There is a temptation to view the most popular science fiction movie franchise of all time as ‘hokum' – escapist nonsense that introduces the viewer to fabulous worlds and wacky characters. But, believe it or not, a lot of the fiction portrayed in the Star Wars films (all six of them, with more in the pipeline) is actually grounded in fact. So what aspects of these blockbusters can be termed ‘science fact'?

One of the most exhilarating sequences in the Star Wars movies was the speeder bike scene in Return of the Jedi, the third film in the series. This involved what looked like a cross between motorcycles and hovercraft racing across a deeply-forested landscape, zig-zagging between trees. For a lot of adolescent fans, the closest they came to emulating the action was to furiously pedal their bikes along woodland trails, making the appropriate sound effects with their excitable mouths. However, a New York-based development company called Aerofex are currently involved in research into what they call ‘low altitude tandem duct vehicles'. The best way to think of these is scaled-down Hawker Harrier jump jets – the world-renowned Royal Air Force fighter jets that can take-off and land vertically. These craft would be ideal for navigating across inaccessible regions, such as the Australian Outback, or East Africa, and would be suited to flying doctors. At a present price tag of up to $100,000, the casual movie fan might have to wait awhile before purchasing one to keep in the garage.

The staple of the battle scenes in every Star Wars feature has been laser guns. Emitting piercing bolts or light, they mow down the dreaded Imperial storm troopers at a fearsome raye. The US Navy has been testing laser cannons mounted on warships, known as the ‘Laser Weapon System (LWS)'. One advantage of this potentially-destructive future artillery is cost. Laser beams cost a fraction of the price of missiles, the latter costing several hundred thousand dollars per weapon, putting the soldiers aiming said devices under considerable pressure!

Unlike the movie versions of laser firefights, where bolts of light streak across the screen accompanied by striking sound effects, the reality is somewhat more staid. Because lasers travels at the speed of light, the beams fired from these LWS arsenals are invisible to the naked eye. They are also silent.

As for the potential for a weapon with the capability of destroying an entire planet – hopefully that doomsday scenario remains in the realm of science fiction for some considerable time!

The mobile phone in your pocket is already a museum piece. Well, seriously, it may well be perfectly snazzy-looking and contemporary for the time being. But as we speak there are design engineers all over the world who are actively involved in ensuring your model will be superseded within the next six months or so! So what are the current design trends currently being drafted?

Windows phones

Where most users of smart phones such as iPhones or samsung s8 or LG g6 these days are offered the straightforward choice of black or white for their shells, there is every likelihood that you might have a transparent option in the not-too-distant future. See-through or 'window' phones will give the user the appearance of clutching a small rectangle of frosted glass. As well as looking fantastic, current weather conditions will be reflected on the screen. You can use your finger as a stylus, or blow at the screen to switch between various modes.

3D

Just as three-dimensional technology has already infiltrated cinema and television screens, this is another way forward for mobile phones. Using hologram-creation technology, three-dimensional images will be projected from the phone screen. This will give the like of Google Maps a whole new range of user-friendly possibilities.

Dexterity

Currently your mobile phone is most probably a small, neat rectangle that fits squarely into a pocket. Increasingly innovative designs will be employed, with some phones becoming 'leaf-shaped', with built-in plastic stems. This will allow the phone to be wrapped around a wrist, arm or neck for safekeeping.

Solar panels

Not only will you be able to power-up you phone for free, you'll be able to keep an eye on your phone to a far greater extent than if it was battling to get noticed amongst the papers, coffee cups and post-it reminders on your cluttered desk!

With the recent diplomatic crisis news, hopefully there will be no disruptions to the FIFA World Cup 2022 taking place in Qatar with total of 64 games will be played to decide the winner.

The use of so-called goal line technology has been sparking furious debate in footballing circles for a number of years. There have been a number of high profile incidents and international matches where the use of technology could have eradicated refereeing decisions since proved to be erroneous.

So what are the pros and cons of introducing goal line technology? Those in favour point to the way that tennis has adopted this technology, vastly improving the flow of matches during top tournaments. Those archive clips of Wimbledon players (most noticeably the likes of Americans John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors) furiously arguing with umpires or line judges about where or not a ball delivered at over 100 kilometers-per-hour had actually skiffed the line, now seem so quaint and amusing. The fact is, knowing that the Hawkeye system will bleep the moment a ball has gone out of play enables the players, and the spectators, to simply relax and get on with enjoying the sport. Slow motion replays allow referees to guarantee pin-point accuracy in decision-making. The level of trust between officials and audience is greatly enhanced.

Hawkeye was introduced by the International Tennis Federation in 2003. However, when the same technology was tabled before FIFA, the world football administration authority, five years later, it was dismissed out of hand. Apparently football's top officials were unimpressed following tests of video replay and the Hawkeye motion analysis system, when applied to their own sport. The main sticking point was the degree of accuracy that technology could offer.

FIFA remained to be convinced that neither video replays nor Hawkeye analysis would lead to accurate decisions in 100% of instances. Another bugbear for footballs officials was the fact that technology, while having the potential to eliminate a lot of refereeing shortcomings, would also greatly slow down games.

Those in favour of introducing technology point to the fact that bad referee decisions undermine the sport completely. Not only do the officials look foolish in the eyes of thousands of spectators (or millions where the games are being televised), players tend to react badly too, swamping the match officials, so that the game tends to grind to a halt in any case.

Football's rule books were cobbled together in a different era. So the task for its ruling bodies is maintaining a precision balancing act between what tradition demands, and the need to move with the times. As in any other walk in life, when deliberate brake are imposed on natural evolution, then the outcome is always negative. By embracing new technology football will continue to prosper as the world's most popular spectator sport. Television audiences are saturated with video replay. Managers now have access to it in their dugouts. Fans in the stadium can access it in their hand-held devices. Why should the referee alone be denied it?

As more and more of us switch from computers to laptops, one of the key questions asked by customers is ‘how can I improve my laptop for gaming?'

One of the first points to note is that advances in technology mean you don't need to have a dedicated gaming laptop to enjoy playing computer games. Serious gamers will still benefit from taking on-board all the appropriate technology that is available, especially if their taste is at the more cutting-edge side of the market. However, nowadays even notebooks are perfectly capable of providing excellent gaming platforms.

As far as technological advancements go, there have been many factors which have led to this improvable in the gaming potential of even the cheapest laptops. Foremost amongst these are the improvements that have been made to processors, such as the Core 2 Duo. This is now available in budget machines, while the Atom processor is now available in dual-core spins. All these innovations help to propel gamers through multi-threaded games at an excellent pace.

As well as advances in processors, memory capabilities have come forward in leaps and bounds. A capacity that would previously have been unheard of for laptops, such as 1GB, is now available as standard. Not only that, it is also easy to upgrade any laptop's memory to 2GB or even more yourself.

The most noticeable area where there have been advances in the technology affecting gaming PCs has been through improvements to graphics.

Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator was once the frequent target of complaints by gamers – but this has come on immensely. It can now be utilized for playing games that once would have required computers causing many thousands of dollars.

In order to get computer games performing at reasonable speeds, you really need to select lower quality settings. The one point to note is that there are the occasional games out there that demand DX10 hardware. Even this isn't necessarily as limiting as it first appears. Intel offers support for the DX10 API with the GMA X3100, 4500 and HD ranges. For compatibility reasons, most games offer a DX9 codepath in any case. In addition, all the Intel chips support the revision of Microsoft 's API. And while DX11 hardware has been available for a while, there are no DX11-only titles on the shelves, and few under development.

Your machine's desktop display is the biggest barrier to a favorable gaming experience. Best to drop this as low as it will go, until your reach the ideal minimum of 30fps. Experimenting with settings will eventually produce the optimum combination.