Star Trek Science

[richlevy]

Well, it looks like they've taken baby steps towards building a transporter and cloaking device. Maybe it's time to start building that 1/3rd scale Romulan warbird in my backyard.

ANBERRA, Australia -- It's not quite "Star Trek" yet, but Australian university researchers in quantum optics say they have "teleported" a message in a laser beam using the same technology principles that enabled Scotty to beam up Captain Kirk. What the team at the Australian National University have managed to achieve is to take apart an encrypted laser beam and simultaneously rebuild a replica one meter away.
Using a process called "quantum entanglement", the team effectively teleported a radio signal contained in the laser beam of light from one place to another.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and British scientists said on Thursday they had found a way to hide an object from microwave radiation in a first step toward making a what they hope will be an invisibility cloak.
Such a device could be used to elude radar, but the researchers, like many scientists, are not working with any particular goal in mind but hope its uses will become apparent later.
"It's not quite Harry Potter," said David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina, referring to the child's fictional character who can conceal himself in a magical cloak.
"It's not exactly perfect -- we can do better -- but it demonstrates the mechanism, the way the waves swirl around the center region where you want to conceal things," he said.
The cloaking device relies on new, laboratory-made materials called metamaterials, which can decrease both the scattering caused by a solid object and the shadow it casts.