Are the following predictions possible? Discuss with your classmates and then check.
Aliens that look like us
Faster-than-light-speed
travel
Planet-busting
superweapons
Teleportation
Invisibility cloaks
Sentient planets
Humanlike
intelligent machines
Tractor beams
Robopocalypse
Matrix-like learning
The reality of sci-fi concepts
If science fiction ruled the world, time travel and
teleportation would be commonplace, and humanlike intelligent machines and
cyborgs would be walking amongst us. But just how likely are these and other
far-out ideas? Here, LiveScience examines the plausibility of 10 popular sci-fi
concepts.
Aliens that look like us
From the Klingons in "Star Trek" to the
skinny, oval-eyed creatures in classic alien abduction tales, many pop-culture
depictions of extraterrestrials have been decidedly humanlike. But what is the
likelihood intelligent alien life would resemble humankind?
Scientists have proposed solid arguments for and
against E.T. developing a body plan similar to ours. At face value, it seems
unlikely organisms on another world that underwent eons of unique evolutionary
history should fit comfortably into our clothes.
But perhaps evolutionary circumstances similar to
those that led us to develop limbs and fingers to manipulate tools arose on
alien planets. Maybe being bipeds with bilateral symmetry is a prerequisite for
building socially and technologically advanced societies. In this respect, some
researchers say we possess a "pretty optimal design for an intelligent
being," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute. It could be that there is no other
choice but for intelligent beings to look like humans.
Faster-than-light-speed travel
Nothing, so far as we know, can travel faster
than light, according to one of the pillars of modern physics,
Einstein's general theory of relativity. Whereas, general relativity says
objects cannot travel faster than the speed of light as measured in local
surrounding space it doesn't place limits on the speeds at which space itself
expands or contracts.
It's this "loophole" some physicists are
hanging their faster-than-light hat on. A "warp bubble" around a
ship, for instance, could make space-time itself contract in front of the ship
and expand behind it. "The warp bubble is a volume of space that might be
able to move at speeds faster than light as measured by space surrounding the
bubble," said Gerald Cleaver, a professor of physics at Baylor University.
"Objects inside the warp bubble would be at rest with
regard to the warp bubble but would also be moving faster than the speed of
light with regard to the surrounding space outside the bubble."
Planet-busting superweapons
In science fiction, planet-busting superweapons are
all the rage. Yet even more terrifying is the wherewithal to take out an entire
star.
The dastardly deed is theoretically possible, however,
and even on time scales not stretching into millions of years. "There's
one scheme to me that seems not quite plausible, but it's close," said
Mike Zarnstorff, an experimental plasma physicist and deputy director for
research at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
A black hole launched into the sun would "feed
and grow exponentially," Zarnstorff told Life's Little Mysteries, and
therefore would "self-propel" a star towards its doom. "A black
hole could suck in all the mass of the sun," Zarnstorff said.
Teleportation
Any chance you will "beaming" up or down
anytime soon? Scientifically speaking, teleportation faces some extreme
obstacles, ones that even the redoubtable Montgomery Scott would find trouble
working around.
"With the teleportation of a large object, you run
up against a conceptual 'no,'" said Sidney Perkowitz, a physicist at Emory University
in Atlanta
To date, scientists have transported quantum
information, in one case between photons nearly 10 miles (16 kilometers ) from
one another. Even so, such quantum teleportation is a far cry from teleporting
actual material or even a person, with ideas
for doing so — such as wormholes — remain entirely speculative and chockfull of
challenges. Even so, these achievements could lead to less-fanciful, though
still impressive, technologies, such as quantum computers.
Invisibility cloaks
In the "Star Trek" universe, cloaking
devices on Romulan and Klingon spaceships create all sorts of tactical
nightmares for their human foes. Hiding in plain sight is certainly a handy
trick for a person, too, as fans of "The Invisible Man" and the
"Harry Potter" series know well.
Science has given us glimpses, as it were, of how
these anti-detection technologies might be possible. But full-fledged
invisibility cloaks like those of science fiction and fantasy remain quite a
ways off.
"I won't call it impossible, but it's implausible
what you see in 'Harry Potter,'" said David Smith, professor of electrical
and computer engineering at Duke
University
Nevertheless, research into rendering objects
invisible has made leaps and bounds just in the last several years. Partial
cloaks that work like sophisticated camouflage — much like the shimmering
distortion of the Predator alien in the 1987 movie of the same name — might be
more realistically achievable, Smith said.
Sentient planets
To an extent, Earth is a living planet, as biological
beings do indeed swim, crawl and fly through our world's uppermost layers of
ocean, land and sky. But all that is still a far cry from the literally living,
conscious planets that make appearances in many sci-fi and fantasy stories. Take
the living planet Mogo in "Green Lantern," which can change its
climate and grow foliage in desired patterns on its surface at will.
Or consider the moon
Pandora from the 2009 film "Avatar," where flora and
fauna have evolved tentaclelike organs that enable them to neurally interlink
with each other. A globe-spanning consciousness exists, with Pandora's trillion
interconnected trees acting like cells in a colossal brain, dwarfing our mind's
100 billion neurons.
In reality, the development of a planet-scale
"being" looks to be an extreme long shot. Based on the chemistries and behaviors of life and nonlife, don't bet
on Mogo or Pandora, scientists say. "The way evolution works, I can't
see it happening," said Peter Ward, a professor of paleontology at the
University of Washington
Humanlike intelligent machines
In many futuristic tales, our heroic protagonists are
often helped — and sometimes harmed — by intelligent
machines far more clever than an iPhone.
Artificial intelligence research has quite a ways to
go, however, before Star Trek-esque visions are realized. Robots and computers
have already proved far more reliable and proficient than humans at specific
tasks, such as assembly-line work or crunching numbers. Yet machines cannot
handle a range of activities that strike us as basic, such as tying a shoe
while holding a conversation.
"What we have learned so far from 50 to 60 years
of AI research is that surpassing human intelligence in a very narrow area or
maybe even in a task-oriented way — like playing a particular game — as
sophisticated as it may be, is a lot easier than creating machines that have
what we call the 'common sense' of a 3-year-old child," said Shlomo
Zilberstein, a professor of computer science at the University of
Massachusetts.
Given the pace of progress, however, many scientists
believe highly intelligent machines will be available in the coming decades. But
it is less clear when (or if) computers will achieve human-like "sentience,"
in terms of self-interest and free will — a premise very much at the heart of
many sci-fi stories.
Tractor beams
This jack-of-all-trades tool ranks as a
science-fiction staple right alongside lasers and faster-than-light travel. An
invisible tractor beam on the Death Star hauled in the Millennium Falcon in the
original "Star Wars" flick, while a shimmering ray — which doubled as
a repulsing beam — saved the crew's bacon multiple times on "Star
Trek."
In sci-fi, tractor beams often consist of
exotic-sounding particles and energies. In our day and age, using regular ol'
light to hold and manipulate objects tractor beam-style is already a reality, albeit
on very tiny scales.
NASA engineers think tractor beam-like technologies
could graduate to bigger tasks, like collecting large dust particles on Mars or
from the tail of a comet.
In theory, continued improvement could someday lead to
tractor beams not all that dissimilar to that deployed on the Starship
Enterprise.
Robopocalypse
If sci-fi flicks, the likes of "Terminator"
and "Matrix," have it right, a war pitting humanity against machines
will someday destroy civilization. Given the current pace of technological
development, does the "robopocalypse" scenario seem more
far-fetched or prophetic? The fate of the world could tip in either direction,
depending on who you ask.
While researchers in the computer science field
disagree on the road ahead for machines, they say humans' relationship with
machines probably will be harmonious, not murderous. Yet there are a number of
scenarios that could lead to non-biological beings aiming to exterminate
humanity.
"The technology already exists to build a system
that will destroy the whole world, intentionally or unintentionally, if it just
detects the right conditions," said Shlomo Zilberstein, a professor of
computer science at the University
of Massachusetts
Matrix-like learning
Speaking of the "Matrix," could knowledge
such as how to practice kung fu be uploaded into the brain in mere seconds via
a futuristic computer jacked into the skull, as happens to Keanu Reeves'
character?
Some emerging research suggests the pace of learning a
skill can be technologically boosted. For instance, with so-called decoded neurofeedback,
scientists have used functional magnetic resonance imaging to trigger brain
activity patterns in the visual cortex that match those from a previously known
mental state, thereby improving performance on such visual tasks.
Perhaps someday, with major advances in several
fields, the acquisition of knowledge and skill could happen at broadband-like
speeds across surgically implanted and external hardware. "The concept is
not totally implausible," said Bruce McNaughton, a neuroscientist at the University of Lethbridge
in Canada
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