Star Trek at 50: Is There Real Science To It?

Star Trek is celebrating its 50^th anniversary, and NASA shared secrets about the science behind the famous franchise. The movie is full of high-tech fantasies for people who want to escape reality, but could there be actual science behind it?

Planet Vulcan from Star Trek may not be a real, but the star system it belongs to is: https://t.co/E6FghBeB3A pic.twitter.com/2vqSHUotRp

— NASA (@NASA) July 24, 2016

The first Enterprise spacecraft was released in 1976, and back then, Nature World News noted that NASA administrator Dr. James D. Fletcher, welcomed the franchise. The original Star Trek series producer, Gene Roddenberry does know his astronomy - the warp was legit because he understood how actual spaceships could take years to travel from one planet to another.

In a recent press release by NASA, Roddenberry and later writers started with the science that we know in the real world and stretched it accommodate the amazing inventions to support action-filled and entertaining, sci-fi stories.

The show's writers are said to get some scientific details from time to time, but there are times when they get their science wrong. Accurate science wouldn't be so exciting if the producers base their writing on reality. Overall, Star Trek has actually been intelligently written, and is faithful to science more than other fiction series.

Would Vulcan be real, though? In its feature, NASA said that it is part of a trinary star system, which means it features three stars - all of them dwarves. The main star, 40 Eridani A, is its mythical primary sun, while the other two orbit each other. If it is real, then The Weather Network noted that Vulcan will have unbelievably beautiful sunsets that will put Tatooine's (and Earth's) to shame.

To celebrate Star Trek, NASA made a virtual model of the system, complete with a model of Vulcan in it - the model is accessible on this link.