Antimatter researchers argue that given the rate of technological innovation and unanticipated ingenuity, radical breakthroughs in antimatter technology and near-term applications may be closer at hand than even advocates dare hope.
A new breed of laser, the free-electron laser, is overcoming many of the limitations of previous lasers and may soon be employed by the military to defend against ballistic missiles.
Building on a landmark paper first published in 1993 that examined methods of applying a phenomenon known as 'entanglement,' teams of physicists at laboratories in Austria, Italy and the United States have successfully 'teleported' light-carrying particles called photons.
Space-borne protective energy systems, like the deflector shields on the fictional starship U.S.S. Voyager, are on the drawing board of real-world scientists. These "cold plasmas" -- analogs to the sophisticated defensive grids envisioned by Star Trek's creators -- are ambient-temperature, ionized gases related to those found deep within the sun?s core. Such plasmas are capable of shielding satellites and other spacecraft; or making them invisible to radars; or both. Nor will they fry electronics or melt metal.