The Science of Star Trek

Chad Cohen
National Geographic Today

December 13, 2002

Star Trek: Nemesis, opening today in the United States, features
alien species at every turn, enemy ships vaporizing in bursts of
light and space ships traveling at "warp speed."

In the 24th century it all makes perfect sense—and also in the 21st. That's partly because Star Trek, from its first incarnation as a U.S. television series in 1966, has relied on real, or at least plausible, science for verisimilitude.

"One of the keys to the success of Star Trek is the fact that it is grounded in scientific credibility," says Andre Bormanis, a writer for UPN's Enterprise—the fifth Star Trek television series—who has a master's degree in science policy from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Now, though, science fiction and fact have thoroughly commingled as scientists pursue advances in alternative energy sources, artificial intelligence, cloning and interstellar travel.

"Is it real science? I'm not sure," says Brent Spiner, who plays the android Lt. Commander Data in Nemesis, and who helped write the script. "They do research and try to get as close to reality as they can. But I don't know that we're 'beaming' yet, are we?"

Beaming and Warp Speed

"Beaming," or teleportation, means to atomize something (or somebody) in one place for reassembly in another. Physicists in Austria, Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the U.S. all claim to have achieved some form of teleportation, by "beaming" photons, or particles of light, from one point to another.

"Warp speed," another Star Trek mainstay, may not be so far-fetched, either.

A space opera needs speed, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry realized. For example, Proxima Centauri, the sun's nearest stellar neighbor, is more than four years away even when traveling at the speed of light—approximately 186,411 miles per second—way too slow for an hour-long show based on interstellar exploration.

But Einstein's Theory of Relativity states that nothing travels faster than light. So Star Trek's writers invented "warp speed." By stretching out the space behind the spaceship and compressing the space in front, "warp speed" actually brings the destination closer, making it unnecessary to travel faster than the speed of light.

"Scientists have debated whether warp travel is theoretically possible," says astrophysicist David Batchelor of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who has been watching Star Trek since the series began. "It would require inconceivable amounts of energy to expand and contract even small regions of the universe."

In 1994 Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre published "The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast Travel within General Relativity" in the electronic journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.

Phaser, Tricorders, Human Clones—Our Future?

Not every piece of Star Trek wizardry requires such a technological stretch. Handheld scanning devices like the "tricorder" are feasible. Already sensors exist that detect everything from brain abnormalities to mineral deposits, so squeezing all those capabilities into a handheld unit within 300 years is unlikely to present a problem.

Star Trek's photon torpedoes and phasers are nothing more than souped-up lasers. The U.S. military hopes to deploy lasers to destroy incoming missiles.

"Nemesis'" drama hinges on cloning, with the evil Romulans having bio-engineered Shinzon, the villain, using DNA from Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) of the Enterprise. Scientists have already cloned mice, pigs, cats, cows and sheep, among others. While only a tiny fraction of these clones are viable and many have genetic abnormalities, extending the technology to humans within the next three centuries seems inevitable.

Do the actors need to understand the science behind Star Trek to develop the characters they play?

"No, I don't need to," Spiner says, "and indeed I don't."

Marina Sirtis, who plays Deanna Troi, agrees. "To put it bluntly," she says, "my scientific knowledge stopped in physics when we got to prisms."

Whatever your level of understanding, Star Trek has credibility. After all, Batchelor points out, it's not as if Star Trek featured wizards.

"The characters succeed at fantastic tasks of engineering, not magic or spells," he says. "The heroes are engineers and scientists, and that is inspiring because there isn't much of that on TV."

So does Star Trek advance the cause of science?

"On a science level, where Star Trek has been beneficial is just in the area of imagination," Spiner says. "That's what Star Trek has always been about."

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