Whether you are like me, a fan of some Star Trek series, or you’re a diehard Trekkie, or you simply want to learn a little of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, you’ll find something to learn at Second Life’s Star Trek Museum. The sheer amount and scope of information available is amazing.

A few of the thousands of facts you can learn there:

• Star Trek’s Enterprise-D has a button on the engineering console marked "Infinite Improbability Drive"? (a reference to Douglas Adams‘ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
• The US Navy’s Aegis-class destroyers were influenced heavily by some design elements of the Enterprise bridge.
• The Enterprise appears in the Battlestar Galactica TV series, in the background of a shot featuring the rag tag fleet in the upper right of the scene.

Space Fleet’s dry dock

The Museum consists of several buildings containing the various parts of the Enterprise, along with a movie theater, art gallery, games, downloadable paper models, and hydroponics lab. There are also Orion, Ferengi, Borg, Andorian,Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian, Bajoran, Maquis, Chameloid, and Betazoid “embassies”, When you enter the Sick Bay, the Doctor’s disembodied voice inquires, “Please state the nature of your medical emergency.” The Astrometrics Lab and 3D Starmaps are particularly impressive. Be sure to check them out.

Nearly every object in the Museum can be clicked on to get a notecard or webpage for more information. Topics range from extreme trivia of Star Trek history to technical explanations of real world science.

Standing inside our solar system in the Astrometrics Lab

High in the sky over the museum, you’ll find a drydock and a Star Fleet station. You can travel between them either by teleporting or using a shuttle, which also gives an auto-pilot aerial tour of the area around the Museum.

If you’re a Second Life member, you can beam yourself onboard the Enterprise (actually into the Museum) by clicking slurl.com/secondlife/TovaDok%20II/25/211/35.