Justin McLachlan

The force is not with us

Today’s holograms are three dimensional, but they’re mostly still contained in a surface, like a piece of holographic film or glass. Projecting 3D images, or any image, hologram or not, into the air is a challenge we’ve just started to overcome. One company in Japan has figured out how to use lasers to cause a reaction in the oxygen and nitrogen in the air that results in a dot of light. Do this at a high frame rate and with enough dots-per-inch, and you get a realistic 3D image that can even move. Combine red, blue and green lasers and you have the full spectrum of color at your command, all out of thin air. This isn’t necessarily holography, at least in the traditional sense we’ve already discussed, but it’s our closest step yet toward the kinds of projections the holodeck probably uses. They’re not photo-realistic, though and even if they were, the illusion would fade as soon as you tried to touch them.

Star Trek solved this problem by wrapping their holodeck holograms in force fields. These not only provided structure and physical presence, but also tactile sensations. A rock in a holodeck not only looks like a rock, but if you touch it, an electromagnetic field makes it feel like a rock, too. Force fields also added a sense of movement. According to the Technical Manual, holodeck users are trapped in a kind of perpetual treadmill. As the user thinks he’s walking, he’s actually held in place by force fields while images on the walls scroll by and  “omnidirectional holo diode clusters” project the appropriate images into his field of view.

Today’s force field technologies, though, are limited, as in almost non-existent. We haven’t yet developed force fields that can provide any safe tactile feedback, let alone the nuances of seemingly unlimited materials and surfaces. Some current research is focused on charged plasma clouds to protect ships and satellites in space, but this approach still requires a physical wire mesh to contain the energy. It’s probably not an adaptable technique for a holodeck. A few years ago, the British Ministry of Defence announced a method to use supercapacitors in tank armor to generate a brief, but powerful magnetic field that could deflect grenades and bullets. While work is ongoing, most of it is geared toward these kinds of defensive applications. We obviously have a good deal of work to do before we can manipulate force fields with the kind of sophistication and complexity that a holodeck would require, and sadly, it might not be on anyone’s list of priorities. Even on Star Trek, humans had both transporters and warp drive before they invented force fields. The Enterprise NX-01 didn’t even have shields. Instead, they relied on polarized hull plates to protect them from weapons fire.

Excerpted from Treknology: Star Trek Tech 300 Years Ahead of the Future by Justin McLachlan. Get a copy on Amazon.