Earlier this year a team of UK researchers announced that they’re developing a Star Trek ‘tricorder’ - Dr McCoy's diagnostic marvel.

But if fans don’t want to wait for that they can always feast their eyes on the phaser gun from the early series of the TV show that someone has built in his garage.

In the much-loved series, the phasers were used by the intrepid Captain Kirk and co to destroy evil aliens – or capture them by setting the weapons, famously, to stun.

The homemade version is very realistic looking and even shoots out a powerful blue laser, which the maker uses to pop a balloon on a chair.

Tech website geekcom speculates that the laser is probably from a PlayStation 3 Blu-ray drive.

Footage of the weapon has been uploaded to YouTube, which even contains smoke effects for added sci-fi atmosphere.

The tricorder, meanwhile, is being developed by a team from the University of Birmingham's School of Biosciences.

The shoe box-sized prototype can already detect dangerous E.coli bugs in a sample in five minutes.

Source