Science fiction has brought forward a number of incredible instances of fictional technology that has captured the hearts and minds of viewers all over the world.
From massive spaceships traversing the cosmos to laser guns and swords used by warriors in the far future to do battle, the possibilities for sci-fi technology are limited only by the imagination of the creators themselves.
But in terms of being used in reality, there are a vast number of other technical issues that often get in the way. Still, sci-fi innovations have become used in real life before, and some could still do so in the future.
Here, we take a look at five pieces of sci-fi technology and see how likely it is for us to use them ourselves in the near future.
Transporters: Beam me up, but not in your lifetime
If you’re like me, you’re a geek. And if you’re a geek like me, that means you’ve no doubt watched quite a lot of Star Trek. It’s one of the earliest and most enduring brand names in science fiction, and for good reason. It introduced audiences to a vast number of incredible pieces of technology that seemed awe-inspiring and impossible to ever achieve.
But perhaps one of the greatest and most ubiquitous sci-fi features in Star Trek is the transporter. It lets users go from one place to another, seemingly without moving at all. The franchise does give some explanation about how it works, with the users being broken down on a subatomic level and then reassembled at their destination.
If that sounds incredibly complicated, it’s because it is. And that’s why it’s not even remotely close to ever becoming a reality.
But that’s probably for the best. It seems in every season of Star Trek, there are at least two episodes dedicated to transporter malfunctions, with everything from transporter clones; people being fused together; hallucinations; turning into children; being sent back in time; or being sent to a parallel universe where everyone is evil and Spock has a goatee. Honestly, if even Star Trek can’t make transporters safe in-universe, we’re probably better off without them.
Cryogenic freezing: Put your plans of cheating death on ice
Full disclosure, I am in the middle of re-watching all of Futurama with my fiancé at the time of writing, so this is one that’s been on my mind a lot.
Cryogenics, or more specifically in this case, cryonics, are a way to get frozen in time. The user goes into a chamber and is essentially completely frozen, the idea of which is to preserve their body and mind for as long as needed until they are eventually unfrozen and woken up in the future.
This has been a staple of science fiction, whether in Futurama as previously stated or even in Austin Powers – and there’s the old urban legend that Walt Disney was frozen solid too.
Here’s the thing: Cryonic technology exists. Bodies have been frozen solid for preservation before, since at least 1967. And yes, it does work in the sense that the bodies are preserved. People do use it for a number of purposes, such as storing cells or embryos.
So if it’s real and it seems to work, what’s the problem?
Well, putting aside the fact that there are ethical concerns about changing the concept of death and the fact that economic realities essentially prevent cryonics companies from making enough of a profit to survive, there is one very big problem: It only half-works.
The freezing part works just fine. The unfreezing part though? Impossible. In fact, there are so many reasons why this is impossible that it would take too long to list all of them. Suffice to say, though, plans for cryonics in the foreseeable future need to be kept, ironically, on ice.
Lightsabers
There is no such thing as a person who never dreamed of having a lightsaber. I am certain of this.
That is how far Star Wars has permeated into popular culture. Even people who have never seen Star Wars still have dreamed of having a lightsaber. Think about it: Aside from being really cool, they’re also so convenient. An extremely useful self-defense tool that comes out at the push of a button without being fragile, and one that has incredible potential as a multitool. It’s a survival knife, firestarter, flashlight, and more all in one.
Can you imagine using a lightsaber to cook? You could cut through raw steak, and the heat of the lightsaber could cook it for you as you cut it!
But unsurprisingly, they’re also not even remotely feasible.
First off, they wouldn’t be lasers. If it was a laser, it would keep shooting off into the distance and wouldn’t be self-contained, like a lightsaber is. It would be plasma, so is that possible?
Yes, in theory. But you would need magnetic fields to keep the plasma contained in the shape of a sword, and that would take a lot of absurdly heavy and expensive equipment to do, not just a small handle.
There is one type of plasma that could in theory work, such as a controlled high-temperature flame formed by igniting jet of fuel. But that’s not even a lightsaber, that’ just a very weird and impractical flamethrower – though interestingly, a prototype of it does exist, made by Hacksmith Industries.
Another possibility, known as protosaber, was characterized by the handle being attached to a power-pack via chord. It’s something that has shown up in Star Wars lore more than once.
Hacksmith Industries actually succeeded in doing this and has made multiple prototypes, even making enough to stage lightsaber duels with them. They eventually succeeded in making what is probably the closest we will ever get in the near future to a lightsaber, or at least a protosaber: A retractable plasma-based blade that burns at over 2,200 degrees Celsius.
But it’s still incredibly impractical and is a far cry from what lightsabers are supposed to be. But it shows it isn’t as far-off as we thought.
Flying cars
Let’s take a break from the realm of teleportation, cheating death through ice, and mindbogglingly complicated swords made of plasma. Let’s look at something more down to Earth: A flying car.
Vehicles that fly or at least hover above the ground becoming commonly used everywhere is seen in many pieces of science fiction. And we don’t have them yet.
But the operative word there is “yet.”
We already have flying vehicles, like planes and helicopters. Making smaller, more personalized flying vehicles is very much in the realm of possibility, though there may be a large number of issues and things that could go wrong.
But while this is surprisingly realistic, the biggest obstacle to you having your own flying car may not be technological, but logistical. Updating almost a century’s worth of traffic laws to now account for a vertical axis is going to be a bureaucratic nightmare, one that few lawmakers will be eager to tackle.
Cloaking devices: They might be possible – bet you didn’t see that coming!
Well, well, well – we’re back to Star Trek again. But also Star Wars. And Predator. And Doctor Who. And Stargate. The point is, this is everywhere.
The idea of a cloaking device is simple: It makes you invisible. In a big starship? Now it’s invisible. Wearing a special suit? Now you’re invisible.
This isn’t even originally a thing of science fiction. The idea of an accessory granting one the power of invisibility has been in folklore and myths all over the world. It’s still used in fantasy today, such as Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility.
And there has been a lot of progress made on this front, at least depending on how you define the word “invisible.”
The idea of “active camouflage” and “optical camouflage” are supposed to make one essentially invisible, as in impossible to perceive visually due to being blended in with surroundings. Then there’s the idea of trying to make light go around something, rather than be reflected off it, which could essentially make it invisible too.
Overall, there are many theories of cloaking that are being actively explored by scientists today. It helps that some things are known to actually be invisible to most visual means of detection, such as black holes, which absorb all light instead of reflecting it, meaning they are impossible to see.
However, while we have been making advances, a working model is still far off in the future.
