Science fiction has produced many amazing examples of fictional technology that have captivated audiences around the world.
From giant spaceships traversing the cosmos to laser guns and swords that warriors of the far future use to fight, the possibilities of sci-fi technology are only limited by the imagination of their creators themselves.
But while there are many other technical obstacles that often stand in the way of real-world applications, science fiction innovations have been and may be used in the real world in the future.
Here we take a look at five science fiction technologies and see how likely it is that we’ll actually be using them in the near future.
Teleporter: Teleport me, but not while you’re alive
If you’re a geek like me, you’ve probably watched your fair share of Star Trek. Star Trek is one of the oldest and most enduring brand names in science fiction, and for good reason: it introduced audiences to a ton of awe-inspiring and seemingly impossible technologies.
But perhaps one of Star Trek’s greatest and most enduring sci-fi features is the transporter, which allows the user to travel from one place to another without seemingly moving at all. The series gives some explanation for how the transporter works, saying that the user is disassembled at a subatomic level and then reassembled at their destination.
If that sounds incredibly complicated, that’s because it is. And that’s why it’s still a long way from becoming a reality.
But that’s probably for the best. Every season of Star Trek seems to have at least two episodes dedicated to transporter malfunctions. Everything happens: transporter clones, human fusions, hallucinations, turning into children, being sent back in time, or even to a parallel universe where everyone is evil and Spock has a beard. Honestly, if even Star Trek can’t make the transporter safe in-universe, we’d be better off not having one.
Cryogenic Freezing: Freezing Plans to Escape Death
I’ll be honest, as of the time of writing this, my fiancé and I are in the middle of rewatching all of Futurama, so this movie has been on my mind a lot.
Cryogenic preservation, or more specifically, cryonics in this case, is a method of being frozen in time. A user enters a chamber and is essentially frozen completely. The aim is to preserve their body and mind for a desired period of time until they are eventually thawed and awakened in the future.
It’s a staple theme in science fiction, such as the aforementioned Futurama and Austin Powers. There’s also an old urban legend that Walt Disney was frozen over, too.
The thing is, cryonics exists. Corpses have been frozen for preservation perfectly well since at least 1967. And it certainly works in the sense that it preserves the body. It’s used for a variety of purposes, including preserving cells and embryos.
So, if it’s real and appears to work, what’s the problem?
Well, leaving aside the ethical concerns about changing our concept of death, and the fact that economic realities mean cryonics companies can’t make enough profit to survive, there’s one very big problem: cryonics only works half the time.
The freezing part works fine. But the thawing part? It’s impossible. In fact, there are so many reasons why this isn’t possible that it would take too long to list them all. But suffice it to say that, ironically, any plans to freeze food for the foreseeable future will need to stay frozen.
Lightsabers
There is no one who hasn’t dreamed of owning a lightsaber, I’m sure of it.
Star Wars has become so pervasive in pop culture. Even people who have never seen Star Wars dream of owning a lightsaber. Think about it. Not only is it super cool, it’s also super useful. It’s a very useful self-defense tool that comes out without breaking at the touch of a button, and it has great potential as a multi-tool. It’s a survival knife, a fire starter, a flashlight, and everything else rolled into one.
Can you imagine cooking with a Lightsaber? You could slice up a raw steak and let the heat of the Lightsaber cook it as you slice!
But of course, they’re not feasible at all.
Firstly, it can’t be a laser, as if it were a laser it would continue firing over great distances and is not self-contained like a lightsaber, it’s a plasma so is that possible?
Yes, in theory, but you’d need a magnetic field to confine the plasma to the shape of a sword, which would require not just a tiny handle, but a lot of incredibly heavy and expensive equipment.
There is one plasma that could theoretically work – a controlled, high-temperature flame produced by igniting a jet of fuel – but it’s not even a lightsaber – just a very strange and impractical flamethrower – although, interestingly, there is a prototype made by Hacksmith Industries.
Another possibility, known as the Proto-Saber, features a handle attached to a power pack via a cord, something that has featured many times in Star Wars lore.
Hacksmith Industries was indeed successful in this, creating multiple prototypes and producing enough for lightsaber duels, eventually succeeding in creating what is likely the closest thing to a lightsaber, or at least a protosaber, in the near future: a retractable, plasma-based blade that burns at over 2,200 degrees.
However, this is still incredibly impractical and a far cry from what lightsabers should be – but it just goes to show that we’re not as far off as we thought.
Flying Car
Let’s take a step back from the world of teleportation, evading death with ice, and amazingly intricate swords made from plasma to look at something a lot more practical: flying cars.
Many science fiction stories depict flying, or at least hovering vehicles, becoming commonplace and ubiquitous. However, such vehicles have yet to become a reality.
But the important word here is “yet.”
Flying vehicles such as planes and helicopters already exist, and creating smaller, more personalized flying vehicles is within reach, although there may be many issues and glitches involved.
But while this is startlingly real, the biggest obstacle to getting flying cars may not be technological, but logistical: Updating nearly a century’s worth of traffic laws to account for a vertical axis would be a bureaucratic nightmare that few lawmakers are likely to want to tackle.
Stealth Devices: It might be possible – I bet you never expected it!
Well, we’re back to Star Trek. But we’ve also got Star Wars. Predator. Doctor Who. And Stargate. Basically, it’s everywhere.
The idea of a cloaking device is simple: it makes you invisible. Are you in a big spaceship? Now you’re invisible. Are you in a special suit? Now you’re invisible.
This isn’t originally science fiction: the idea of an invisible accessory exists in folklore and mythology all over the world, and still appears in fantasy today, such as Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.
And, at least depending on how you define “invisible,” there has been great progress in this area.
The ideas of “active camouflage” and “optical camouflage” aim to make something essentially invisible, to blend in with its surroundings and not be visually noticeable, and there’s also the idea of orbiting something rather than reflecting light, which can also make it essentially invisible.
Overall, there are a number of theories of cloaking that are currently being actively researched by scientists. It also helps that we know that there are some things, like black holes, that are practically invisible to most visual detection methods. Black holes cannot be seen because they absorb all light rather than reflecting it.
But while we are making progress, a practical model is still a long way off.
