"Star Trek" Gizmos Get Real

The high-tech gadgetry of the "Star Trek" future is now the present -- somewhat.

"Star Trek" creator Gene Rodenberry was so far ahead of his time that we're still catching up, Dr Michio Kaku, physicist and author of "Physics of the Impossible," told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith on Friday.

Remember communicators? Perhaps the most notable example of "Trek" tech that made it to the present day are cell phones. They're hand-held and work like communicators, but with computer chip technology.

The engines on the Enterprise are powered by antimatter fuel, an idea that is not so far-fetched today. At Fermilab outside Chicago, Kaku said, anti-matter has actually been produced. Antimatter has 100 times the power of a hydrogen bomb.

However, antimatter is very expensive -- each gram costs several trillion dollars to create. So we may not see any anti-matter engines until the next century, Kaku said.

Another "Trek" advancement we use today are laser beams as powerful as phasers. The problem is that we lack a portable power pack that can fit in the hand, Kaku said. Military lasers today pack the power of a phaser, but their power packs are huge.

"While the Pentagon created something very powerful with their ray gun, they still lack some of the power they need to make it a really viable option," he said.

Teleportation -- a cool "Trek" way to get around -- has been performed at many labs, including the University of Vienna in Austria, the University of Maryland and The California Institute of Technology. But only atoms and photons - particles of light - have taken the leap.

Within a decade, Kaku predicts, molecules, DNA, and genes will be teleported.

But teleporting a human being is very, very difficult, he said, and it may take centuries for someone - other than an actor, of course - to say, "Beam me up, Scotty."