Science constantly shows us interesting things. As we move into a brighter future, scientific advances begin to border on magic. Science is constantly trying to make the impossible possible and, of course, makes constant progress.
Teleportation
For a long time, mankind was in search of a way to teleport, but it always turned out that we demand too much from science. And then science rushed forward and showed that teleportation is possible. We have previously addressed the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. Researchers at the Delft University of Technology were able to teleport information across the room and prove quantum entanglement in practice.
Scientists have isolated a pair of electrons in two diamonds at a distance from each other. According to the theory of quantum entanglement, the change in spin in one diamond should repeat itself symmetrically in the other diamond. This is exactly what happened - a change in the behavior of one electron affected another at a distance of 10 meters. The experiment succeeds 100% of the time.
Scientists are currently working on increasing the distance, and if the theory is correct, everything will work out. If the experiment to transmit information over long distances is successful, very soon we will be able to reliably teleport information using quantum particles without any loss of time and data.
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Tie light into knots
For all we know, light should travel in a straight line. However, there were craftsmen in our world who wanted to fix it. Scientists from the universities of Glasgow, Bristol and Southampton were the first to tie light into knots, making an abstract mathematical concept a reality. Nodes were created using holograms that directed a stream of light around regions of darkness using knot theory, a branch of mathematics that deals with knots in real life.
One leading scientist explains that light is like a river that can flow straight and swirl into funnels. You can also tie your own beam of light into a knot using a hologram. This experiment clearly showed that the future of optics may not be boring at all.
Objects that develop independently
It will take a little more time before anyone can use 3D printing technologies, but science has already gone further, towards 4D printing. While it may seem overwhelming for most of us, the fourth dimension is time, which means the next generation of printers will not only be able to print anything, but the printed objects themselves will be able to change and adapt on their own.
Scientists have already unveiled a 4D printer capable of printing materials that can fold on their own into simple shapes like cubes over time. It doesn't sound so cool yet, but time will pass, and this technology will change science forever.
Very soon, we will be able to produce machines that can reach hard-to-reach areas - deep wells, for example - for maintenance. Medical operations will be carried out independently by machines made from such materials. Mostly they will be printed on printers and not in factories. The water pipes will determine what to do during the overflow.
Since 4D printing essentially allows you to make materials that can transform themselves into anything, the possibilities are endless. It's safe to say that it will take some time before 4D printing takes over large objects, but looking at the pace of 3D printing, it will be pretty soon.
Black holes in the laboratory
For a long time, black holes were one of the main products of popular fiction, and no one could make them artificially. Until scientists from Southeastern University of Nanjing in China decided to simulate a black hole in the laboratory. They created a circuit with a specific material that is used to change the way electromagnetic waves travel.
A similar material is used to achieve invisibility, but instead of reflecting visible light, their setup works with microwaves. Such metamaterials absorb electromagnetic radiation and convert it into heat, similar to a black hole.
This experiment has a number of useful applications, particularly in energy production. In particular, science is trying to figure out how to replicate the success of a black hole, but using light, since the wavelength of light is much shorter than that of microwaves.
However, this is the first time a black hole has been simulated under controlled conditions. Recently, other scientists have demonstrated Hawking radiation using the example of a sonic black hole in the laboratory.
Stop the light
Einstein was the first to realize that nothing can move faster than light, but he said nothing about how to slow down light. In an experiment at Harvard University, scientists were able to slow down light to 20 km / h.
A similar material is used to achieve invisibility, but instead of reflecting visible light, their setup works with microwaves. Such metamaterials absorb electromagnetic radiation and convert it into heat, similar to a black hole.
This experiment has a number of useful applications, particularly in energy production. In particular, science is trying to figure out how to replicate the success of a black hole, but using light, since the wavelength of light is much shorter than that of microwaves.
However, this is the first time a black hole has been simulated under controlled conditions. Recently, other scientists have demonstrated Hawking radiation using the example of a sonic black hole in the laboratory.
Stop the light
Einstein was the first to realize that nothing can move faster than light, but he said nothing about how to slow down light. In an experiment at Harvard University, scientists were able to slow down light to 20 km / h.
Moreover, they went further and decided to completely stop the light. The experiment was based on a supercooled material known as Bose - Einstein condensate. This condensate forms at temperatures just a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero, so atoms have very little energy to move. Keep in mind that absolute zero is an abstract concept that, in principle, cannot be achieved.
Although scientists had previously only slowed down the light to 61 km / h, this was the first time the light had been brought to a complete stop. The particle of light even left a hologram when it stopped, turning into stable matter instead of a traveling wave, which it essentially is.
And since the light is relatively stable in this form, it can literally be put on the shelf. What's more, when humans have proven that light can be stopped, researchers are even working to make it move in the opposite direction.
Antimatter production in the laboratory
Antimatter is perhaps the answer to all of our future energy needs. Nevertheless, despite all efforts, scientists have not been able to find an abundance of antimatter in the Universe that could be compared with the amount of matter, and this remains one of the biggest mysteries of modern science.
However, although this mystery will not be solved in the near future, scientists have learned how to create and contain antimatter in the laboratory. A group of scientists from different countries, known as ALPHA, discovered a way to preserve antimatter for a split second.
Even though the production of antimatter has been available for a decade now, holding on to antimatter has always seemed impossible as it annihilates when it collides with everything we know as matter.
Scientists at CERN have discovered a new way of storing antimatter for a long period of time in a powerful magnetic field, but the problem is that this field affects measurements and does not allow us to study antimatter as expected. Perhaps in the future, it will be antimatter that will be our main source of energy when all natural extraction possibilities run out.
Telepathy
We've often written about how science finds ways to connect to the human brain, but so far using the example of rats - and remotely move its tail. While this is a major achievement, scientists don't stop there. In an experiment conducted by a scientist at Duke University, two rats were able to telepathically communicate with each other thousands of miles away, which in theory could pave the way for similar technology for humans.
The rats were connected using brain implants. One of them had to choose one of two levers, depending on what color the lamp was on. Another rat could not see the lamp, but pressed the desired lever, receiving electrical impulses from the brain of the other rat. The rat did not know what was affecting the brain of another rat, it was simply receiving its reward.
Exceeding the speed of light
This seemingly well-known fact - that the speed of light in our Universe is maximum - tried to refute scientists from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton. They sent a laser beam through a chamber filled with a special gas and timed it. As it turned out, the beam exceeded the speed of light 300 times.
He left the cell before entering it, which apparently violates the law of cause and effect. But the scientists explained that this law was technically not violated, since the ray of the future did not affect the events in the past in any way. The consequences of the experiment are still widely debated, and there is no solid evidence of the authenticity of its findings - just precedent.
Hiding things from time itself
It is one thing to make a thing invisible and hide it from human sight, but it is quite another thing to hide a thing from time itself. Researchers at Cornell University have created a device that splits a light beam into two components, transports it through a medium, and connects it at the other end with a temporary lens, without recording what happened during this period. The lens slows down the faster part of the beam and speeds up the slower one, creating a temporary vacuum that hides events during transmission.
Simply put, this device lets through everything that happened in the path of the light beam and hides it from time itself. Currently, such a trick can only be cranked for a very short period of time, but nothing prohibits increasing it in the future. Time masking can be useful in a variety of areas, in particular, secure data transmission.
An object does two things at the same time
We had many theories about how particles at the quantum level manage to do the impossible, until scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara built a quantum machine that was able to show what was really going on.
Scientists have cooled a tiny piece of metal to the lowest temperature possible. Then they included this piece in a quantum circuit and made it tremble like a string, as they discovered a strange thing: it moved and did not move at the same time, as the theory suggested.
Imagine that a person is resting at home and backpacking overnight. In the experiment, in principle, this was the case, but on a much smaller scale. The discovery of scientists has enormous implications for science, as quantum mechanics may well realize our wildest dreams.
Science magazine named this discovery as the most important scientific achievement of 2010. Some people even took it as proof of the existence of multiple universes. Perhaps in the future, being in two places at the same time will become quite commonplace. Then, of course, you will have time for everything.