Skip to main content

Is a Holodeck Possible?

   


The fictional simulator located on starships and starbases gave the Starfleet crew entertainment, a training mechanism, and a way to investigate mysteries. In the science fiction realm, the holodeck was a room equipped with a hologrid containing multidirectional holographic diodes, using photons and force fields to create a realistic environment. In an otherwise empty room, “solid” props and characters interacted with a holographic background capable of creating any scenario possible. Science has a different name—“tele-immersion”—for Star Trek’s holodeck. The technology for this interactive virtual world is closer than you might think.
     
    Some scientists and researchers think we will have holodecks as early as 2024. While the technology exists to create one already, it would be crude compared to the one on Star Trek. Taking the science fiction genre out of the equation, holodecks are simply an attempt by Hollywood and video game makers to move entertainment closer to reality. Instead of slouching on a couch during a movie or getting a thumb workout during a session of Halo, a player can maneuver a battle site while interacting with actors or run around the bases after hitting a grand slam at a New York Yankees game. Many of the difficulties of creating a holodeck have already been solved. For example, the U.S. Army has created a floor called an “omnidirectional treadmill” that allows users to walk around a room without running into walls. Microsoft is at the forefront of this technology, filing several patents for holodecks. The IllumiRoom, a Microsoft project, can manipulate surroundings and make furniture disappear. Lightspace is a digital chandelier by Microsoft that can detect people and objects in a room and display images from the ceiling that cover the walls and floor. And in 2014, scientists at the University of Illinois created CAVE2, which uses 8-foot-(2.4-m)-high screens that cover 320 degrees of a room and can model global weather patterns, study the effects of drugs, and help doctors practice surgery.
     Researchers have already created a 3-D reality. The difficulty is creating a realistic interactive reality, where a participant can shake the hand of a coworker thousands of miles away or hit a home run that feels exactly like the real-life alternative. If science does master the holodeck, there may be significant changes in how we function. TVs, even flat-screen, HD, and “smart” devices, may become obsolete as people opt for a real-world experience. Business travel could decline if holodecks become less expensive than airplane flights and hotels. In fact, many people may opt never to leave the house again since any experience they desire can virtually drop into their living room.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Will the Universe End?

    In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is not in fact static, but expanding. In the years following his discovery, cosmologists took up the implications of the discovery, asking how long the universe had been expanding, what forces caused the expansion, and whether it will ever cease.    Cosmologists are pretty confident about the first question: just shy of 14 billion years. A great deal of evidence supports the predominant answer to the second question: The universe rapidly emerged from a singularity in an event that cosmologists call the Big Bang. The third question is a bit more mysterious, and the answer relies on an obscure, confounding phenomenon known as dark energy. The density of dark energy in the universe determines its ultimate fate. In one scenario, the universe does not possess enough dark energy to forever counteract its own gravity and thus ends in a “Big Crunch.” Under this scenario, the universe’s gravity will overcome its expansio...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Causes Volcanic Lightning?

      On March 10, 2010, Eyjafjallajökull volcano, a caldera in Iceland covered by an ice cap, erupted. It sent plumes of clouds across most of Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. Photos of the eruption show lightning originating and ending in the cloud of ash that hovered over the volcanic opening.    The largest volcanic storms are similar to supercell thunderstorms that spread across the American Midwest. But while those thunderstorms are fairly well understood, volcanic lightning still remains mysterious. The remote location of volcanoes and infrequent eruptions make volcanic lightning difficult to study. In general, lightning occurs through the separation of positively and negatively charged particles. Differences in the aerodynamics of the particles separate the positive and negative. When the difference in charge is great, electrons flow between the positive and negative regions. A lightning bolt is a natural way of correcting the charge distributi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is the Mpemba Effect Real?

       For more than 2,000 years, scientists have observed the unique phenomenon that, in some conditions, hot water freezes faster than cold water. In the fourth century B.C.E., Greek scientist Aristotle noted, “The fact that the water has previously been warmed contributes to its freezing quickly: for so it cools Sooner.      Seventeenth-century English scientist Francis Bacon noted, "slightly tepid water freezes more easily than that which is utterly cold.” Several years later, French mathematician René Descartes echoed his predecessors' observations, writing, "One can see by experience that water that has been kept on a fire for a long time freezes faster than other."      Given the centuries old knowledge that hot water does indeed freeze faster than cold in certain circumstances, it should have come as no surprise when Tanzanian schoolboy Erasto Mpemba claimed in his science class in 1963 that ice cream would freeze faster if it w...
Post a Comment
Read more