Top 5 Sci-Fi Gadgets We Wish Were Real
Tech Talker dives into the world of science fiction technology to find the coolest gadgets we wish were real today.
If you haven’t guessed it by now, I’m a total sci-fi geek. I love The Walking Dead, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and a whole slew of other movies and shows in this genre. My favorite part about most of these programs is when they show off some futuristic tech that we could only dream of now.
So this week, I’m going to dive into some of the coolest sci-fi technology that I wish was real!
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Here are 5 super awesome sci-fi gadgets and technology that I can’t wait to become reality:
Teleportation
By far one of the coolest things in sci-fi tech is teleportation. Ever since I saw my first episode of Star Trek I’ve been hooked on the idea of teleporting from place to place instantly. I always thought it would be amazing to step onto a platform and seconds later be in a completely different place!
Imagine if this technology were real – what effect would it have on our world? No house would be complete without a teleporting closet. Cars, planes, and trains would pretty much be useless and so would roads and bridges. If we wanted to get somewhere, we could just teleport there on a moment’s notice. Of course then you would be stuck with all those unused frequent flyer miles!
I always thought it would be amazing to buy a piece of property in the absolute middle of nowhere and then be able to teleport into town for work. Heck at that point, you could be a world traveler on the weekends. I could probably do a whole episode on my dreams for teleportation.
As it stands now, the only teleportation that has actually been done is on the quantum level. Check out more on Quantum Teleportation if you’d like, but don’t get your hopes up that this will happen on a large scale anytime soon.
Invisibility/Cloaking Device
One of my other favorite devices from sci-fi is a cloaking device which allows whatever is being concealed by it to be invisible. What kind of space movie wouldn’t be complete without a cloaking device? One moment there’s a lone spaceship floating around in the void, and the next a fleet of spaceships appears as they turn off their cloaking device which has been concealing them.
Cars, planes, and trains would pretty much be useless and so would roads and bridges. If we wanted to get somewhere, we could just teleport there on a moment’s notice.
It would be awesome to have the ability to hide in plain sight. You could easily conceal yourself if you were being chased or use it to sneak around and do any number of awesome things.
Luckily for me, this is much more feasible than teleportation. There’s an awesome article in Popular Science that shows researchers working on technology that will allow a sort of invisible camouflage. Surprise, surprise it looks like it’s being made for the U.S. military, but nonetheless, it’s still awesome!
Warp Drive
Next up is the warp drive. This isn’t just a next generation hard drive; a warp drive is a device that allows spaceships to travel faster than the speed of light. This is an extremely popular device in Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars and a whole host of other space-related TV and movies.
This device drastically cuts down on the time it takes to go anywhere in space. After all, if the most popular space movies used current space propulsion technology it would be pretty boring.
“Sir, let’s set course to the nearest star system!”
“All right but that will take us a few thousand years!”
It just doesn’t have the same effect, right? In sci-fi films and shows, spaceships like the Millennium Falcon can simply jump in and out of warp speed, traveling faster than the speed of light to explore worlds far beyond our galaxy.
This is another piece of tech that isn’t completely impossible from a truly scientific standpoint. In fact, a NASA physicist has been working on just that – a spaceship that can traverse distances faster than the speed of light.
Now before you scream in horror for thinking that I just violated one of Einstein’s rules (that nothing can exceed the speed of light), in this case physicists are theorizing on bending space. They would be creating negative space in the front of a ship and positive space in the back of the ship to propel it forward.
As you may imagine, this isn’t very easy technology to create. If this type of device pans out, it probably won’t be seen in my lifetime. But anything that pushes us closer to having a real Millennium Falcon is OK by me!
Shrink Ray
Next up is the shrink ray. You’ve likely seen this type of gadget in a cartoons and movies alike. It’s a device that has the ability to shrink anything into the size of an action figure or a bacterium (remember the movies, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Innerspace?). I loved the idea of a smaller version of myself that could experience the world from a totally new perspective
As a kid I always thought that it would be awesome to shrink myself by half and that way I would have twice as much of whatever candy or pizza I was eating. I also always thought it would be awesome to build an extremely nice house really small and just shrink myself when I got home. That way I could buy a couple of square feet of oceanfront property and – voila! Instant mansion.
Sadly, shrink rays are simply science fiction at this point. It would be hard enough moving molecules from one point to another, but actually shrinking the atomic structure might be a tad more difficult… and explosive!
Time Machine
Last but certainly not least is probably everyone’s favorite piece of sci-fi tech, the time machine. This comes in many different flavors across the sci-fi universe, whether it’s Dr. Who’s Tardis, Terra Nova’s time gate, or a DeLorean DMC-12.
Who hasn’t wished that they could correct a mistake, have lunch with a deceased loved one, or even hang out with dinosaurs? The uses for time travel are pretty limitless, but also riddled with peril if used incorrectly.
One major paradox in many of these sci-fi movies is that if you affect the past so that you were never born, wouldn’t that have prevented you from going back in the first place? This type of circular thinking drives me crazy! I would be all for a device that just let you observe the past (without messing with it). The ability to just glimpse the past could solve so many mysteries and would be an incredible tool!
Sadly it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting this anytime soon either (not unless we figure out a way to harness the power of a couple of suns and channel them into a wormhole!)
I know what you’re thinking – that talking about all of this sci-fi is pretty silly. But at the same time, it’s also pretty awesome. It can help us put technology and scientific discovery into perspective. Take a look at today from the eyes of someone from 1950. Cell phones, computers, the internet – all of this stuff that we use daily would have been just like sci-fi to a person in the 1950s. So who knows, maybe we’ll be teleporting and zipping across the galaxy in another 60 years!
Well, that’s it for today! Be sure to check out all my earlier episodes at quickanddirtytips tech-talker. And if you have further questions about this podcast or want to make a suggestion for a future episode, post them on Facebook QDTtechtalker.
Until next time, I’m the Tech Talker, keeping technology simple!
Science fiction man and spaceship images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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About the Author
Tech Talker demystifies technology and cutting edge devices so that even the most tech illiterate can understand what’s going on with their computer or gadget — and what to do when something goes wrong.
