‘Star Trek’ Beams Into Science Lessons : Education: Museum uses the series’ star ship propulsion, transporters and other marvels of a fictional future to help explain real principles.

When the emitter array falters, the Romulan Warbird powers up its forward disrupter array or the transporter’s pattern buffer scrambles a security officer’s molecules, it means one thing: Somebody’s watching “Star Trek.”

But behind the techno-babble recited with such sincerity by crew members of the fictional USS Enterprise lurk genuine scientific principles about space, physics and medicine.

Now “Star Trek” fans and science buffs can play with the accouterments of the popular television show and movie series and learn something about their world--and their universe.

“Federation Science” at the Franklin Institute Science Museum uses the future’s appeal to teach the science of the present. It’s a natural idea that adeptly weaves together fact and fiction.

“I’m not going to say people watch the show because of their interest in science. But the science certainly comes through, and it’s a great draw,” said Elaine Wilner, a Franklin Institute spokeswoman.

The exhibit, created by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry from an idea by the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of “Star Trek,” has been on tour for two years.

In it, touch-screen displays are interspersed with uniforms and props from the “Star Trek” shows and movies. The exhibits are mostly computers programmed to match the look of the show.

“It seems we’ve always been preoccupied with the future,” says Patrick Stewart (Capt. Jean-Luc Picard) in an introductory video. “All around you is a science that one day may lead to a future among the stars.”

At one booth, participants stand in a mock transporter chamber to be “beamed down” to a strange planet where they can stay and use virtual reality to wander and explore.

Could a transporter that converts matter--including human beings--into energy and beams it somewhere ever be reality? Maybe yes, maybe no, says Franklin Institute astrophysicist Jim Moskowitz.

“The technology to move individual atoms is emerging in labs today, but it may be impossible to map the positions of all the atoms in a person’s body,” Moskowitz said.

“Plus, there’s the big problem of whether consciousness is a physical thing that can be disassembled and rebuilt,” he said.

Program note: Roddenberry invented the idea of the transporter because it was too expensive to film the Enterprise landing and taking off.

Other computers at the exhibit beckon users to push buttons and teach them different principles.

* One console uses gas spectroscopy to help participants discover the spectrum of gases--argon, neon, helium, nitrogen--by pushing buttons to make them light up.

* A “Code 1” distress call from the space station orbiting planet Runga 4 challenges the computer operator to change the antenna’s direction and temperature to filter static and improve the signal.

* Anti-matter, a staple in the way “Star Trek” ships’ engines run, is explained as the opposite of matter. When the two collide, scientists theorize, they would cancel out each other and create pure energy.

* Another console asks the operator to plot the Enterprise on an intercept course with a space station and navigate it into geosynchronous orbit around a planet.

The exhibit’s centerpiece is crafted to resemble the Enterprise’s bridge, complete with a Gargantuan viewing screen and an assortment of navigation consoles. Here visitors can locate pulsars, plot courses between Orion and the Trifid Nebula, or use a tractor beam to change an asteroid’s trajectory and save the planet Kutta.

The very difference between the original series of the 1960s and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” aptly illustrates how far science has come.

Much of the then-futuristic gadgetry of the ‘60s is commonplace today, or at least on the threshold of accessibility--such as voice-activated computers, CAT scans, fax machines and pressurized hypodermic injections.

“Most of the technological progress that defines our lives has emerged only in the last half-century,” Stewart says.

Beyond teaching science, the exhibit seems to propose a more universal theme: that today’s science fiction, no matter how outlandish and foreign it appears, could be tomorrow’s scientific fact.

“A lot can happen in 400 years,” Stewart says. “Just look what has happened in the last 400 years.”