years. Now, you may have
Speaker 1: heard that there have been some people who have been
Speaker 1: thinking about sending satellites to do a fly by of
Speaker 1: a planet that's that's that's actually an orbit around Proxima
Speaker 1: Centauri Proxima B specifically, it is an Earth size planet
Speaker 1: in the Goldilocks zone around Proximus Centauri, and that it
Speaker 1: would take us about twenty years to get those satellites
Speaker 1: there if we use the methodology that has been uh suggested.
Speaker 1: And how's that work if it's four light years away
Speaker 1: and we can't travel the speed of light. Well, the
Speaker 1: idea is that we would launch these very tiny satellites
Speaker 1: up into orbit and we would use lasers to act
Speaker 1: as the propulsion for those satellites. So we would speed
Speaker 1: them up by shooting lasers from Earth toward these satellites
Speaker 1: that would provide the propulsion. They would accelerate gradually, but
Speaker 1: they would accelerate continuously, so you would just keep giving
Speaker 1: them little boosts and they would keep getting faster and faster.
Speaker 1: And while the rate of acceleration would initially be fairly slow,
Speaker 1: it would also be steady, and after a while you'd
Speaker 1: be traveling at a pretty good clip, and ultimately you'll
Speaker 1: be traveling at about the speed of light, which doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like it's very fast, you're thinking, but it's that's
Speaker 1: wicked fast. And it means that we would get those
Speaker 1: satellites to proxima B at around the twenty year mark,
Speaker 1: a little bit more than that actually, So that is
Speaker 1: the way that would work. But like I said, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to get your spaceship up the light speed.
Speaker 1: That's because your spaceship typically has mass. Mass is going
Speaker 1: to be the thing that keeps you from achieving that
Speaker 1: same speed. As light. Light does not have mass has
Speaker 1: relativistic mass, which which means that the at a relativistic equation,
Speaker 1: you would factor in mass with light. It can actually
Speaker 1: impart momentum, and momentum is something that only mass can
Speaker 1: really do really uh transfer. But it's because we're talking
Speaker 1: about relativistic speeds. We're not talking about actual mass. Like,
Speaker 1: you can't take a particle of light and measure it
Speaker 1: to say how much mass it has. So you can
Speaker 1: get pretty close to the speed of light even if
Speaker 1: you have mass, at least close to the speed of
Speaker 1: light according to our view of things. But you're not
Speaker 1: actually gonna match lights speed as long as you're using
Speaker 1: something that has mass. So how the heck do you
Speaker 1: get around that? If you can't travel at light speed
Speaker 1: much less faster than light speed, how do you make
Speaker 1: a series where you can explore the galaxy? It would
Speaker 1: be a ship where you would have to have generations
Speaker 1: of people carrying on the same mission so that you
Speaker 1: could finally get to wherever you're going and do whatever
Speaker 1: it was you were hoping to do. How does Star
Speaker 1: Trek get around it? Well, that's where the warp drive
Speaker 1: comes in. The warp drive is supposed to warp the
Speaker 1: fabric of spacetime itself. Now, this helps you travel through
Speaker 1: between distant points at a speed that seems to be
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light, but it's not really
Speaker 1: if you're really technical about it, you aren't actually moving
Speaker 1: faster than light. You're just decreasing the distance between two points.
Speaker 1: That's easier to explain this if I take a kind
Speaker 1: of fanciful example. So let's say you're looking at a
Speaker 1: paper map and you're planning a trip between Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and I don't know Edinburgh, Scotland. So you've decided you
Speaker 1: want to go in a straight line. You use a
Speaker 1: ruler and you line up Atlanta and Edinburgh and you
Speaker 1: draw a line from Atlanta to Edinburgh with a very
Speaker 1: steady uh rate. So you're you're just drawing this line.
Speaker 1: You're moving at a at a decent clip, but you
Speaker 1: know you're just you're just drawing the line there. Now,
Speaker 1: Normally such a trip would also involve a track out
Speaker 1: over the ocean, longboat ride, followed by a lot more
Speaker 1: overland travel once you hit the UK. But what if
Speaker 1: you just folded the map. So you fold it so
Speaker 1: that Edinburgh and Atlanta are right next to each other,
Speaker 1: and then you draw a line that connects the two
Speaker 1: of them in this folded over shape. So you're not
Speaker 1: drawing the line faster than you were before. You're still
Speaker 1: using that same rate of speed, but you actually connect
Speaker 1: the two cities much faster because you have less distance
Speaker 1: to travel. Well, that's how warp drive is supposed to work.
Speaker 1: So simply put, a warp drive shrinks the physical distance
Speaker 1: in front of it and extends the distance or stretches
Speaker 1: spacetime behind it, so you'd still travel at near light speed,
Speaker 1: but you use the warp coils to manipulate the fabric
Speaker 1: of space itself wrinkly get up, so you effectively travel
Speaker 1: less distance to get to where you're going. The warp
Speaker 1: numbers in the show indicated how severe that warping would be.
Speaker 1: In Star Trek the next generation, the Federation would actually
Speaker 1: learn that all of that warping of space time continuum
Speaker 1: had some unintended and dangerous side effects, pretty typical for
Speaker 1: stuff that we humans tend to do, and at that
Speaker 1: point the Federation would put a limit on warp speeds
Speaker 1: except in case of real emergency. I specifically remember watching
Speaker 1: that episode when it came out, because everyone in my
Speaker 1: group thought it was ridiculous. We all said, oh, come on.
Speaker 1: As the Federation instituted a galaxy wide speed limit. But
Speaker 1: how realistic is this idea of a warp drive. Well,
Speaker 1: from a theoretical standpoint, there's actually a lot of support
Speaker 1: for it. There's the this idea of the Einstein Rosen bridge,
Speaker 1: which is a hypothetical structure that could link two separate
Speaker 1: points in spacetime together, and that describes a very similar phenomenon.
Speaker 1: It's also known as wormholes. Right, You've got a wormhole
Speaker 1: in one part of spacetime that connects to a totally
Speaker 1: different part of space time, And normally you would have
Speaker 1: to travel perhaps millions of light years to get between
Speaker 1: those two points. But the wormhole, it's kind of a shortcut.
Speaker 1: It allows you to pop over from one side to
Speaker 1: the other. Now, this structure is completely hypothetical. We've never
Speaker 1: observed such a thing, but it is consistent with the
Speaker 1: rules of general relativity. So, in other words, there's nothing
Speaker 1: that we know about the universe that flat out says
Speaker 1: this thing is not possible. Right, we don't have any
Speaker 1: proof here that says, oh, this could never happen because
Speaker 1: of X, Y and z. But traveling through such a wormhole,
Speaker 1: even if it is in fact something that exists and
Speaker 1: not just a hypothesis, it would require some stuff that
Speaker 1: we're not entirely sure is actually possible or real, like
Speaker 1: some form of exotic matter or additional physics as yet
Speaker 1: unsupported by our model of the universe. So it's not
Speaker 1: like the hypothothetical nature of this warp or these wormholes
Speaker 1: is enough. You have to even go a step further
Speaker 1: and say, well, even if they do exist, there's no
Speaker 1: way we could travel through one unless we were to
Speaker 1: completely reform physics as we understand it today. As for
Speaker 1: actively warping spacetime, so not using a wormhole, but just
Speaker 1: creating that warp yourself, it's a well, it's in theory,
Speaker 1: it could work within our understanding of the universe. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's nothing that we know about the universe that says
Speaker 1: this would be impossible, so it's hypothetical. But in other words,
Speaker 1: there there could be practical limitations keeping us from ever
Speaker 1: building such a divi ice. From a purely scientific standpoint,
Speaker 1: nothing we know of says it's completely impossible, but from
Speaker 1: a practical standpoint it may very well be. In a
Speaker 1: theoretical physicist named Miguel al Qubair was able to work
Speaker 1: out the math showing that it could be possible to
Speaker 1: warp space time in such a way that would be
Speaker 1: equivalent to warp speed. You could shrink the space in
Speaker 1: front of you while along the space behind you, giving
Speaker 1: the effect of traveling much faster than light from the
Speaker 1: point of view of an outside observer, although from your
Speaker 1: perspective you'd be traveling at normal speeds. And within the
Speaker 1: realms of science, there are those who hypothesize about a
Speaker 1: type of interstellar drive called an al Qubier drive. But
Speaker 1: such a drive would require a pretty hefty dose of energy.
Speaker 1: And by hefty, well, I mean that the amount of
Speaker 1: energy needed to deform space to create such a warp
Speaker 1: bubble would require the equivalent of twenty thousand mega tons
Speaker 1: of TNT, or if you pre for a an entire
Speaker 1: ton of mass converted into energy. According to Einstein's famous
Speaker 1: E equals MC squared. Remember that C squared is the
Speaker 1: speed of light squared, and speed of light is super fast,
Speaker 1: So it only takes a little bit of mass to
Speaker 1: create an entirely huge amount of energy. Right. Because you
Speaker 1: take the mass and whatever whatever metric you're using, and
Speaker 1: you multiply at times the speed of light squared, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a really big number. So a very small
Speaker 1: amount of mass equals a huge amount of energy. This is,
Speaker 1: of course the basis not just of nuclear power, but
Speaker 1: of the atomic bomb. It only takes a little bit
Speaker 1: of matter for this to become an enormous release. So
Speaker 1: an al QB air drive would also require negative mass
Speaker 1: to work, So you would need negative mass plus you
Speaker 1: would need an enormous amount of energy in order to
Speaker 1: get the drive working. These are some really big limitations.
Speaker 1: It's it's entirely possible that those alone will mean that
Speaker 1: will never actually develop one. Now, one thing that might
Speaker 1: provide that energetic boost we would need would be an
Speaker 1: antimatter drive. Star Trek actually uses antimatter. In fact, they
Speaker 1: have an antimatter containment system, and in one notable instance,
Speaker 1: the antimatter containment system lead to the destruction of one
Speaker 1: of the enterprises. There was a failure in the antimatter
Speaker 1: containment system and then the enterprise was no more. This
Speaker 1: would be the next generation version of the enterprise. Next generation.
Speaker 1: They treated the enterprise like it was Klean X. You know,
Speaker 1: you just pull one out, destroy it, throw it away,
Speaker 1: you get another one. I'm a little bitter about this.
Speaker 1: In the original series, they lost the Enterprise one time,
Speaker 1: and that would be in Star Trek three, the Search
Speaker 1: for Spock, when they destroyed the Enterprise in an effort
Speaker 1: to defeat the Klingons. And it was a huge, emotionally
Speaker 1: powerful moment because the ship itself was seen as sort
Speaker 1: of a character. And then in the next generation it
Speaker 1: became so casual that Picard and I am not making
Speaker 1: this up once said, we still have a lot more
Speaker 1: letters in the alphabet, because they would always add another
Speaker 1: letter at the end of Enterprise. They have Enterprise B,
Speaker 1: Enterprise C, Enterprise D, Enterprise E. And when he made
Speaker 1: that comment, I turned off and wanted to throw something
Speaker 1: at something else. That's a tangent. That's just Jonathan going
Speaker 1: crazy about people casually treating this destruction of this enormous
Speaker 1: spaceship as being not a big deal. Back to antimatter.
Speaker 1: So one thing that could provide that energy boost would
Speaker 1: be this antimatter drive. So when matter and antimatter encounter
Speaker 1: one another, they annihilate each other. And I don't mean
Speaker 1: like in the W W E Way where you got
Speaker 1: these two guys talking about how they're gonna ruin each other. No,
Speaker 1: they literally annihilate one another, and in the process produced
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of energy at a efficient conversion rate
Speaker 1: according to that calculation of equals mc squared or that
Speaker 1: equation I should say, So, if you collide to particles
Speaker 1: together at high enough energy levels, there's a chance that
Speaker 1: you will spontaneously create new particle antiparticle pairs. So antiparticles
Speaker 1: are the counterparts to actual particles. So, for an example,
Speaker 1: you've got electrons. That's a negatively charged sub atomic particle.
Speaker 1: The antiparticle to an electron is a positron. It has
Speaker 1: the exact same mass, but it has a positive charge
Speaker 1: rather than a negative charge. If an electron an oppositron
Speaker 1: meet up, they annihilate one another. So that means if
Speaker 1: you actually create these antiparticles, you then have the huge
Speaker 1: challenge of keeping them from coming into contact with any
Speaker 1: kind of regular matter. If they do, then the antimatter
Speaker 1: and the matter will annihilate each other and you'll end
Speaker 1: up with some energy. But that's it. You You can't
Speaker 1: keep that antimatter a round. To store antimatter, you would
Speaker 1: have to come up with a really clever way to
Speaker 1: isolate the antimatter from any physical matter. That happens to
Speaker 1: be in the area. Uh, here's a fun fact too.
Speaker 1: When the universe first formed is fun fact. Hey, next
Speaker 1: time you're at a party. When the universe first formed
Speaker 1: shortly after the Big Bang, we had just a touch
Speaker 1: more matter than we had antimatter. There was both during
Speaker 1: the Big Bang, but we had more matter than antimatter.
Speaker 1: And the reason that's important is because if they had
Speaker 1: been exactly equal, we wouldn't have a universe. All the
Speaker 1: matter in any matter would have just annihilated each other.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, we had more matter than we
Speaker 1: had antimatter. Why no, we don't really know. We've actually
Speaker 1: produced antimatter in high speed particle accelerator experiments like over
Speaker 1: at the Large Hadron Collider. That is something that has happened.
Speaker 1: It's we've observed it, so it's not like it's just
Speaker 1: it's not just hypothetical. We've act actually seen this. We've
Speaker 1: created antiparticles, and in fact, over its cern there were
Speaker 1: teams that even figured out how to keep those antiparticles
Speaker 1: uh completely safe for about twenty minutes, which sounds like
Speaker 1: a pretty short time, but typically in these collisions where
Speaker 1: you generate antiparticles, they exist for less than a fraction
Speaker 1: of a fraction of a second. Within within an instant
Speaker 1: they have annihilated with a particle. So while you can
Speaker 1: measure their appearance and disappearance, it tends to happen instantaneously.
Speaker 1: From our perspective, there's no way you would ever be
Speaker 1: able to observe it directly, So being able to actually
Speaker 1: preserve anti matter for up to twenty minutes is a
Speaker 1: an enormous deal. In the anti hydrogen laser physics Apparatus
Speaker 1: or alpha over at CERN created anti hydrogen, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I think now they're still mass of engineering
Speaker 1: challenges in the way of harnessing antimatter as an energy source,
Speaker 1: and it may never be practical, but if it is,
Speaker 1: that would be amazing. We would have the capability of
Speaker 1: harnessing more energy than ever before, and it would be
Speaker 1: relatively easy to generate enough power for all the needs
Speaker 1: of everybody on the planet with these antimatter engines, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. But you'd have to reconcile yourself
Speaker 1: with the possibility that in the event of a cast
Speaker 1: trophic failure, everything goes poof, So like the warp drive,
Speaker 1: there's nothing in the laws of physics standing in our
Speaker 1: way when it comes to antimatter engines. But at this
Speaker 1: point it's literally a case of engineering. We may discover
Speaker 1: that trapping and harnessing antimatter is beyond our capabilities. It's
Speaker 1: not against the laws of physics, it just might be
Speaker 1: beyond what we can physically be capable of doing. So
Speaker 1: perhaps our warp drives of the future will be fueled
Speaker 1: by people shoveling more antimatter into a giant anti coal
Speaker 1: furnace or something. And there's probably the lithium crystal involved
Speaker 1: in there somewhere too, all right. So that's the warp drive,
Speaker 1: and that's the antimatter engine dealt with. But there's still
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about when it comes to Star Trek.
Speaker 1: So when we come back, we'll take a look at
Speaker 1: tractor beams and transporters. But first a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about trek your beams for a second.
Speaker 1: So in Star Trek, also in other science fiction shows,
Speaker 1: there are these beams of energy that various vehicles spaceships
Speaker 1: typically can use that will help lock other objects into
Speaker 1: a position and either tow them toward you or push
Speaker 1: them away, or otherwise keep them in the same spot
Speaker 1: that you want them to be in. So you can
Speaker 1: actually use beams of this energy to isolate and then
Speaker 1: manipulate other objects. Depending upon the nature of the tractor beam,
Speaker 1: it could be for boarding purposes, it could be it
Speaker 1: could be to help a vessel that is in danger.
Speaker 1: In the case of the Borg, it's so that you
Speaker 1: can hold it steady, but so as you can send
Speaker 1: all your little Borg soldiers over and start borgafying. Everybody
Speaker 1: left and right becomes a Smorges Borg. Ramsey's judging me
Speaker 1: and anyway, it's this idea that you could use this
Speaker 1: energy to hold things in place and pull them closer.
Speaker 1: But here's a tricky part. If you're using a beam
Speaker 1: of something, if you're beaming energy out at a target,
Speaker 1: you're you're sending something outward. How do you pull that
Speaker 1: thing in towards you? I mean, you're sending energy out
Speaker 1: that's a push. So how do you pull something with
Speaker 1: a pushing force? Clearly, there are some forces that are attractive,
Speaker 1: such as the electromagnetic force or dracar noir Colonne just kidding,
Speaker 1: this stuff's awful, But how do you how do you
Speaker 1: end up pulling that thing towards you? By the way,
Speaker 1: Ramsey thought that joke was funny. Ramsey used to wear it.
Speaker 1: So how do you use how do you pull something
Speaker 1: towards you using energy? Assuming you're not just using electromagnetic force,
Speaker 1: where the object that you're looking at has an electromagnetic
Speaker 1: charge and you're using the opposite one, and obviously opposite
Speaker 1: charges attract you would pull the thing towards you. That's
Speaker 1: one way, But the way we see tractor beams used
Speaker 1: in science fiction, that's not That's not what we're seeing, right.
Speaker 1: We're not seeing something just being pulled until it makes
Speaker 1: contact with the enterprise. The enterprise doesn't use a tractor beam,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly, next thing you know, all the shuttles
Speaker 1: in the area are slammed up against the side of
Speaker 1: the enterprise. That wouldn't be terribly useful, to actually be
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous. Instead, they're able to very precisely manipulate and
Speaker 1: move these things. And it doesn't appear to be electromagnetic
Speaker 1: in nature. So could you use some other energy to
Speaker 1: beam something out at an object and yet pull it
Speaker 1: toward you. The answer, by the way, happens to be yes.
Speaker 1: It's a counterintuitive effect, so it's kind of like imagining
Speaker 1: a sailboat and you're blowing wind at directly at the sailboat,
Speaker 1: and yet it's moving toward the source of wind. That
Speaker 1: seems very counterintuitive, but it turns out scientists and engineers
Speaker 1: discovered a couple of ways to make it happen on
Speaker 1: a very small scale. And one of those ways, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into all of them, but I'll
Speaker 1: do this. One one of those ways is using something
Speaker 1: called a Bessel beam vessel being b E S S
Speaker 1: E L. Now, this is a particular type of laser
Speaker 1: or laser, as my old listeners like to hear me say,
Speaker 1: imagine a beam of light that is in the form
Speaker 1: of a series of concentric circles. All right, So you've
Speaker 1: got circles within circles within circles, and in the very
Speaker 1: center there's a dot. That dot represents an empty spot
Speaker 1: of this beam. The beam maintains that shape over vast
Speaker 1: distances and can even hit an object and reform on
Speaker 1: the other side of the object as long as some
Speaker 1: of the outer concentric circles are larger than the object itself.
Speaker 1: So as long as those concentric circles are of a
Speaker 1: greater diameter than whatever the object is, you can actually
Speaker 1: shoot a beam at that object and instead of it
Speaker 1: just breaking the path of that beam. You know, when
Speaker 1: we think of light, if you put an object in
Speaker 1: front of light, it just blocks the light, right unless
Speaker 1: it's translucent or transparent, in which case some light goes through.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about solid object and opaque object. Well, in
Speaker 1: this case, if it's small enough and that beam hits it,
Speaker 1: the beam will actually reform on the other side, as
Speaker 1: if there's nothing in the way. So it's almost like
Speaker 1: it's ignoring the presence of that object as long as
Speaker 1: that object is small enough. So some physicists discovered that
Speaker 1: by using two Bessel beams, they could draw tiny particles
Speaker 1: toward the source of light. And here's what's happening. The
Speaker 1: lasers hit this tiny little particle from different angles. The
Speaker 1: beams then reform on the other side of the object.
Speaker 1: So this object, let's say it's a let's say it's
Speaker 1: just an atom, a hydrogen atom. So it's a proton
Speaker 1: and an electron, and you've got these two beams hitting
Speaker 1: this proton and electron, this this hydrogen atom, and they're
Speaker 1: hitting it at an angle where on the opposite side
Speaker 1: of this the energy is formed, and it's greater than
Speaker 1: the energy of each individual beam hitting from the front
Speaker 1: of the particle. It's because of that converging angle where
Speaker 1: you've got a greater concentration on the opposite side, that
Speaker 1: you then have the ability to push this atom closer
Speaker 1: to the source of the light. So you can think
Speaker 1: of two lights, two flashlights, if you will, converging as
Speaker 1: they are about to hit an object. Let's say it's
Speaker 1: a bowling ball, so we can easily imagine it on
Speaker 1: a macro scale, and you've got these two flashlights where
Speaker 1: they're they're converging so that the the two beams would
Speaker 1: cross just on the other side of the bowling ball.
Speaker 1: So the beams hit one surface of the bowling ball
Speaker 1: at an angle where if the beams were to be
Speaker 1: able to continue to the other side, they would converge
Speaker 1: right on the other end of the bowling ball together.
Speaker 1: That's what's happening with Bessel beams. Using uh these laser
Speaker 1: techniques to move very very small objects we're talking like
Speaker 1: on the molecular scale. You can then use that to
Speaker 1: combine and when when the beams reform on the other side,
Speaker 1: it creates more energy on the far side that it
Speaker 1: does on the near side, and it starts to push
Speaker 1: the object closer to the source of light. People call
Speaker 1: these laser tweezers or light tweezers because you're using two
Speaker 1: different sources of lasers on the same little object, almost
Speaker 1: as if you were using a pair of tweezers to
Speaker 1: manipulate some small piece of whatever. And it's fascinating. Over
Speaker 1: at the University of St. Andrew's, researchers have discovered how
Speaker 1: to create negative force using light to manipulate microscopic objects.
Speaker 1: So it's a special optical field that does the pulling
Speaker 1: and it's all due to that geometry of light, and
Speaker 1: the technology is astounding. However, it is still a very
Speaker 1: far cry from the world of science fiction because those
Speaker 1: are tractor beams that are really only useful for extremely
Speaker 1: tiny objects, stuff that's in that microscopic range. It's not
Speaker 1: really possible to scale that up so you could tow
Speaker 1: a vehicle or even move a small object around. To
Speaker 1: do that, you have to pour a lot more energy
Speaker 1: into your lasers, which would turn them into thermal weapons,
Speaker 1: so you would end up either melting or setting fire
Speaker 1: to whatever it was you wanted to pull toward you.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, I try to spend as much time away
Speaker 1: from things that are on fire as I possibly can,
Speaker 1: with the possible exception of marshmallows, but tractor beams are
Speaker 1: at least in theory possible on the microscopic scale. On
Speaker 1: the macro scale, maybe not, at least not in the
Speaker 1: way we understand energy to work right now. It could
Speaker 1: be that we discover something in the future that allows
Speaker 1: us to have this kind of incredible ability to manipulate
Speaker 1: distant objects using energy, but for the time being, that's
Speaker 1: not really the case. Now, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: another piece of technology that is ubiquitous in all the
Speaker 1: different versions of Star Trek, something that, in fact, for
Speaker 1: some people it's synonymous with Star Trek because of a
Speaker 1: a apocryphal quote, the beat me Up Scotty quote, and
Speaker 1: that's the transporter. So if you're not familiar with Star Trek,
Speaker 1: you're probably pretty lost in this episode by now. But
Speaker 1: one of the things they have are transporters. They're essentially teleporters.
Speaker 1: This was a way to get around some of the
Speaker 1: more mundane problem that you would encounter with a science
Speaker 1: fiction based series, largely, how do you get people from
Speaker 1: a spaceship that's meant to be in space onto other
Speaker 1: places like the surface of a planet or a moon,
Speaker 1: or maybe into another ship. And how do you do
Speaker 1: it in such a way where you're saving your budget
Speaker 1: so you don't have to have a giant shuttle built
Speaker 1: and then have animation of that shuttle leaving the Enterprise
Speaker 1: and then flying down to a planet and then landing
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. Well, one way you
Speaker 1: could do it is you create a magic teleporter, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what they did in Star Trek. And um
Speaker 1: this creates all sorts of problems, both technological and philosophical.
Speaker 1: So you might say, well, what's actually going on with
Speaker 1: these transporters? Keeping in mind that you know, in the
Speaker 1: early days of Star Trek, no one was bothering to
Speaker 1: explain how the technology was supposed to work. It just did,
Speaker 1: So it depends upon the explanation. Now, one thing you
Speaker 1: could say is it could be like the way it's
Speaker 1: depicted in say, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. You
Speaker 1: watch that movie and you have Mike TV who gets
Speaker 1: blasted into a million tiny pieces and his broadcast from
Speaker 1: one point to another and then reassembled on the other side,
Speaker 1: that would be difficult. I mean, obviously that requires transporting
Speaker 1: the atoms across a distance anyway, So why would you
Speaker 1: do that? Why would you break someone up into all
Speaker 1: their constituent atoms, then transport those atoms to where they
Speaker 1: needed to go, and then put them back together. It
Speaker 1: doesn't sound particularly efficient or pleasant to be divided up
Speaker 1: into your tiny atoms and then sent to your destination
Speaker 1: for reassembly. Even assuming you could get this technology to work,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like a practical approach. So maybe that's
Speaker 1: not it. Maybe it's not that the transporter is breaking
Speaker 1: you down to the atomic level and then somehow magically
Speaker 1: sending those atoms to a different place. Maybe something else
Speaker 1: is happening. Maybe it breaks down the body, scans all
Speaker 1: of your body's constituent atoms for information, so it learns
Speaker 1: how all the different atoms and molecules in your body
Speaker 1: are connected to one another, and how what their relationship
Speaker 1: is and and how they fit, and then sends that
Speaker 1: information to your destination, which then builds essentially a copy
Speaker 1: of you out of raw material following that blueprint that
Speaker 1: was created through the scanning process. So you're really just
Speaker 1: taking a full inventory of a living organism and all
Speaker 1: the stuff that makes it what it is, sending that
Speaker 1: information to a destination and building it again. Even if
Speaker 1: you were able to transfer the memories of the old person,
Speaker 1: that instance of the old person is gone, though, right
Speaker 1: I mean, So let's say it's me. I'll consider myself
Speaker 1: Jonathan A Jonathan Alpha. So Jonathan Alpha, I step into
Speaker 1: a transporter and I'm gonna beam myself to Walt Disney World, Florida.
Speaker 1: So Jonathan Alpha gets into the transporter and says engage,
Speaker 1: and then I get blasted by energy which splits up
Speaker 1: all of my atoms and scans everything and sends that
Speaker 1: information over to Walt Disney World, Florida. And then Jonathan Beta,
Speaker 1: who possesses all the memories and all the traits of
Speaker 1: Jonathan Alpha, is brought into existence and begins life anew,
Speaker 1: but still Jonathan Alpha is dead. Transporters essentially would become
Speaker 1: suicide machines because the person who stepped onto the transporter
Speaker 1: base would no longer have any continuity of consciousness. That
Speaker 1: person is gone. The thing that's created on the other
Speaker 1: side would be an exact duplicate of that person and
Speaker 1: have all the memories of that person, including the memory
Speaker 1: of stepping on the transporter, but it would be essentially
Speaker 1: a new person, so you have an interruption in consciousness.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of people have objected to, this
Speaker 1: idea of the transporter. In fact, Bones, you know, the uh,
Speaker 1: the character of Bones, the doctor in the original series
Speaker 1: of Star Trek had an objection to using transporters, and
Speaker 1: at least some versions that objection was voiced as I
Speaker 1: don't want to have all my Adams blasted apart and
Speaker 1: be dead and have some copy of me walking around.
Speaker 1: I'm not really crazy about that. Didn't mean that, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it happened anyway, So we had some grouchy copies
Speaker 1: of Bones walking around in the original series. But you
Speaker 1: might say, let's say this, this is how this works,
Speaker 1: that the transporter does in fact essentially kill a person
Speaker 1: and then reconstruct them on the other side. Why would
Speaker 1: you kill Jonathan Alpha at all? I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: he's a nice guy, he likes you. What what's your
Speaker 1: beef with Jonathan Alpha? Why not just let Jonathan Alpha
Speaker 1: survive back at the launch site and Jonathan Beta, a
Speaker 1: perfect clone, can putter about at the destination. So Jonathan
Speaker 1: Beta is over at Walt Disney World, Florida having a
Speaker 1: great old time, and Jonathan Alpha is still alive over
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia, without having to be blasted into tiny
Speaker 1: little bits. In fact, assuming we have this technology in
Speaker 1: the first place, there's no real reason this couldn't happen
Speaker 1: unless the transport technology absolutely required breaking down the transported
Speaker 1: person into their component bits to get a full scan.
Speaker 1: If the scan was non invasive, you could end up
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of copies of yourself all over
Speaker 1: the galaxy. Just think of all the podcasts I can
Speaker 1: make now. According to Arizona State physicist Lawrence Krauss, who
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Physics of Star Trek, he
Speaker 1: says that in order to de materialize a human body
Speaker 1: and turn it into energy, which we assume means breaking
Speaker 1: down all that binding energy between all the different atoms
Speaker 1: in your body, essentially you're using your body as fuel
Speaker 1: for a nuclear uh series of reactions, essentially a nuclear bomb.
Speaker 1: This would release the energy of about a thousand, one
Speaker 1: hundred megaton nuclear weapon detonations for a single person, depending
Speaker 1: upon your weight, really depending upon your mass. The largest
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon ever tested, by the way, was the tsar
Speaker 1: bomba which had a fifty or fifty seven megaton yield,
Speaker 1: So having a thousand hundred megaton nuclear weapon detonations, that's
Speaker 1: pretty big deal just to get yourself down to Walt
Speaker 1: Disney World, Floria Jonathan Alpha. You should think more now.
Speaker 1: You might also ask how much information would a human
Speaker 1: body represent if you were to scan a human body
Speaker 1: and try to recreate it on the other side, how
Speaker 1: much data is that? And we don't really know, but
Speaker 1: that hasn't stopped some people from having some thought experiments.
Speaker 1: Students at the University of Lester made some pretty big
Speaker 1: assumptions when they were working out how much time and
Speaker 1: energy would be needed to teleport a human being, and
Speaker 1: they settled on using the amount of information contained within
Speaker 1: d NA and the amount of information encapsulated by human brain.
Speaker 1: Their calculations came to two point six times ten to
Speaker 1: the forty second power bits, which is two point six
Speaker 1: tredicillian bits or five duo decillian bytes. There's no prefix
Speaker 1: for that number of bites because our prefixes for naming
Speaker 1: large numbers of bites stops at when the ten to
Speaker 1: the eighteenth power or a yata byte. So for reference,
Speaker 1: the last time that you know, you i've ever talked
Speaker 1: about big data. We were talking about creating two point
Speaker 1: five exabytes of data every day. What we're saying is
Speaker 1: that a human being represents way more than that just
Speaker 1: one human being, which would then mean that teleporting that
Speaker 1: person by sending the data to its destination would take
Speaker 1: a really long time because data can only travel at
Speaker 1: the speed of light, and you're depending on what method
Speaker 1: you're using to send the data. You know, in order
Speaker 1: for you to to actually have that received properly, you're
Speaker 1: not receiving it all at once. You have to receive
Speaker 1: it in chunks, right. It's kind of similar to WiFi
Speaker 1: or why gig or any of those technologies. You have
Speaker 1: to figure out what's the data throughput? How much data
Speaker 1: can we send out any one time. When you're talking
Speaker 1: about that much data, obviously that increases the amount of
Speaker 1: time it takes you to send it. Plus you still
Speaker 1: limited by the distance between point and point B, so
Speaker 1: you can't just instantaneously transport from one spot to another.
Speaker 1: There would actually be quite a delay depending on how
Speaker 1: far away you were. So a little complicated, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: there's no real answer to that. So you might ask well,
Speaker 1: is telebrotation even possible at all? Well, there's there's quantum telebrotation.
Speaker 1: It's not exactly the same thing. In fact, it's not
Speaker 1: the same thing at all, but at least has the
Speaker 1: name telebrotation in it, right. Quantum telebrotation refers to the
Speaker 1: transmission of information, not even really full information, but it's
Speaker 1: not the transmission of matter. You can transmit the state
Speaker 1: of a quantum particle, such as an electron spin, without
Speaker 1: transporting the particle itself, and it can travel over a distance.
Speaker 1: Because in two thousand and fourteen, a team of researchers
Speaker 1: broke records when telebrating the quantum state of a photon
Speaker 1: fifteen and a half miles or twenty five kilometers from
Speaker 1: the destination to the or from the origin to the destination.
Speaker 1: I should say they used an optical cable to transmit
Speaker 1: the state, which might sound like cheating because we're talking
Speaker 1: about teleprotation. I'd argue the term teleprotation as part of
Speaker 1: the real reason people misinterpret what this is all about.
Speaker 1: But that's because it does not mean instantaneous travel. Here's
Speaker 1: what's actually going on. You measure a quantum particle to
Speaker 1: a certain extent UH and you have well, first you
Speaker 1: have to entangle two particles. Entangling means that they have
Speaker 1: this relationship with one another. Typically it means that the
Speaker 1: spin of some element is UH is reverse. So if
Speaker 1: you have an electron and you're entangling the second elector on,
Speaker 1: the spin of one electron might be up, the spin
Speaker 1: of the other electron is down. As long as you
Speaker 1: don't measure either of the two electrons, they will remain entangled,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter how far apart they are. You
Speaker 1: could move one electron all the way across the universe,
Speaker 1: and as long as you haven't disrupted the system or
Speaker 1: observed it in any way, then the two electrons will
Speaker 1: be entangled, and as one is spinning up, the other
Speaker 1: will spin down. Whenever one changes, the other one will
Speaker 1: change likewise, and this will continue until you observe the system.
Speaker 1: When you do it decoheres, you break coherence, but you
Speaker 1: will know that at the instant when you measured the
Speaker 1: electron that was on your side, you'll know what the
Speaker 1: state of the other electron was at that same moment.
Speaker 1: So if we've moved to electrons all the way across
Speaker 1: the universe, and then I observe the electron that's in
Speaker 1: front of me, and I see how it's spinning down.
Speaker 1: I know that the electron across the universe at that
Speaker 1: moment it was spinning up. I don't know what it's
Speaker 1: doing now, because the decoherence means that you have broken entanglement.
Speaker 1: They are no longer entangled together. However, you can go
Speaker 1: a different, slightly different way and transport a quantum state
Speaker 1: sort of, and it's a little confusing. Let me see
Speaker 1: if I can give you kind of a high level
Speaker 1: approach as to how it would work. We're getting into
Speaker 1: quantum physics, which gets pretty hairy, and my expertise in
Speaker 1: quantum physics is at at an enthusiast level, so take
Speaker 1: it for what you will. So here's how it would work.
Speaker 1: You would measure a quantum particle to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: but not so much that your measurements are actually gonna
Speaker 1: mess things up and make the system go deco here.
Speaker 1: So then you would have that quantum particle interact with
Speaker 1: a second quantum particle um. Let's let's give these guys names.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna call your first quantum particle particle Man,
Speaker 1: and the second quantum particle is triangle Man. So you've
Speaker 1: got particle Man and triangle Man, and earlier before you
Speaker 1: did this, triangle Man actually hung out with a third
Speaker 1: particle we'll call it universe Man. So triangle Man and
Speaker 1: universe Man go along really well, and they became entangled
Speaker 1: at a quantum level, so that means they're quantum states
Speaker 1: are complementing one another. As one changes, the other one changes.
Speaker 1: So let's we're gonna talk about particle spin here. Triangle
Speaker 1: Man's spin is up, universe Man's spin is down. Both
Speaker 1: will change simultaneously to continue complementing one another as long
Speaker 1: as they are entangled. But then you have particle Man
Speaker 1: and triangle Man interact as anyone who has heard the
Speaker 1: song Nose. They have a fight, triangle wins. This actually
Speaker 1: changes things for both particles. Moreover, since universe Man and
Speaker 1: triangle Man were entangled, universe Man is also affected. You
Speaker 1: send this scan data from particle Man over the universe
Speaker 1: Man's position, and through some process I don't actually understand,
Speaker 1: universe Man essentially becomes particle Man. The effect is that
Speaker 1: particle Man has teleported to universe Man's position, all because
Speaker 1: of quantum entanglement. But this transformation. While it seems instantaneous,
Speaker 1: still requires you to actually send that scan data to
Speaker 1: the destination, so you're still limited by whatever medium you're
Speaker 1: communicating through. It's not truly instantaneous. If your brain is
Speaker 1: not broken yet, stay tuned because in a little bit
Speaker 1: we're gonna start talking about replicators. But first, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Star Trek replicators. Uh. There. These would replications would
Speaker 1: be the next generation version of the food synthesizers that
Speaker 1: were in the original series. Eventually in Star Trek there
Speaker 1: was the implication at least that they could replicate pretty
Speaker 1: much anything unless it was necessary for them not to
Speaker 1: be able to replicate it for purposes of the plot. So,
Speaker 1: for example, as far as you could tell, they could
Speaker 1: replicate most any normal matter, but not stuff like latinum,
Speaker 1: which was a a precious metal that was used in
Speaker 1: galactic trading, particularly among the Ferenghi. So you couldn't just
Speaker 1: replicate latinum because if you could, you could just flood
Speaker 1: the market and mess with inflation and totally make it
Speaker 1: an entire economy collapse. This was necessary for multiple reasons,
Speaker 1: one of the big ones being that. You know, when
Speaker 1: Rottenberry was envisioning Star Trek, part of at least some
Speaker 1: of the visions had it where it was a post
Speaker 1: scarcity society with no need for money. If you can
Speaker 1: make everything you need with a replicator, you don't really
Speaker 1: need cash anymore. Right, there's no scarcity everyone. There's plenty
Speaker 1: to go around for everybody. The only thing that would
Speaker 1: be a requirement is energy. You would need energy to
Speaker 1: run whatever the technology was that was providing that post
Speaker 1: scarcity uh source of resources. So as long as you
Speaker 1: had plentiful energy, there's no need for money. Now, if
Speaker 1: energy is not plentiful, then you would need money because
Speaker 1: you would have to pay for whatever the equivalent amount
Speaker 1: of energy was, so that there'd be some way of
Speaker 1: divvying that up. But at least in parts of Star
Speaker 1: Trek lore, there was no money in the Federation space area,
Speaker 1: but there were still other places like the Fringy Empire
Speaker 1: where money was very important. And so you had replicators
Speaker 1: that could theory theoretically replicate just about anything, but not
Speaker 1: certain things or else it would have broken broken the story,
Speaker 1: that's what would have happened. So plot is always more
Speaker 1: important than science. I guess is the lesson there. So replicators,
Speaker 1: how would they work in star trek? Well, presumably they
Speaker 1: were working on a very similar principle as the transporter.
Speaker 1: So the transport, of course converts bodies into energy and
Speaker 1: sends it somewhere and then converts that energy back into matter.
Speaker 1: But with a replicator, you would have to do something else. Right,
Speaker 1: you might convert pure energy produced by the ship's power
Speaker 1: plant into matter, so equals mc squared. That you know
Speaker 1: that can work both ways, right? Uh? So could you
Speaker 1: take energy and make matter from it? Well, theoretically, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you can convert matter into energy via nuclear reactions.
Speaker 1: It's also physically possible to conduct a phase transition from
Speaker 1: energy to matter, but it's really hard. I mean, practically
Speaker 1: it's probably not possible even in space. You would probably
Speaker 1: just have more luck going about getting your resources the
Speaker 1: old fashioned way as opposed to trying to make pure
Speaker 1: energy turn into matter. Another thing you could do is
Speaker 1: maybe recycle waste material down to the molecular or atomic
Speaker 1: level and then reassemble that, but you would be limited
Speaker 1: by whatever materials you had to work with. Similar to that,
Speaker 1: instead of recycling waste material, maybe you just have a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of vats of raw materials, so raw atoms. Uh.
Speaker 1: Or you might recycle waste material down to the sub
Speaker 1: atomic level, not the atomic level, and then reassemble that.
Speaker 1: That would give you a lot more chemical versatility than
Speaker 1: just the individual atoms. Uh. That might be what the
Speaker 1: Star Trek replicators are actually doing. But that requires splitting atoms,
Speaker 1: so you'd have to figure out how to do that,
Speaker 1: Like how much energy are you using to split the atoms,
Speaker 1: how are you containing the energy that is generated by
Speaker 1: splitting the atoms, And is that in fact a more
Speaker 1: efficient way of producing things like food than just storing
Speaker 1: food on a spaceship. Now, a lot of these approaches
Speaker 1: seem to be predicated upon the concept of molecular assemblers.
Speaker 1: So a molecular assembler is a specific kind of of nanotechnology. Really,
Speaker 1: just think of it as some sort of device or
Speaker 1: nanobot or object or process that can take individual atoms
Speaker 1: and form them together to make specific molecules, and then
Speaker 1: take those molecules and put them together and then put
Speaker 1: them in a structure that is that you know, resembles
Speaker 1: something else already. So you can build say a steak
Speaker 1: atom by atom and molecule by molecule, a cooked steak
Speaker 1: at that you could do that. Uh, it would be
Speaker 1: completely synthetic. And we have talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: synthetic foods in the past on tech stuff, But synthetic foods, UH,
Speaker 1: don't take this very granular approach. We're not putting them
Speaker 1: together atom by atom and molecule by molecule. That's not
Speaker 1: really an efficient way for us to do things. We
Speaker 1: don't have that assimilar built. And if we wanted to
Speaker 1: do it, you could do it in the lab. You
Speaker 1: could manipulate individual atoms and slowly move them into position
Speaker 1: and make them form bonds with one another, but it
Speaker 1: would take a really long time and a huge amount
Speaker 1: of energy comparatively speaking, and so it would be an
Speaker 1: incredibly inefficient way of making anything, let alone food. So
Speaker 1: you would need to have some sort of automated approach
Speaker 1: that would work at an incredible speed, and these molecular
Speaker 1: assemblers would potentially be that. And you may have heard
Speaker 1: some interesting doomsday theories about such stuff like nanobots that
Speaker 1: could take matter, break it down, and build it into
Speaker 1: something else. There is a a hypothetical situation called the
Speaker 1: gray goose scenario. And gray goo is where you get
Speaker 1: molecular assemblers that build more molecular are assemblers by breaking
Speaker 1: down matter, so they The idea is that these could
Speaker 1: malfunction and instead of ever making anything else, they just
Speaker 1: continuously start breaking down all the matter around them and
Speaker 1: turning them into more molecular assemblers, and that as a result,
Speaker 1: they would just completely take over the entire surface of
Speaker 1: the planet and eventually more of it and turn it
Speaker 1: into just more molecular assemblers. So we would all get
Speaker 1: devoured by these little nanotechnology things. Here's the good news.
Speaker 1: We don't have those, so there's no worry about it happening.
Speaker 1: But it is one of those kind of doomsday scenarios
Speaker 1: that science fiction authors have proposed after hearing about the
Speaker 1: concept of a molecular assembler. We do have three D
Speaker 1: printed foods, there are some examples out there. Typically, the
Speaker 1: three D printed foods are fairly primitive compared to this.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're not building them molecule by molly fuel. Instead,
Speaker 1: you're printing out layers of ingredients until you have a
Speaker 1: finished product. In some cases, it's it's not that different
Speaker 1: from like putting icing on top of a cake. You're
Speaker 1: just laying down a layer and another layer on top
Speaker 1: of that, another layer on top of that. UM. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have said that three D printers
Speaker 1: are about as close to replicators as we can get
Speaker 1: right now, of course, the three D printers not replicating anything,
Speaker 1: not not in the sense of star Trek. You could
Speaker 1: have a single digital model, send it to a three
Speaker 1: D printer and have the three D printer printed out,
Speaker 1: and it might be using plastic, it might be using metal,
Speaker 1: it might be using glass, it could be using organic material.
Speaker 1: We've seen some interesting experiments using three D printers to
Speaker 1: create artificial organs, for example, or at least artificial tissue.
Speaker 1: UM that's sort of potential, is phenomenal, but again it's
Speaker 1: not quite the same thing as a replicator. It doesn't
Speaker 1: get down on that level. Eric Drexler is probably one
Speaker 1: of the more famous figures out there who has suggested
Speaker 1: this idea of the nano factories of molecular assimilars approach.
Speaker 1: But it's it's really difficult to say whether or not
Speaker 1: this will ever come about as an actual thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of different mechanical and chemical manipulation
Speaker 1: approaches we would have to master in order for this
Speaker 1: to work, and there's no guarantee yet that we will
Speaker 1: ever actually reach that point, or if we do that
Speaker 1: it will be any more efficient than other methodologies. So again,
Speaker 1: kind of like some of the other Star Trek technologies,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily that they're impossible. It may be that
Speaker 1: they become impractical, that there are other ways of addressing
Speaker 1: the problem that maybe aren't as science fiction. Ee, maybe
Speaker 1: they're not as magical in the long run, but they
Speaker 1: are less inefficient and therefore more practical on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis. So we're probably not even close to
Speaker 1: creating any kind of nanotechnology or molecular assembler um. It's
Speaker 1: it's a tall order. We have gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where we can manipulate individual atoms. You may remember that
Speaker 1: IBM researchers were able to take atoms and and position
Speaker 1: them with a I believe it was a scanning electron
Speaker 1: microscope where they were able to position them one at
Speaker 1: a time to spell out IBM, which is kind of clever,
Speaker 1: but that's a far far cry of using atoms to
Speaker 1: spell out a word and using atoms to make a
Speaker 1: nice pastrami sandwich and some hot Earl gray tea but
Speaker 1: this is the sort of technology that we find inspirational. Uh.
Speaker 1: There have been plenty of examples of tech in Star
Speaker 1: Trek that either directly or indirectly influenced people to try
Speaker 1: and create tech in the real world that approaches that
Speaker 1: same use. Try quarters are a great example, And in
Speaker 1: a future episode I will definitely cover those. Other things
Speaker 1: I'll have to cover will include things like phasers and
Speaker 1: shields and cloaking devices. The list is enormous, but I
Speaker 1: can't possibly tackle all of that in one episode. It
Speaker 1: would take ages and ages, and honestly, I I want
Speaker 1: to make sure I get to other stuff. So at
Speaker 1: some point in the future I will revisit this topic
Speaker 1: and I will cover some of the other technologies found
Speaker 1: in Star Trek, and we will explore those possibilities, like
Speaker 1: impulse drive. What exactly is impulse drive and how does
Speaker 1: it work? You know, what are the uh? What does
Speaker 1: it mean if you reverse the polarity? Apparently it's important
Speaker 1: because it happens in like half the episodes of Star
Speaker 1: Trek the Next Generation? But and why does Riker sitting
Speaker 1: at chair or by swinging his leg over the back
Speaker 1: of the chair before sitting down? Some of these questions
Speaker 1: may in fact be impossible for us to answer, but
Speaker 1: we will take a close look at them in the future.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if any of you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover in tech stuff, whether it's the
Speaker 1: tech of fictional universe is, maybe it's a specific type
Speaker 1: of technology and you've always wanted to know how it works.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a company you want to hear more about
Speaker 1: its history and how it how it came to be,
Speaker 1: or a specific person in the world of technology you
Speaker 1: would like me to cover. Or maybe there's someone I
Speaker 1: should interview and talk to about their expertise in whichever
Speaker 1: field of tech they happen to be focused in. You
Speaker 1: should let me know because otherwise I'm just I'm just
Speaker 1: casting out into the void, or depending heavily upon my
Speaker 1: producer Ramsey, who is amazing at coming up with really
Speaker 1: cool ideas and it's a it's a huge load off
Speaker 1: my mind. If you want to be like Ramsey, and
Speaker 1: trust me you do. He looks good in a denim jacket.
Speaker 1: You gotta make sure you get in touch with me.
Speaker 1: You send me an email the addresses tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line
Speaker 1: on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for the show at
Speaker 1: both of those is tech Stuff hs W. Remember I
Speaker 1: often will live stream my recording sessions. It happens on
Speaker 1: Wednesdays and Friday's. Just go to twitch dot tv slash
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. You'll see the schedule there. You can join in.
Speaker 1: You can log into the chat room. I'm happy to
Speaker 1: chat with you guys and have a great discussion. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I get phenomenal suggestions in there, sometimes I get silly
Speaker 1: ones and guess what, I like both of those things,
Speaker 1: so join in on the fun. Also, if you love
Speaker 1: technology and you want even more, you should subscribe to
Speaker 1: the new show text Stuff Daily. That's a show that
Speaker 1: comes out every day Monday through Friday. It's about a
Speaker 1: five or six minute long show, and we just cover
Speaker 1: little topics that have been in recent discussion in tech
Speaker 1: news and give you context behind it so you understand
Speaker 1: the stories that are behind the headlines. So make sure
Speaker 1: you search for that on whatever podcatching service you use.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff Daily and I'll talk to you again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Because it has to works dot Com