# "Sheilds Up"



## a_majoor (30 Oct 2007)

Satellites will need some sort of lightweight protection against radiation, microwaves and laser weaponry, and aircraft systems will need shielding as well. "Cold Plasma" is an interesting concept which might fit the bill. Other potential uses include radar cloaking and decontamination.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/cold_plasma_000724.html



> *Force Fields and 'Plasma' Shields Get Closer to Reality*
> By James Schultz
> Special to SPACE.com
> posted: 07:00 am ET
> ...


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## Greymatters (30 Oct 2007)

Star Trek - so many 'radical' ideas that have come to be true nowadays...


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## Spencer100 (30 Oct 2007)

You start a thread on the "tech" that was "invented" or "first seen" in Star Trek that became real.

Personal commucators - Sat and cell phones
Desk top computers - PCs
Data pads - PDAs
etc....


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## MedTechStudent (30 Oct 2007)

Teleportation.....they actually have teleported a particle of light.  Granted it was only about 3 inches mind you but still....progress yes?


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## CougarKing (30 Oct 2007)

Don't you mean "Shields up"? Just annoying when one sees typos in the title.

Wasn't there a book that came out several years ago called The Physics of Star Trek? Did anyone here read it and do you think the theories behind them are plausible?

BTW, shouldn't this be in Radio Chatter? hehe... ;D


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## Jorkapp (31 Oct 2007)

If you can find it out there, there's a 2 hour documentary called "How William Shatner changed the world". I've seen it on Discovery Channel. It gives a pretty good summary of all Star Trek influenced technologies we now have.


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## CougarKing (31 Oct 2007)

Slight hijack: Is William Shatner a naturalized US citizen after all those years of working there? Makes me wonder what kind of US President he would make if they changed the law allowing foreign-born citizens to run for President in the States? hehehe...but then again Ahhh-nold Schwarzenegger, the California Gover-nator would run too and that would be scary...  > ;D


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## Greymatters (31 Oct 2007)

Moderate hijack:  Star trek vs. the Terminator? Interesting concept...

Back to your regularily scheduled thread...

I heard that 'mockumentary' was pretty funny.. in fact I think someone said that here on a related thread?  Still havent seen it yet myself but its on my list...


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## Chou (2 Nov 2007)

Getting back to the point that Sci-fi like Star Trek have influenced many invetions or ideas.  Its amazing how a show like that can drive our imagination to eventualy produce the objects someone once made up.  For example warp drive and faster-than-light travel is being taken serioursly over the last decades.  Look at NASA's website. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/warp.html 

and http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/index.html where $1.6M was invested into this type of research.  
Obviously we have just began to scratch the surface but it's just a matter of time before some of us will be saying "engage!"


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## Colin Parkinson (2 Nov 2007)

The Enterprise was also equipped with a Bussard ramjet. A electromagnetic field to collect Hydrogen particles. They are still working on how to build a real one.


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## a_majoor (3 Feb 2008)

Evidently the Russians are still working on this concept, although their funding woes means this is probably only just ticking over (if at all).

http://www.military-heat.com/43/russian-plasma-stealth-fighters/#more-43



> Writing by Tolip on Wednesday, 3 of October , 2007 at 2:30 pm
> 
> First developed by the Russians, plasma stealth technology is also known as “Active Stealth Technology”. Plasma stealth is a proposed process that uses ionized gas (plasma) to reduce the radar cross section (RCS) of an aircraft. A plasma stream is injected in front of the aircraft covering the entire body of the aircraft and absorbing most of the electromagnetic energy of the radar waves, thus making the aircraft difficult to detect.
> 
> ...


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## ballz (4 Feb 2008)

Chou said:
			
		

> faster-than-light travel is being taken serioursly over the last decades



i asked my physics teacher why in space travel where theres no friction we can't accelerate faster than light. much to my amazement, he told me that as you speed up, mass actually increases, to the point where its infinite. so in order to accelerate infinite mass, u need infinite energy. light being photons doesnt have mass so its not so much of a problem for light... we humans arent so lucky.

i know these NASA guys are some kind of smart but if they can figure a way around that hurdle i dont even wanna try and understand it.


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## Loachman (4 Feb 2008)

Please use proper capitalization and spelling.

Clear communication is a requirement in the CF, especially at the officer level, and it is expected here as well.

You will be judged on it in both places.

Thank-you.


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## dwalter (4 Feb 2008)

The physics of warp drive are actually quite the short cut around faster than light travel. If any of you have ever heard of Alcubierre Metric, that is the real nitty gritty physics behind how the theory would work. Put rather simply, warp drive is not causing a vehicle to travel at a greater velocity than 1.0c, rather it is a method of bending space around the vehicle, bringing the point of origin, and the destination into contact. As soon as the two areas are bent inwards enough, and touch, it is possible for the vehicle to move seamlessly to the destination in a very short distance. When space reverts to 'normal' the ship can be some lightyears away from where it started. Of course you can see the problems with this idea. Bending space isn't the problem, but creating the technology to do it, and having enough power to do it on a large enough scale that it allows travel up to light years is a definite challenge. That is why in Star Trek they have a warp core, which is a matter/ anti-matter reactor. That would be roughly the type of power we would need to discover to do something like warp in real life.

OK end of long science lecture  You can tell I have a bit too much free time on my hands tonight.


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## ballz (4 Feb 2008)

I don't know much about Star Trek but the physics of all this stuff blows my mind. I quickly learned after a few chats with my teacher to just accept that these things are possible, and that although there is an explanation, my brain just is not capable of comprehending any of it.

I hope this is more to your liking, Loachman, but it will take some getting used to, so bare with me. ;D


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## Greymatters (4 Feb 2008)

Jorkapp said:
			
		

> If you can find it out there, there's a 2 hour documentary called "How William Shatner changed the world". I've seen it on Discovery Channel. It gives a pretty good summary of all Star Trek influenced technologies we now have.



Saw it last month.  A lot of inventors seemed willing to attribute their desire for exploring technology to the original star trek series...


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## a_majoor (29 Sep 2013)

Electron accelerators the size of a grain of rice can be used to do many things outlined in the article. This is also a way to create plasmas (for active stealth and other purposes), and not mentioned in the article is generating high power electron beams for Free Electron Lasers (FEL), which are energy efficient, scalable to many different power levels and "tunable" as to the wavelength of light that can be emitted.

http://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2013-09-27-accelerator-on-a-chip.aspx



> *Researchers Demonstrate 'Accelerator on a Chip'*
> Technology could spawn new generations of smaller, less expensive devices for science, medicine
> 
> September 27, 2013
> ...


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