Four articles this month, though I have to admit that they’re more about technology than general science. The first and potentially most exciting of these is the news of Intel’s demonstration of technology to transmit power wirelessly. Personally I’ve always wondered when we would get around to accomplishing this. After all, in science-fiction shows like Star Trek, you never see long trails of wiring all over the place. Now that wireless transmission of data is easy, power cords are number one source of ugliness and mess with tech gadgets.
Anyone who’s watched Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige would also know that Nikola Tesla achieved this late in the 19th century. However, as the article explains, the trick isn’t in simply transmitting it, it’s in doing it safely and efficiently. The article talks about installing the system in airports and offices, but if it becomes cheap enough I can’t imagine why ordinary home users won’t want to be able to do away with pesky electrical wires as well. Still, our current troubles with neighbors stealing bandwidth from wireless networks are bad enough, just think about how troublesome it would be if your neighbors could steal your electricity supply as well!
Next, this story about the possibility of invisibility cloaks has been making the rounds of various blogs. There are actually two separate teams working on two different materials, though both are aimed at creating a material that has a negative refractive index. Talk of an actual invisibility cloak seems wildly premature given how limited the technology is to specific wavelengths of light, but anything that brings the cloaking technology of science-fiction one step closer is good news to me.
Yet another staple of science-fiction turned scientific reality is the news of the United States Army deploying a laser cannon on a truck. Okay, so it’s a defensive weapon, intended to knock down incoming rockets and artillery rounds rather than to destroy enemy targets, but hey, lasers pew pew!
Finally, a rare piece of Malaysian scientific news that made it to headlines around the world: a Malaysian variety of tree shrew that is apparently able to drink the equivalent of a case of beer every night without getting drunk. This is because it drinks the fermented nectar of the bertam palm tree which is naturally alcoholic and they go on binges lasting two and a half hours every night. Not bad for such tiny creatures, though I’d like to add that researching them to find out ways to deal with drunkenness seems like hardly the best way to use research funds.