HOW FAR IS SCIENCE FICTION FROM ACTUAL SCIENCE?

I am sure that at some point in your life you must have wondered about the space that lies between science fiction and reality. If not, then at least after watching a sci-fi movie, you must have thought about its plausibility in the real world. Well, for starters, the sci-fi genre is very vast on its own and chances are that at least some of the things which were portrayed as fiction some time ago have actually been brought to reality. For instance, inventions like flip phones, tablets, universal translators, Bluetooth handsets, and 3-D printers are all among such things which are directly inspired by Star Trek. I mean, there was a time when these actual things were a part of the science fiction realm. Think about telephones fifty years ago. Many people must have dreamt about wireless phones and video calls but how many actually believed that one day they all will be reality? Also, the evolution of technology is really fast. It took sixty-six years for man to fly for the first time and land on the moon. If we jump back to just 90 years, the father of nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford believed that the thought of harnessing the power of an atom was moonshine. Only if he was around now, how quickly do you think he must have swallowed his words? This once again proves that what seems to be science fiction today, becomes the reality of tomorrow.

To draw more comparisons, let’s just start with one of the most famous sci-fi movie of all time – Back to the Future. It’s a bit early to talk about time travel but, we can surely talk about the things that it predicted to have become reality by 2015. Granted that hoverboards and flying cars are not a thing, but, we do have wearable technology, smart clothing, personal flying drones, portable video conferencing devices, video glasses, and biometric locks. And yet we are moving towards things like fusion engines and airpower (which is basically electricity through the air to charge your electronic devices). Nikola Tesla will surely be happy. Now that we have reached Tesla, just think about how futuristic a Tesla car is? Autopilot in a car. A car that can drive you anywhere on its own. It can come to you from the parking spot. It can adjust the temperature for you even before you get in. And you can listen to your favourite podcast while playing a game of chess as the car takes you to your destination. I am certainly not suggesting that you should, but, you can if you wanted to. All this was science fiction 10-15 years ago.

Okay, so we have talked about how science fiction from the past has become today’s reality. But, what about today’s science fiction? How far we are from the things which are fictional in today’s time? We can’t talk about today’s science fiction without bringing our attention to robot uprising and time travel. I know that alien invasion is also a hot topic, but it deserves an episode of its own. So, what are the chances that Artificial Intelligence will become conscious and decide to terminate all of humanity? I am not an expert in the field but I am an expert at googling. And from the articles that I have read, some of the experts are definitely concerned. It's not like they are worried that a terminator will be coming soon. Think of it in this way, when people in the past used to think about robots, they used to think of a humanoid being who could do everything. From doing your dishes and walking your dog to taking out the trash and driving your car. But, what happened in reality? Programmers wrote algorithms that enabled a car to self-drive. The fiction indeed became reality but not in the form of a single robot doing multiple things but in the form of multiple, highly specialized robots doing very specific things.

Point being, there is not an all-doing highly intelligent AI that we need to worry about. Since AIs are generally built to be experts in one or two fields, even if an AI uprising occurs, it will be more like humans not being able to participate in a car race and less like humans struggling to maintain their existence. Nonetheless, at least from my point of view, we need not worry about an AI uprising anytime soon.

Now that AI uprising is out of the way, what about time travel? Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity does suggest that time is nothing but an illusion relative to an observer and it can slow down and speed up depending on how strong of a gravitational force is exerted through space. In theory, it is indeed possible for a person to travel back and forth in time by utilizing things like wormholes, Alcubierre drives, cosmic strings, etc. But, the practical feasibility of such concepts is yet to be identified. So, unfortunately, this science fiction dogma is still within the realm of fiction. But, you never know when the most implausible thing becomes so possible that it takes the form of reality. So, keep your fingers closed.

I know that I am leaving out countless other concepts like teleportation, invisibility, telepathy, telekinesis, interstellar space travel, superpowers etc. but, as I said earlier, the entire genre of science fiction is so vast that it is almost impossible to talk about every single concept in five minutes podcast or a thousand words article. Maybe, it’s also a part of fiction that every single topic of science fiction can be talked about within five minutes. Maybe one day this will also become reality. Till that day, let’s talk about one topic at a time.

In conclusion, science fiction is not too far behind actual science because yesterday’s sci-fi is tomorrow’s reality.

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