8 'Yeah, Science!' Moments In Film And TV

4. The Swarm - Star Trek Beyond

The scientific ups and downs of the new Star Trek offering have been roundly covered here, but one aspect of it gave me such good science tingles that it bears inclusion, and that's the swarm warfare.

The field of swarm robotics is a personal favourite, but also extremely significant for the future of technology. The move away from the idea that the most advanced and effective robotic systems have to be roughly human shaped, tottering around on two legs and fumbling fine motor movements, has opened up a number of interesting avenues. Non-scalable technology is out, swarms are in.

Swarm systems are versatile and scalable. Whether it's in the form of a legion of cleaner-bots scampering around your home, or, as in Star Trek, a terrifying, contorting battle fleet, their main strength is in their flexibility.

In warfare, a swarm is so difficult to combat because, like a swarm of wasps, the moment you swat one, there's another, angrier one to take its place. For this reason, the US military (amongst others) are already pouring resources into researching swarm systems.

Could we be witnessing another instance of Star Trek predicting the technology of the future? Only time will tell.