Why Don't We Invent That Tomorrow?

museumpeace writes "In the NYTimes book review blog, David Itzkoff takes a look at a new book devoted to predicting which 'science fiction' technologies may really fly some day. The author is Michio Kaku, one of the inventors of string theory, so he bears a hearing. His picks include light sabers, invisibility and force fields." Which sci-fi tech do you think needs to get invented over the weekend?

Comments

That's an easy one!

[The Ancients]

Which sci-fi tech do you think needs to get invented over the weekend?

I don't expect much. Time travel of course. D'uh.

Re:That's an easy one!

[EEPROMS]

The problem with time travel is although it may be possible to travel in time it would not be a good idea. Let me explain, if have an actual time machine and travel back lets say 1 week you would materialize millions of miles away from earth in the middle of deep space. The reason for this becomes obvious when you realise earth is actually moving through space faster than a speeding bullet thus totally stuffing up the usefulness of traveling through time.

Re:That's an easy one!

[The Ancients]

I think if we can work out the logistics of time travel, the other three dimensions shouldn't provide too much of an issue.

Re:That's an easy one!

[The Ancients]

It's worse than you thought - you're mom was real cute when she was younger ;-)

Re:That's an easy one!

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

It's worse than you thought - you're mom was real cute when she was younger ;-)

That sounds like something my Dad would say....hey wait a minute!

Re:That's an easy one!

[Soleen]

I just invented a time machine, without the problem that you described.

It has some limitations but it already works!
Limitations are following: it drives in one direction only (forward), and with speed no faster than 60 seconds a minute!

This in 60 seconds you can travel 1 minute in future!

Re:That's an easy one!

[bluefoxlucid]

Absolute positioning is a myth. Think about motion and momentum for a while and you'll get it.

Re:That's an easy one!

[ptbarnett]

It just means you can only travel through time in exact year increments so the earth is back where it was.

Nice troll. But, for those that didn't realize it, don't forget about galactic rotation and expansion of the universe.

Re:That's an easy one!

[MttJocy]

I see another problem here, lets presume I could materialize on the surface of earth at this altitude, longitude and latitude at some arbitrary date I would also need to materializing there with the same momentum as the body in question otherwise I am going to appear stationary and be rapidly accelerated by gravity towards a body which is approaching me at a massive speed enough I would imagine to completely obliterate my body, if we were talking earth it would be traveling towards you or away from you at a rate of up to 30km/s if you were stationary and did not possess the momentum we all have by being on earth normally it would be somewhat painful I imagine.

Re:That's an easy one!

[ByteSlicer]

you're mom was real cute

I already thought time travel was weird, but this? He's his own mother !?

Re:That's an easy one!

[_Hellfire_]

I suppose the easy way to find out would be to send a series of transponders out into the past, and then analyse the location data you already gathered.

My brain just came up with a scenario whereby a bunch of NASA scientists sit around a boardroom table and plan such an experiment. It'd go something like:

week 1: build/program receivers on earth
week 2: listen for signal
week 3: build probe
week 4: send probe back in time to week 2, and record precisely what time and date you did it so... you can analyse signal from week 2 and figure out how far earth moved!

And then my brain 'sploded.

Re:That's an easy one!

[mpeskett]

We can slow down time already, by moving really fast. The difficult bit is moving backwards or forwards in a discrete step. I suppose you could use relativistic speed to go forward in time - shoot off around the place for a year, come back and find more time has passed than you had to sit through, but it's not quite time travel as envisioned by sci-fi.

Re:That's an easy one!

[SQLGuru]

Is it a safe assumption that we have never been in the same place twice? Even with the variables that we know, how many other orbits / vectors are we following? Assuming some universal coordinate system origin, I would almost believe that Earth has never been at the same coordinates since the birth of the universe.....and might not until the death of the universe.

Layne

Re:That's an easy one!

[kallisti]

I can't remember any teleportation or time travel story that mentions this obvious thing. The tabletop RPG Traveller took all of this into account. It was possible (although very unlikely) to get abilities like teleportation, but the rules were so hard-assed about the actual physics to make it practically useless. For instance, it calculated the amount of potential energy that you get from teleporting up or down in Earth gravity. This was assumed to be applied to you as a near instant change in body temperature which meant in the end that any attempt to actually go much faster than the stairs would cook your brain.

Not to mention getting slammed by a wall of you tried to teleport too far across a planet. The weirdest mix of science and pseudo-science since the golden age of comics.

Re:That's an easy one!

[Cal Paterson]

Do you know what a troll is? The grandparent was not a troll. If you're looking for a generic insult for use on the internet, I not only suggest "n00b"; but also that you go back to playing Unreal Championship. While /. doesn't have the highest standards in the world, I think we're above the most blatant name-calling methods.

Re:That's an easy one!

[repapetilto]

Ok... so theres a couple of ways to get around such things while still staying scientifically consistent.

1) Traveling backwards in time by going faster than the speed of light you know [(1-v^2/c^2)^.5] (will take infinite energy, but were talking time travel so lets hand-wave that away... maybe you get it back on the return trip or something). So first youve got your machine that can speed you up that fast, also for the sake of argument lets say the force you can generate is so large that you get to the speed of light in less than planck time (the first trick), thereby not interacting with anyone or traveling anywhere before you lose all mass and travel at light speed. From there, if you think about it (to avoid the root of a negative), the direction that light travels must switch, so once again youd be traveling through time at the same speed as now relative to earth and at the same location, only everything would be running opposite. So what you wanna do is once agian use your ultimate acceleration device but turn it on for a fraction of a second less, and this amount of time your accelerating is related to how far back in time you end up when you then decelerate to zero V relative to the earth, now youre at a point backwards in time relative to where you started, but if you try to interact with anything you'll have to do it all backwards, and plus you're not in the right spot which just isnt going to be fun. So heres the second trick, now you once again accelerate to lightspeed and a little bit beyond really quickly. Now youre in the past traveling in the direction of causality as we know it, but in the wrong spot( probably the middle of nowhere, you can check this by sending some smaller time machines ahead of you programemd to come back that can sense the surroundings) so you just travel through space until you get to where you want, and now you do whatever it is you wanted to do back there.

2)You don't actually go back in time, but a copy of you does. If the state of every subatomic particle in your body could be detected very near to the time before youre sent back, you wouldnt know the difference. So we take that information, compress it in some way (your DNA is basically a compressed human being, think about that), then send that signal through a microscopic wormhole moving at relativistic speeds relative to its nearby partner who you keep in a safe location, with some way for it to decompress itself. When you exited the slow moving partner you would end up in the same location but in the past.

Re:That's an easy one!

[nschubach]

I think if you could do that, most people would be too busy transporting their DNA all over the galaxy exploring all the habitable planets before time travel. What would your copy do? If it could send itself back, how/would you determine who shall remain alive or do you continue to infinitely clone yourself. Could this give way to the religious belief that somehow humans did start from thin air? Were Adam and Eve copies of an alien race who figured out how to transport their DNA signature to this planet to continue their race on a distant planet?

I think "alternate universes" could probably be explained with time/space warping though. They may not be alternate universes, but alternate planets that happen to interfere with your little time warp phenomenon. That wouldn't really be time travel, but a "natural" form of transportation without destruction.

The question that begs to be asked for time travel though: If you do travel back in time, and let's say you know exactly where you will end up. How do you get back? Let's say you build a device in the past (now present)... you've used resources from that time that could have been used for something else, creating the famous paradoxical situations. You could, by using a wrong plank of wood or stepping on a bug that might scare your ancestors into each others arms, change the course of your history, rendering you nonexistent. It would happen so fast, it would be like stepping off your time machine and vanishing into thin air. Along with your device. Not even mentioning airborne viruses that you could carry back with you.

Re:That's an easy one!

[RiotingPacifist]

But in the earth coorinate system, were always in the same place.

People are quite happy to accept that we cant travel faster that c, but soon forget that all frames of reverance are all equal. There is no aether, no absolute position, no zero velocity, hell there aint much apart from acceleration!

Re:That's an easy one!

[19thNervousBreakdown]

You also assume that there's an absolute frame of reference... which there isn't.

Re:That's an easy one!

[Kligat]

You have to take into account the Earth wobbling slightly about the Earth-Moon barycenter, the Earth orbiting the Sun, the Sun orbiting the barycenter of the Milky Way Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy orbiting the barycenter of the Local Group while it is drawn to the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Local Group being drawn to the Virgo Cluster while it's probably moving about the Virgo Supercluster.

Physicists, say the ever reliable Wikipeda (it's okay to use it while mocking it if I check it's sources, right?) are still debating on a step-up from superclusters called a galaxy filament. It makes me think that making sure Earth would be in the exact same space relative to everything else that influences its parent bodies' orbits would be almost as difficult as tracking the location of every object in the universe in the first place.

Since the Earth is moving at 30 km/s relative to the Sun, the Sun is moving at 240 km/s in a nearly circular orbit, and the Milky Way is moving at 100 km/s relative to the center of mass of the Local Group, maybe if you went back a day, you'd be 230 times the distance between Earth and the Moon, or half an AU, and since Warp Factor One in the original Star Trek series' inconsistent ship manual for the writers said that equals the speed of light, accounting for the location discrepancy would only take about 5 minutes, not taking into account the Virgo Supercluster, right?

Re:That's an easy one!

[c4miles]

If only there were some way to account for both Time And the Relative Dimension In Space.

Re:That's an easy one!

[Clueless Nick]

Everybody knows that when you travel in time, your arrival at your destination is heralded by strong winds, electric storms, and thunder. Don't believe me? Refer to these:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181852/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118689/

No rational car driver, sane bird or other sentient being would want to pass through that!

Re:That's an easy one!

[bytesex]

Well, maybe you could use the earth's gravity then; you would step into your time travel vehicle, move back a second, fall back to earth, move back another second, fall back to earth again (or reposition yourself). If you do it quickly, you wouldn't notice, and you'd still be on earth when you arrived.

Re:That's an easy one!

[Fred_A]

Well, maybe you could use the earth's gravity then; you would step into your time travel vehicle, move back a second, fall back to earth, move back another second, fall back to earth again (or reposition yourself). If you do it quickly, you wouldn't notice, and you'd still be on earth when you arrived. That's pretty much the system I'm using, except I'm moving forward in time, not back, and it takes a second to move a second. But it's very reliable so I'm confident I'll get there eventually.

Re:That's an easy one!

[julesh]

But in the earth coorinate system, were always in the same place.

People are quite happy to accept that we cant travel faster that c, but soon forget that all frames of reverance are all equal. There is no aether, no absolute position, no zero velocity, hell there aint much apart from acceleration!

Unfortunately, the coordinate system you're suggesting we use is not an inertial one: it is accelerating under many influences, the most significant of which is gravity from the sun. Picking an inertial reference frame to use seems essential to me, but I don't see how one can be found that doesn't have the problems parent posts have discussed...

Re:That's an easy one!

[spun]

The big bang as a point of reference? You do know it happened everywhere, right? I mean, it's not as if there was this superdense clump sitting in space that then exploded. There was no space.

Von Neumann Machines

[susano_otter]

Seriously.

At any scale. But nanoscale is my preference.

Ideally of types that interface cleanly with the human nervous system.

But that's just me.

Re:Von Neumann Machines

[Oktober Sunset]

Interfaces with the human nervous system? Try Meningitis.

Kaku bears a hearing?

[CRCulver]

Why Michio Kaku may be a fine mathematician, I think his ideas of technological progress are often shaky. I remember reading his book Hyperspace as a teenager and getting really irked by his repeated and fairly unrealistic visions of godlike power in the near future (an irritation at least one Amazon reviewer shares).

Re:Kaku bears a hearing?

[CheshireCatCO]

I had a similar response to Hyperspace (although my specific irritations are lost in the mists of bad memory and over a decade of time). Honestly, I'm not really inclined to give a special weight to an inventor of String Theory anyway; I'm very unimpressed with the scientific merits of that theory and I rather feel it borders on a non-science.

Re:Kaku bears a hearing?

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

I remember reading his book Hyperspace as a teenager and getting really irked by his repeated and fairly unrealistic visions of godlike power in the near future (an irritation at least one Amazon reviewer shares).

Ah, the delusion of grandure. I do agree that futurologists are guilty of this - but what we have even today is really quite grand.

What he's doing though seems to me to be mere extrapolation. Let us go back a few thousand years and try to explain to your average hunter/gatherer that in the future we have an arrow which can shoot all the way around the world and completely obliterate 50 square miles of whatever we aimed it at. That's pretty godlike, and that kind of technology came along with the microwave oven and color television.

The hunters arrow creates a hole a few inches in diameter - the hydrogen bomb creates a crater many hundreds of meters in diameter, so a weapon of a few thousand years from now should be able to create a blemish in matter approximately 1000 miles in size, a few thousand years past that and the weapon would make a big hole almost 6 million miles in size.

thousands of years are not long periods of time to the universe, I won't continue to extrapolate into the millions of years of humanities progress.

I think, if we survive and continue to progress like this, that we will be pretty bad-ass indeed.

Re:Kaku bears a hearing?

[gardyloo]

The hunters arrow creates a hole a few inches in diameter - the hydrogen bomb creates a crater many hundreds of meters in diameter, so a weapon of a few thousand years from now should be able to create a blemish in matter approximately 1000 miles in size, a few thousand years past that and the weapon would make a big hole almost 6 million miles in size. Yay for extrapolation through two points! Apparently, several thousand years ago, hunters' darts could actually *fill up* craters!

Re:Kaku bears a hearing?

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

A few inches in diameter? Is that a ballista in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?

Both!

Re:Kaku bears a hearing?

[MttJocy]

The worst thing about such talk of weapons is that natural law shows us that weapons able to destroy entire solar systems in a single blast and send radiation out over massive areas are entirely possible (see supernova) all that is required is enough energy which would probably make such a device absolutely massive.

Although someone developing technology which could cause a star to enter prematurely into its death phase by interrupting its normal reactions could possibly be smaller (especially if a chain reaction was involved) which could be a devastating but fairly easy to carry weapon if someone was out for interstellar war with someone.

Re:Kaku bears a hearing?

[fmobus]

Not that simple, I believe. Impacted area increases in a quadratic manner (remember A = PI.r^2). It is very likely that the energy needed to blast that area/volume is on higher polynomial (ie, being a r^4 or r^5). Much like getting a spaceship near c, there is a point where energy requirements get prohibitive.

Unfortunately our potential has limitations. There is just so much energy we can extract from our environment (read: sun). Maybe our best shot is building something like a dyson killer star

String Theory

[eln]

I dunno, string theory always seemed to me like something you would come up with at 3am while smoking a joint after having spent the past 6 hours polishing off a keg with your physicist friends.

"Hey man, you know what would be awesome? What if the whole Universe was really made up of a bunch of vibrating strings?"

"Whoa...I think you just blew my mind man...Hey, don't bogart that!"

Re:String Theory

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

"DUDE ... have you ever seen a molecule on WEED? Totally different ... its all ... stringy"
motions a bunch of other scientists over to look in the microscope
"Duuude... why're we staring into a bong?"

Re:String Theory

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

You might be closer to the truth than you intended to be.

Of course, this smacks of urban legendry - but snopes nor wikipedia seem to offer definite refutations, just lack of support.

Re:String Theory

[toastee]

My bong has been known to cause passage of time to speed up in a very localized fasion.

Teleporters

[Opportunist]

Duh. Anyone who has to drive to work on Mondays will want one.

Re:Teleporters

[ampathee]

Depends on whether it's a wormhole type teleport, or the type where it vapourizes you then recreates you somewhere else. I'd use the former, but I wouldn't go near the latter.

More weapons??

[Izabael_DaJinn]

Guns and sabers. That's not a very innovative future.

And invisibility? Nothing good would come of that either.

I'd be happy for a cure for the cold personally.

Easy: Method of Locomotion to another Solar System

[MrPerfekt]

No other advance would ever be as important as a quick way between the stars for colonization of other places in the galaxy. It would change our world so much indirectly just by us having the ability to leave it.

One word

[AresTheImpaler]

Which sci-fi tech do you think needs to get invented over the weekend?

Fembots

Obligatory

[Bryansix]

Where is my flying car?
But seriously I think that we should invent a real HUD system that could work through contacts but be powered just with body heat.

Re:"Mr Fusion"

[The Ancients]

Or something to cancel out the noise of accordion players.

Already been invented. Called a gun.

bears a hearing?

[Red Flayer]

FTS:

The author is Michio Kaku, one of the inventors of string theory, so he bears a hearing

I've got a friend who also likes to talk about things that should be invented, he's a mechanic, so he hears a bearing.

Re:bears a hearing?

[PiMuNu]

The author is Michio Kaku, one of the inventors of string theory, so he bears a hearing.

After all, an inventor of string theory must be an expert on science fiction...

Re:bears a hearing?

[proxy318]

Yeah, well I've got a friend who's a fisherman, and he bears a herring. I've also got a friend who's a pirate, and he wears an earring. I could do this all day.

Re:bears a hearing?

[fucket]

A friend of mine fondly remembers serving on the same ship with your pirate friend. Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he still hears the ARRRRRing.

Mr.Fusion

[gmuslera]

Seems to not break any phisical law (?) and will have a good impact in... well, anything not related with the oil industry.

Re:I could certainly use...

[eln]

I don't see why you're putting all this pressure on GM to get all of this done. Surely Ford or even, God help us, Chrysler could pitch in too?

Michio Kaku and Discovery

[xtracto]

Michio Kaku hosted a series of documentaries from Discovery Channel, among them is 2057 The city. They are indeed quite interesting as they speculate on how the future (specifically the year 2057) might be, but they base their predictions in current technology being developed and researched.

Worth to see IMHO.

Re:Michio Kaku and Discovery

[AKAImBatman]

Michio Kaku hosted a series of documentaries from Discovery Channel, among them is 2057 The city.

Now that you mention it, I remember seeing that episode. It was absolutely terrible.

"Base code so old that no one remembers how to modify it?" Apparently, the host knows absolutely nothing about how large scale software projects are managed, and how incredibly fragile they become when not actively maintained. And even if we accept his premise, I think you'll find that "The City" (SPOOOOON!) would have patched against those ancient vulnerabilities decades ago. No one is going to leave an entire city unpatched against an active worm.

And don't even get me started about the level of "The City's" integration. The kid just pops his shark into a billboard and it manages to make its way across hundreds of disparate systems into "The City's" primary mainframe? That must be some impressive code to run on so many platforms, exploiting the exact same vulnerability at every turn! And yet the virus is somehow constrained to "The City" even though it's being passed along the Internet? If it was really so virulent, wouldn't nearly every city in the world be affected?

Oh, that's right. He used his momma's security codes. That makes complete sense. Not. Because I really trust a cop with complete access to "The City's" systems? Maybe, just maybe, she might have been restricted to only systems she needs access to? Even if we assume she occasionally needs increased access, one would think there would be a procedure in place to provide only temporary access upon request and approval from a superior. Otherwise, what's to prevent Joe Badguy from kidnapping a cop, torturing her for the passcodes, then taking over "The City" before anyone can stop him?

Really stupid show. /rant

Linkage.

[urcreepyneighbor]

If anyone's interested in learning more about Dr. Kaku, here are some links to start with:

• personal website
• Wikipedia entry
• MySpace page,
• weekly radio show ( Explorations )
• and Coast to Coast AM guest profile

My pick

[geekoid]

unaging.
Physically staying 27 until I die from something other then natural causes.

Re:My pick

[shadwstalkr]

Physically staying 27 until I die from something other then natural causes.

I vote for asphyxiation by breasts.

Re:My pick

[MorePower]

Why would you need to be allowed to retire. I'm going to retire as soon as I have enough money invested to live on the interest plus some extra to grow the principle enough to offset inflation each year. That's well before "official" retirement age, which is good considering how few of my male relatives even lived to their sixties.

It's not even really hard to save up that money, the key seems to be "don't have kids", which would be even more important in a world with immortality.

My pick ...

[garett_spencley]

Automated lawn sprinkler systems capable of delivering hydrochloric acid.

I'm sick of those damned teenagers hanging out on my lawn.

Duh

[Gat0r30y]

Duke Nukem Forever!

Been Done

[my $anity 0]

We are sexy, sexy von Neumann Machines

Dr. Michio Kaku also has a radio show

[certron]

Dr. Michio Kaku also has a radio show called Explorations that primarily features interviews with other scientists. Most of the stations that air it have audio archives of the program, too, so you can check it out if you like.

http://www.mkaku.org/radio/

Apparently, he also has a myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/mkaku

Re:Lightsabers...

[bladesjester]

As a swordsman, may I just say first that I'd want one and second, that most people would probably cut their own heads/arms/random other body parts off with them... lol

Sounds like a win to me all around *grin*

Re:"Mr Fusion"

[Weaselmancer]

How about an identical accordion 180 degrees out of phase with the offending accordion?

No, not by itself

[StefanJ]

Even a magic Go Anywhere Fast drive, one that worked for interplanetary as well as across the depths of interstellar space, would not automatically open up the universe for colonization.

We'd still need great improvements in reaction drives, for example, to overcome the velocity differences between different star systems.

Lacking magical Star Trek style sensors, we'd need to find ways to detect and analyze planets.

Life support systems. Expedition craft that can handle a takeoff as well as a landing. Power sources. Cripes, it goes on and on.

Really, it's not like Masters of Orion or some other 4x game.

Me, I'd settle for that Mr. Fusion someone mentioned uptopic.

Re:No, not by itself

[jdigriz]

If the Go Fast Anywhere drive is magic, it can be like the spacefolding ships of Dune. No need for take-off and landing, just appear right on the surface of whatever planet you want to be on. Disappear from said planet the same way. Yeah, you'll need to find the planets first, but since you can Go Fast Anywhere, just spacefold to the near vicinity of the star and use a big radar dish, or synthetic array and telescopic observations to survey the system. No need for "magic star trek sensors", Arecibo works just fine in planetary radar mode, when it has funding. Spectroscopy and physical probes should suffice for the "analyze planets" part, once you're close enough. Yeah, it'll take a bit of time and multiple observations to work out the orbits, so you can predict where the planet will be so you can spacefold to that exact location, but it's not anywhere near impossible. Power sources? A Rickover-style nuclear plant should do fine for powering the electrical system of the ship, weight's not a real issue since we are spacefolding. That's assuming you can't tap whatever magical force powers the spacefold drive for ordinary power. Life support? We've been working with sealed environments for a while now. It's not tremendously difficult, assuming you don't spacefold to say, Venus, Jupiter or Io (radiation) or too close to a star. The relative velocity thing would not be a problem with spacefold drive, as we've seen that it matches velocity perfectly during the fold in the sequel novels because it is not smashed to bits by the planet it appears on.

So yeah, a properly dreamed-up magic Go Fast Anywhere drive would open up the galaxy. Implementation is left as an exercise for the reader.

Screw that, I want space colonies

[Quattro Vezina]

Read High Frontier, by Gerard O'Neill. Space colonies are perfectly feasible. Building one is more an exercise in putting existing technologies together than inventing new technologies.

I want to live in an O'Neill cylinder!

Re:Screw that, I want space colonies

[nicklott]

Possible, just insanely expensive. From the wiki wallah:

O'Neill's reference design ... consists of two counter-rotating cylinders each two miles (3 km) in radius, and twenty miles (30 km) long

I'm not going to do the maths, but you can imagine how much metal goes into a 3x20 mile long cylinder. Now imagine cutting that up into 20x5 metre sections and launching it into space. It might take a while.

I think we need to invent smelting in space before we can try these things, not to mention doing some proper research into closed ecosystems.

I endorse the above post.

[Valdrax]

Michio Kaku's predictions on technology frequently make me wonder just how good of a grasp he actually has on physics. My favorite is the old article where he predicts the way to escape the heat death of the universe by sending "atom-sized" nanomachines through a wormhole into a parallel universe where these machines would spread in a sphere at nearly light speeds.

Oh sure... we'll just ignore how something the size of an atom is supposed to contain any sort of parts capable of manipulating the environment as well as how they're supposed to encode information and make decisions. Might as well also ignore where such a machine is getting the energy to spread at light speed. Heck, why don't we just ignore reality entirely and get into exercises of sheer mental wankery, and...

Never mind, I keep forgetting he's a string theorist. Exercises in mental wankery that have no real attachment to physical reality is his bread and butter.

CowboyNeal replicator

[that_itch_kid]

Replication! That way, every Slashdot guy and gal can have his or her very own CowboyNeal!! Even your pet CowboyNeal can have his or her very own CowboyNeal!!

A peace ray.

[smellsofbikes]

We need about 6.8 billion of those.
Although if someone could recreate the "camera" that Oliver Wendell Jones first built, that'd be good for some laughs, too.

I'd settle for a teleporter, if worse came to worse.

Re:I could certainly use...

[Greyfox]

c. GM Animals that hunt and chase fat people.

In North America they're called bears and they don't work so well. In India they're called tigers and they work VERY well (Ever see a fat Indian? I know I haven't...)

Obviously we just need tigers in North America.

Re:Lightsabers...

[Captain DaFt]

Here's a real, functional light saber that can be built with todays tech:

  Take a high-powered infra-red laser that can be focused with a lens so that the focal point is energetic enough to ionize air.

Now get a lens whose focus can be changed electrically (Quartz and germanium are two possibilities that come to mind, I know germanium is transparent to infrared, not too sure about quartz)

Put laser and lens in a handle, sweep the focus of the lens from just past the hilt out to about three feet and back, several times a second.

Voila! Nice hissing, glowing column of energy that looks like a sword, cuts like a plasma torch, and can be yielded with one hand.

Caveats: Beams wont block other beams like a real sword.
                  Wear safety goggles to protect remaining eye from laser.
                  Please just ignore the power cable running to the wall outlet.
PS, if you're silly enough to do this, please post video of mishaps on You Tube AND Darwin Awards!

Needs inventing by Saturday night

[snowful]

Free beer and pizza

Re:Lightsabers...

[techno-vampire]

Voila! Nice hissing, glowing column of energy that looks like a sword, cuts like a plasma torch, and can be yielded with one hand.

Thank you, Sir Rodney, for that very important piece of information.

At last!

[DynaSoar]

Finally, a /. article for which the mention of golly gee whiz SciFi stuff in the summary isn't a gratuitous insert. Kaku really talks about this stuff. Rationally.

Parts of the book relating to wormholes, time travel and teleportation have been adapted by Kaku himself and published in the March 2008 ("Special Einstein") issue of Discover magazine. You can get an unadulterated taste of the book and a bunch of other nifty stuff about Einstein, relativity and such all in one package.

I think the claim he was an inventor of string theory isn't entirely accurate. However, he was co-author of the first paper on string field theory, which showed the five versions of string theory to be different versions of the same underlying mechanism. I think "rescurer" would be more accurate than "inventor" as well as being worth more credit.

Despite publishing other popular books previously including a best seller, hosting a 4 part BBC special, a 3 part Discovery Channel special and two different weekly radio shows, he's so far managed to dodge the inevitable unwashed masses and supposedly washed whiny insiders who show up to tip the ivory tower of popularizers of science. Last time it was Brian Greene. Even Sagan was so assailed until he forced their forgiveness by dying at them. Let's see how Kaku weathers the storm following the massive attention this new book is getting him. Including one picture of the Stargate and one of a Kirk led landing party being beamed down in the Discover article should help bring them out of the woodwork.

ZPM

[rossdee]

Obviously we need new souces of energy to replace fossil fuels. Zero Point energy seems to be a good choice. I don't expect that we could get a ZPM small enough to carry around in your hands like they do on atlantis, but something the size of a bus would be good enough.

Re:ZPM

[AshenFalls]

If you consider 'physically impossible' synonymous to 'good choice', sure. Solar (I'd prefer this one for obvious reasons) and nuclear are where it's at. Fusion, maybe, but not gonna happen anytime soon, and the power plants will probably be ridiculously expensive compared to, well, anything.

Re:"Mr Fusion"

[Captain DaFt]

"Or something to cancel out the noise of accordion players."

Fight fire with dynamite, if the accordion playing annoys you, drown it out with bagpipes!
Just make sure you're the closest to the door, and it's open, AND you have a get-a-way car right outside the door, with its door open and motor running.

I got one.

[polyomninym]

I know this is so far out, but how about FOOD for HUNGRY PEOPLE. 3 words Duke Nukem Forever;)

Moved and seconded...

[Jane Q. Public]

I vote with the two above. Wake me up when the String Hypothesis actually earns the name "theory"!

I want to believe!

[Jorophose]

I get to have something invented over the weekend??

GNU Hurd!

Re:Stop Aging

[Oligonicella]

"To the degree that it is possible for us to solve aging, our current apathy about it is a little like voluntary genocide."

I'm pretty familiar with the topic and you're simply wrong. There's no apathy and there's not a lot of progress. Unless you have some new research I'm unfamiliar with and could provide a link?

Broiled tongue in cheek.

[alfredo]

Which sci-fi tech do you think needs to get invented over the weekend?

A Windows release that actually works as advertised.

Re:Fembots...

[Viceroy Potatohead]

Granted it's not sci-fi tech, but...Fsck that sh!t. If I have my choice of sci-fi female/femaleish characters, I'll take the Bene Gesserit over lousy robots, any day...

Crap... now I want to create a lulzcat image of a 300lbs, slick skinned, unshaven geek with exaggerated, plaintive eyes and the caption "U Has Bene Gesserits?"

True story

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I was at a supercomputing conference in Oregon a few years back. Michio Kaku was the keynote speaker, talking about his predictions of fundamental limits on various technologies. He started spouting on about some semiconductor limit but as he was speaking there was a bit of a commotion coming from the back. Eventually it was revealed that there was a bunch of guys from some research lab disputing over whether or not to mention their latest work before making an official announcement. You see, they'd already broken Kaku's limit.