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Star Trek Science
liam.mccaffrey - 23/6/14 at 10:07 AM

I’m sure some of you are star trek fans and are aware of the “tricorder”. For those not in the know, it is basically a handheld device about the size of a large graphing calculator which can basically scan anything and everything.

I was on our inspection services stand at our oil refinery open day over the weekend and I was thinking about all the equipment we have at our disposal and how close we are to replicating the functionality of a star trek tricorder just with the equipment we have here at the refinery and can carry around with you. When all considered I was amazed at the capability we already have.

Things we have right now:
Ultrasonic flaw detectors which can measure material thickness and find discontinuities, cracks and examine welds. A lot more also when used in shear wave or phased array mode.

Digital x-ray equipment can examine welds (or anything really) in the field and with instant results.

Positive material analysers use x-ray fluorescence to accurately determine the chemical composition of metal. I’m still amazed by this every time I see it.

We have a hand held optical scanner which can build a point cloud 3-d model of anything.

On a larger scale we have laser scanning tools which can accurately measure pretty much anything.

Then there are the more obvious things like cameras, mobile phones, tablets and laptops giving us huge computational muscle and the ability to wirelessly transfer ever increasing amounts of data.

When taken together and throw in stuff like software defined radio it starts to come quite close to the type of things they do in star trek. Obviously at the moment its all a damn site bigger than a tricorder.

Thinking about where computers were 30 years ago its hard to imagine where we’ll be in another 30!!

EDIT
Forgot to add thermal imaging cameras and our VOC camera which can see hydrocarbon vapours like butane and propane!

[Edited on 23/6/14 by liam.mccaffrey]

DW100 - 23/6/14 at 10:22 AM

Star trek communicators seem old hat now.

People would think nothing of picking up their mobile phone to call the international space station. It has access to all human knowledge through the internet and apps are hugely increasing it's capabilities.

fesycresy - 23/6/14 at 11:08 AM

Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, was an alien

Agriv8 - 23/6/14 at 11:12 AM

I have More 'Processing' Power and More 'memory' in my right pocket that the first mainframe I was 1 of 3 on a shift who kept it running 24/7. Add to that a full colour screen music, video not to mention that GPS camera video conferencing Ect Ect.


As to where we are going to be in 25s years from know who knows.

ATB Agriv8

mcerd1 - 23/6/14 at 11:18 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Agriv8
I have More 'Processing' Power and More 'memory' in my right pocket that the first mainframe I was 1 of 3 on a shift who kept it running 24/7


we all have daily access to more computing power than anyone had dreamed of in the 1960's

but I don't think anyone back then would have imagined that all most people would use this massive computing power for is e-mail, youtube, facebook and playing angry birds / candycrush.....

Agriv8 - 23/6/14 at 11:21 AM

Nearest we got was some ASCII art of the page 3 variety!

ATB agriv8

scudderfish - 23/6/14 at 11:46 AM

We went to the National Museum Of Computing (near Bletchley Park, excellent place to visit). Here is a photo of Kate holding the SD card from her camera in front of an early hard disk platter. The SD card stores 500 times more info....

TheGecko - 23/6/14 at 12:31 PM

If you want TriCorder like behaviour, have a look at the SCiO here. Their Kickstarter program has finished but you can still order one (at a slightly higher price).

It's basically a Near-infrared spectrometer in a handheld housing, that communicates with their cloud processing engine via your phone and can do quite accurate chemical analyses of samples. Watch the video at the link above and be amazed!


D

[Edited on 23/6/2014 by TheGecko]

[Edited on 23/6/2014 by TheGecko]

Agriv8 - 23/6/14 at 01:06 PM

The second row of hd's look very familiar as do the tape drives at the back. Monday motioning full stop and clean with copious isoclean isopropanol used to end up quite light headed after cleaning all 8. Looks like I will have to get to Bletchley park.

ATB agriv8

Simon - 23/6/14 at 01:56 PM

Everything in Star Trek is real, they are just keeping it secret at the moment

I was gonna use an old warp engine in my MG TF (the one the wife still doesn't know about)

ATB

Simon

loggyboy - 23/6/14 at 02:16 PM

quote:
Originally posted by liam.mccaffrey
Positive material analysers use x-ray fluorescence to accurately determine the chemical composition of metal. I’m still amazed by this every time I see it.


My wife works for one of the biggest Uk supplier of handheld XFR scanners - and when she first went for the interview and later described it to me I told her the blokes were pulling her leg... a few mins on google later I realised it was real... lol

snapper - 23/6/14 at 06:32 PM

My cousin, a diesel fitter and scratch build space model maker of immense skill has been recruited by the Institute for Inter Stellar Studies and the British Interstellar Society to build a model of Deadulas, in doing so he has been invited to lectures by very cleaver people the likes of Alan Bond ( interstellar engines) and a man called Kelvin Long, nuclear physicist and lecturer in near light propulsion and faster than light propulsion.
With my limited knowledge I can understand near light engines but faster than light (warp) is for me just a concept however in these lectures there is an awful lot of theoretical physics some of it using Stephen Hawkins postulations.
With this exposure to serious science and with the projects openly stating that they are hundred year projects I think it is now less Star Trek and more Wright Brothers
None of these people will be alive when near light speed is achieved but perhaps there names will be.

My perverse mind however is already dwelling on the possibility that the first near light speed astronoughts taking into account time dilation at near light speed could spend hundreds of earth years traveling to Barnards star only to find that warp engines had been invented in their absence and othe astronoughts got there first having left earth hundreds of years after them

Irony - 23/6/14 at 08:31 PM

Some good stuff by this fella on a similar subject, this episode is about him trying to build a real lightsaber.

Simon - 23/6/14 at 10:15 PM

quote:
Originally posted by snapper
....
My perverse mind however is already dwelling on the possibility that the first near light speed astronoughts .......


In one of Peter Hamilton's books (Pandora's Star), part of the story is of a spaceship going to Mars (?) and landing, only to have a couple of smartarses standing behind them in a wormhole on the planet's surface, thereby negating the need for spaceships

It amused me anyway, but the thing is if those first astronauts don't set off, there probably won't be any further development in space flight - probes and scopes may be the way forward.

I'm a bit of a cynic when scientists come up with the "ooh, we'll never go faster than light or even close to it" because I'm sure they said that going faster than 20mph would be dangerous. Once the ramjet engines are working - not too far off now, then we'll have aircraft doing Mach 10. Australia for Elevenses, home for lunch I'm sure the same thing will happen with spaceflight

Sadly we use money, I think in the post money economy of the Star Trek, things happen a bit quicker because there's no money issues.

ATB

Simon

owelly - 23/6/14 at 10:41 PM

I'm sat at work hanging off the end of a 3MW Solid State Phased Array Radar. It can identify tiny bits of space debris floating about/orbiting above us, but it won't fit on your pocket though. Do I win a prize?

Irony - 24/6/14 at 07:59 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Simon


In one of Peter Hamilton's books (Pandora's Star), part of the story is of a spaceship going to Mars (?) and landing, only to have a couple of smartarses standing behind them in a wormhole on the planet's surface, thereby negating the need for spaceships

Simon


Later on in Pandora's Star (or one of the Trilogy) it takes you to the fella who invented wormhole technologies house. Instead of doors between rooms he has wormholes. Each room in his house is on a different planet.

SteveWallace - 25/6/14 at 07:55 PM

On the subject of faster than light travel, did anyone ever find the flaw in the results reported a couple of years back by that Italian particle physics lab that claimed to have measured neutrino speeds fast than the speed of light?

IIRC neutrinos generated by CERN were measured as arriving at the Italian detector faster than they should have been and, despite a long look at the data, no one could find an error. It was only a very small percentage, but faster than light is faster than light and it's not possible according to current physics theories.

scudderfish - 25/6/14 at 08:06 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Irony
quote:
Originally posted by Simon


In one of Peter Hamilton's books (Pandora's Star), part of the story is of a spaceship going to Mars (?) and landing, only to have a couple of smartarses standing behind them in a wormhole on the planet's surface, thereby negating the need for spaceships

Simon


Later on in Pandora's Star (or one of the Trilogy) it takes you to the fella who invented wormhole technologies house. Instead of doors between rooms he has wormholes. Each room in his house is on a different planet.


OT but will someone please get Peter Hamilton an editor with the balls to stand up to him and chop large chunks of text out of his books. My god! do they go on and on and on! The number of times in The Great North Road it was described in excruciating detail the change in clothing necessary to go out in the cold and then back into somewhere warm made me want to stab a kitten.

Simon - 25/6/14 at 10:52 PM

quote:
Originally posted by scudderfish
... My god! do they go on and on and on! The number of times in The Great North Road it was described in excruciating detail the change in clothing necessary to go out in the cold and then back into somewhere warm made me want to stab a kitten.



That's why they call it Space Opera - cos it goes on an on. And I like it so nurr na na nurr nurr

Just waiting for the 3000 page odyssey

Have just started reading Alastair Reynolds and that's quite descriptive too.

ATB

Simon

snapper - 26/6/14 at 05:22 AM

quote:
Originally posted by owelly
I'm sat at work hanging off the end of a 3MW Solid State Phased Array Radar. It can identify tiny bits of space debris floating about/orbiting above us, but it won't fit on your pocket though. Do I win a prize?


We must meet next time I'm working with MOD Plod

owelly - 26/6/14 at 05:39 AM

I can give you a tour of the site......but shhhh, don't tell anyone.

loggyboy - 26/6/14 at 08:21 AM

quote:
Originally posted by SteveWallace
On the subject of faster than light travel, did anyone ever find the flaw in the results reported a couple of years back by that Italian particle physics lab that claimed to have measured neutrino speeds fast than the speed of light?

IIRC neutrinos generated by CERN were measured as arriving at the Italian detector faster than they should have been and, despite a long look at the data, no one could find an error. It was only a very small percentage, but faster than light is faster than light and it's not possible according to current physics theories.


IIRC they did eventually find a mistake in the calcs.