I don’t usually link to car adverts, but an exception ought to be made in this instance, as both Leonard Nimoy, and Zachary Quinto, who do, or have, played Spock on “Star Trek”, reunite once more onscreen.

Laser, or energy guns, called phasers, were often carried by the starship crews seen in sci-fi TV/film series “Star Trek”, and now it looks like we’ve finally caught up following the arrival of an actual phaser. The purpose, and more crucially, the way these phasers work, somewhat differs from what we’ve seen up until now however:

Using a nanoscale drum, scientists have built a laser that uses sound waves instead of light like a conventional laser. Because laser is an acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation,” these new contraptions – which exploit particles of sound called phonons – should properly be called phasers. Such devices could one day be used in ultrasound medical imaging, computer parts, high-precision measurements, and many other places.

Star Trek Into Darkness, the second installment of the J.J. Abrams made “Star Trek” reboot movies, opens in Australian cinemas on 9 May… that’s less than two months away, and if the latest trailer is anything to go by, it’ll be one high-octane experience to say the least.

So what to say? Always outgunned, always outnumbered, but never out done?

Now all I have to do is somehow score a ticket to a preview screening… and ok, I’ll even wear a tux if I have to.

I wonder if Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had the remotest idea, or even gave the notion the slightest thought, that the now iconic sci-fi show would still be going strong almost 50 years after its inception?

Last week I alluded to the possibility of a Star Trek/Star Wars crossover given J.J. Abrams will be directing the next film in the “Star Wars” franchise. Well, what more can I say then?

While just a little more time than was really necessary is devoted to Mr Data, this clip showing characters from the early episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) filming wardrobe and make-up tests is still quite… amusing.

And who else, by the way, thinks Geordi La Forge must have been beamed up to the twenty-fourth century from the 1980s?

Followers of sci-fi TV and movie franchise “Star Trek” have seen several versions of the starship USS Enterprise come and go. But which one was the best? It’s something I’ve not really thought much about, but US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, speaking at Comic-Con last week, suggests that you can never better an original:

A panel at this year’s Comic-Con took on one of the more controversial of these subjects, by debating just which fictional spaceship is indeed the best. But it turns out that a member of the audience had maybe the most convincing argument of all – and it was none other than Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He explained that the measure of a starship’s worth isn’t in how it looks today, but how it was seen by people when it originally came out. Measured by this metric, he believes that the USS Enterprise from the original Star Trek TV series is the best spaceship of all time, which Tyson goes on to describe as “astonishing, awesome, beautiful, and seductive.”

Those in the audience were in clear agreement.

An alternative title sequence for the original “Star Trek” TV show, that possibly takes some inspiration from the 2009 Star Trek movie.

Curiously though DeForest Kelley, who played Dr McCoy, as one of the original show’s trio of stars, is absent here. True enough Kelley did not feature in the title sequence for the first season of “Star Trek” in 1966, but was included by the second season.

I’m not sure there’s too much need for historical accuracy at this stage though, given all seven key cast members went on to become household names. Just my thoughts anyway.

Spaceships bearing a striking resemblance to the USS Enterprise, from “Star Trek”, could be operational in about twenty years, though their range would be limited to travel within the solar system. That’s better than nothing mind you.

This version of the Enterprise would be three things in one: a spaceship, a space station, and a spaceport. A thousand people can be on board at once – either as crew members or as adventurous visitors. While the ship will not travel at warp speed, with an ion propulsion engine powered by a 1.5GW nuclear reactor, it can travel at a constant acceleration so that the ship can easily get to key points of interest in our solar system. Three additional nuclear reactors would create all of the electricity needed for operation of the ship.

Should the absence of the use of social media by those residing within the Star Trek universe be a concern? No. Its use was abandoned centuries earlier following mass disillusionment with overwhelming signal to noise ratios that rendered virtually all communication inscrutable… doesn’t anyone understand that?

Even when we are alone, most of us check a number of communication vectors and leave them live – Twitter, email, text messages, Facebook, our blogs, Reddit, news feeds. We are a baby hivemind spinning our training wheels. To be alone as profoundly (to me) as Sisko, Kira, and the rest often are, I would have to make a decision to shut down all of those streams. (And I do that sometimes. But it’s a choice. The Internet is always on. Actually, in my house we have 19th century nights where all the power and screens are shut off and only pre-electricity activities are on the table. You know, reading books, playing live instruments, talking, cooking, playing cards. It’s a bit hilarious that those nights are the closest thing I can get to living on DS9.)