Melbourne: Your dream of having an invisibility cloak or a ray gun could become a scientific reality in this century, according to a leading physicist.
In an article written in latest issue of New Scientist, Professor Michio Kaku revealed that concepts taken from science fiction such as invisibility cloaks, force fields, ray guns, basic forms of teleportation and telepathy are all within the reach of scientists and conform to the known laws of physics.
"History has shown that it is always dangerous to declare something impossible," News.com.au quoted him as saying.
"Unless there is a law of physics forbidding a technology, then it is not only possible, it is sure to be built someday,” he added.
Professor Kaku categorised his ideas into three categories. The first included technologies that could possibly be developed within coming decades; second included those that could be theoretically possible but would take hundreds or thousands of years to develop; and the third comprised of impossible ideas.
"What Class I impossibilities have in common is that they could be achieved in the foreseeable future using the known laws of physics, but may require sophisticated engineering," he said.
"These include invisibility, force fields, ray guns, psychokinesis, starships, antimatter engines and even certain forms of teleportation and telepathy.
“It may also be possible that people would be able to read each other’s mind. In the future, researchers may be able to compile a 'dictionary of thought' – a one-to-one correspondence between brain signals and specific thoughts," he added.
Scientists are currently working on developing brain-reading gadgets. A San Francisco Company Emotiv Systems has already launched an EPOC headset that allows gamers to control on-screen action only by thinking.
Scientists have already been teleporting single photons over distances of 600m, and can also teleport whole caesium and beryllium atoms.
"Teleporting a person made of trillions of atoms may take several centuries to perfect – and that takes us into the next class of impossibility" along with time travel, he said.
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