What Do You Know, I Wrote A Book!

This post has little to do with biological exceptions, but if you find the writing on this blog at all appealing, then perhaps you will like this topic as well. I have finished a book for Springer Scientific Publishing, and this book is now ready for pre-ordering and e-book sales. The book is entitled, The Realization of Star Trek Technologies: The Science, Not Fiction, Behind Brain Implants, Plasma Shields, Quantum Computing, and More.

A new Star Trek movie was just released, and September marks the 50th anniversary of the airing of the first episodes of the original Star Trek series. To mark the occasion, I have investigated just how close science is to producing all those great technologies introduced in the various Star Trek series and movies.

As I started my research, it soon became apparent that some technological goals presented in the shows have been met and even surpassed (cell phones, tablet computers, talking computers, hand held scanners, etc.). But more surprising was how far science has come in producing working versions of larger technologies.

Would you believe that lasers have been produced that can pull objects toward the source of the light. That's a tractor beam to you people less interested in Sci-Fi. Even more amazing, brain implants are on the market right now that can restore vision to the blind, a la Geordi's VISOR. They even have the ability to see beyond visible light, just like Commander La Forge could.

Perhaps the two most amazing advances are in the areas of cloaking devices and teletransportation. Engineers and physicists can render objects invisible to wavelengths of light, allowing someone to sense what is behind the object as if it weren't there at all. That's a true cloak, not a trick with mirrors or cameras. And finally, transporters may be decades away, but scientists have begun to teletransport energy, atoms and information from one place to another - without ever existing anywhere in between. The distance record is now farther than what would be needed to transport things from space to the Earth's surface.

In all, nine Star Trek technologies are discussed in the book, including how they are used in the franchise, how they are explained to function, and how prophetic the creators were - the ways things really work is so close to how they were predicted.

The hard copy, e-book, and individual chapters can be pre-ordered from Springer Scientific Publishing: http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319409122

or from Amazon Books: https://www.amazon.com/Realization-Star-Trek-Technologies-Intelligence/dp/3319409123/ref=zg_bs_226507_8

The hard copy of the book should be available for shipping in September.

Here endeth the commercial.

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