Famous Technology that Never Was

Flux capacitor? Warp Drive? Star Gate? We all know what these devices do, and they are even ingrained in popular culture to the extent that many people actually believe they are possible...or even real. Here are a few notable examples of famous technology that only truly exist in the realm of Science Fiction.

Warp Drive: Faced with writing a story line that included interaction with alien species originating from stars and galaxies well beyond our solar system, sci-fi writers had to come up with a means of making speedy interstellar travel a possibility, snubbing Einstein's seemingly iron-clad notion of the constant, unexceedable speed limit of light, or c. The answer, of course, was the 'Warp Drive', (also known as 'Hyper Drive' in the George Lucas Star Wars series) and exacted to a precise science (or non-science?) in the Star Trek series, 3D CAD animation, holographs and jettisonable core included.

Flux Capacitor: As made famous by Marty and the Doc in the "Back to the Future" trilogy, the Flux Capacitor allows the ubiquitous DeLorean to travel forward and backward through time, providing you're going 88 m.p.h and have the ability to generate 2.1 Gigawatts (pronounced jigga-watts) of power at the same time. You can even buy a 'real' Flux Capacitor online for a few hundred bucks for your own DeLorean, but don't expect time travel, just a bunch of hefty speeding tickets.

Star Gate: As made famous in the Stargate SG-1 movie, and subsequent TV mini series, the Stargate, made from a mysterious, super dense, super conducting material called 'Naquada', allows SG-1 team members to travel through relativistic "worm-holes", allowing interstellar voyage at the flick of a few encrypted, oversized buttons. Unlike the Warp Drive or Flux capacitor, worm-holes are actually based in science-fact, and may actually exist in the interior of black holes, but sadly, you'd probably get stretched into a million long mile strand of human spaghetti from the fantastically powerful gravitational shear forces trying to get through. Sorry Jack, Jack O'Neill, that is.

The Force: While not a technology, The Force is worthy of mention because of the popular desire of all humans to be able to control others and move objects with our thoughts. Who wouldn't want to be able to use The Force on the boss, or effortlessly change a tire without getting your hands dirty? A snazzy repackaging of the pseudo-science known as 'Telekinesis' or the ability to move objects with ones mind, Telekinesis was actually studied by the U.S. military during the Cold War to see if any basis of the theory lie in fact. The result? May the Schwartz be with you.

Radioactive bugs, radiation exposure: Whether you're Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, or Ben Grimm who would have ever thought that exposure to high levels of radiation would do anything except rot your soft tissue and kill you...fast. The notion that radiation exposure can cause super-strength was probably fomented during the 1950's -the Golden Age of nuclear testing- when scientists discovered that seeds exposed to radiation grew into giant vegetables, although no-one was lining up to eat them, at least not voluntarily. According to Marvel and DC comics, however, radiation can be good for you, if you consider being a love-tortured teenage spandex bug, a green version of Hulk Hogan, or a brooding pile of good ol' bricks a 'good' thing.