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Star Trek phaser gun technology in the works

Posted by Team Boxwish 4 months ago

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Are scientists taking a leaf out of Boxwish’s book and being inspired by movies? Just recently we told you that Harry Potter-style invisibility cloaks might become a reality thanks to brainboxes experimenting with bending light to make objects disappear (see Related Content, right) and now it looks like the scientific community has finished its Hogwarts movie marathon and has now started on something a little more space-age, as the next film gadget to make an appearance in the real world could be from sci-fi staple, Star Trek. Yes, those clever bods that actually listened in their school science lessons might be taking us where no-man has gone before – into phaser gun territory.

To the uninitiated, phaser guns emit a beam that stuns or kills and this principle has now been found to work… on worms. Yup, once exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light, the worms are paralysed. Even when the light is switched off, the after-effects continue and it’s only when the worm is exposed to a different light that movement is restored.

Okay, so that might not quite make James T. Kirk’s Christmas list, but let’s remember it’s baby steps people and it is the first time that such an effect has been demonstrated. The work is being conducted by a team from Simon Fraser University in Canada and the findings have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

But before you fear this will just mean intergalactic war, scientists claim the technology will be applied for medical purposes. Shame, we know some Romulans that have really got it coming…

[via The Telegraph]

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