Sunday, November 2, 2014
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Bending or deflecting
light is already a reality
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WELL this
is exciting news if ever we heard it: time travel is going to be an actual
thing by the year 2100 (maybe). That's if a bunch of UK scientists are to be
believed, anyway.
A number of physicists from Imperial College London and the University of Glasgow have predicted that time machines could actually be a legitimately possible thing within about 85 years, and that teleportation could be just another mode of transport by the year 2080. So we can all look forward to telling Ryanair to do one in 70 years time, then.
And in the most exciting part of the research, which comes from The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair - or maybe just the part that tells us this might all be a great big elaborate joke *checks calendar to make sure it's not April 1st* - an invisibility cloak a la the wonderful Harry Potter himself could be ready and available to use within 15 years. FIFTEEN YEARS. Which is basically nothing.
But - and this'll shut the doubting Thomas' amongst us RIGHT up - apparently prototypes of invisibility cloaks are already in existence, with the science behind them seeming to be pretty sorted.
Imperial College physicist, Professor Chris Phillips, explained. "One way to create an 'invisibility cloak' is to use adaptive camouflage, which involves taking a film of the background of an object or person and projecting it onto the front to give the illusion of vanishing," he said. Which is basically what we would have said if someone asked us how we thought it would work, too. Ahem.
Excitingly, he revealed: "We're actually not that far away from this becoming a reality – rudimentary technology versions of this have already been created (see photo above). It's entirely feasible that we could see a 'Harry Potter'-like invisibility cloak within the next 10 to 20 years."
A number of physicists from Imperial College London and the University of Glasgow have predicted that time machines could actually be a legitimately possible thing within about 85 years, and that teleportation could be just another mode of transport by the year 2080. So we can all look forward to telling Ryanair to do one in 70 years time, then.
And in the most exciting part of the research, which comes from The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair - or maybe just the part that tells us this might all be a great big elaborate joke *checks calendar to make sure it's not April 1st* - an invisibility cloak a la the wonderful Harry Potter himself could be ready and available to use within 15 years. FIFTEEN YEARS. Which is basically nothing.
But - and this'll shut the doubting Thomas' amongst us RIGHT up - apparently prototypes of invisibility cloaks are already in existence, with the science behind them seeming to be pretty sorted.
Imperial College physicist, Professor Chris Phillips, explained. "One way to create an 'invisibility cloak' is to use adaptive camouflage, which involves taking a film of the background of an object or person and projecting it onto the front to give the illusion of vanishing," he said. Which is basically what we would have said if someone asked us how we thought it would work, too. Ahem.
Excitingly, he revealed: "We're actually not that far away from this becoming a reality – rudimentary technology versions of this have already been created (see photo above). It's entirely feasible that we could see a 'Harry Potter'-like invisibility cloak within the next 10 to 20 years."
And Dr. Mary Jacquiline Romero, from the University of Glasgow's School of Physics and Astronomy also had the presence of mind to explain how teleportation would work for those of us who aren't quite of the same scientific brain-power that she is.
"Teleporting a person, atom by atom, will be very difficult and is of course a physicist's way, but perhaps developments in chemistry or molecular biology will allow us to do it more quickly," she said. But promisingly, she added: "The good thing about teleportation is that there is no fundamental law telling us that it cannot be done."
It's just time travel that'll be the real tough cookie to crack, but according to Colin Stuart, author of The Big Questions in Science, it's already been achieved. "But only in tiny amounts," he hastened to add. "I would say we are looking at 2100 as a very optimistic timescale for travelling weeks into the future."
Well that's as good a word to take as any. Now we've just got to work out a way to stay alive and make sure we see it.
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