Arthur C. Clarke’s idea that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” has been cited by laymen for decades to explain the seemingly unexplainable. But now, a piece of technology exists that even scientists can’t really wrap their heads around. British scientist Robert Shawyer created a space engine that requires no propellant and can keep going indefinitely, provided the hardware doesn’t suffer any damage. It’s what the scientific community would call impossible. The rest of us might be inclined to call it magic. Recently, NASA confirmed that this “impossible” engine actually works.

The EmDrive converts microwaves into thrust via a mechanism that can’t quite be explained by conventional physics. Microwaves are generated with electricity which could be provided by solar power; these microwaves then bounce around in a closed container, somehow providing thrust that requires no propellant at all. In Shawyer’s experiments – and in a subsequent Chinese experiment which validated Shawyer’s results – enough thrust was produced to operate a standard satellite thruster. (The above video is Shawyer’s EmDrive moving itself during a 2007 test.)

Shawyer and the Chinese team had achieved the impossible, but no one believed their findings. Shawyer tried for years to get someone in the scientific community to take his work seriously, but it wasn’t until American scientist Guido Fetta built his own propellant-less microwave thruster that people started to pay attention. Fetta worked with NASA’s advanced propulsion team to test the microwave thrust method and, to everyone’s astonishment (except Shawyer’s, of course), found that it worked. The success of the experiment flies in the face of the law of conservation of momentum, making it unexplainable by conventional physics. The team even made modifications to the design that should have made it fail, but somehow it still worked. NASA’s version only produced a tiny fraction of the power that Shawyer’s EmDrive achieved, but the fact that it produced any thrust at all has been enough to draw the attention of the worldwide scientific community.

NASA’s paper on the experiment doesn’t go into much detail about the actual mechanism that makes this seemingly-impossible engine work. They do, however, hint at the possibility that the force is produced by interacting with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma. In other words, the engine could be using quantum mechanics which we can’t quite explain just yet. If true, the EmDrive (or the Cannae Drive, as Fetta calls his version) could be the most incredible breakthrough in the history of space travel. The need for on-board propellant is probably the biggest hurdle in deep space exploration, and a propellant-free engine that could theoretically travel forever could make it possible for us to venture farther from Earth than conventional physics would ever allow.

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What would you give – particularly on those stressed-out mornings when you’re running late – to be able to charge your smartphone in a mere half minute? An Israeli startup called StoreDot has developed a prototype that does exactly that, even if the battery is completely dead.

The secret used in the amazing charger is called quantum dot technology. It relies on microscopic nanocrystal batteries made of semiconductor materials. StoreDot calls their version of the technology “nanodots,” and they hope to completely change the world of mobile device batteries. The technology is much greener than current mobile batteries and, amazingly, also costs less.

As of yet, as seen in the video above, the StoreDot device is big and bulky, and nowhere near ready to be used in a phone. But the external charging capabilities are enough for us – we’d love to get our hands on a prototype, no matter how clunky and cumbersome it might be. According to StoreDot, we’re about a year away from seeing this technology built inside phones, and another two years away from seeing it get powerful enough to last a whole day. By 2017 or so, we should all be carrying around smart devices with quantum magic happening inside them.

(via: TechCrunch)

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Aircraft anti-detection systems have gotten incredibly complex. So complex, in fact, that they can intercept a radar signal and send back a picture of something other than the aircraft (see the images below). Researchers at the University of Rochester in New York have figured out a better way to outsmart the outsmarters by exploiting the quantum properties of photons. Attempting to measure a photon always destroys its quantum properties, so the team posited that they could shoot polarized photons at aircraft to create images of the craft.

If an enemy were to intercept those photons and send them back in a deceptive pattern to indicate that the measured object is a different shape or in a different location, it would be immediately obvious. This is because the act of manipulating the photons would always change their delicate quantum properties. As seen in the sample images above, a manipulated image is simple to detect thanks to the high rate of polarization errors in the returned signal. The system isn’t flawless as there are still ways for very savvy adversaries to crack it – but there are also ways to fix those vulnerabilities.

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Deciding things is hard. Ordinarily, people who want to avoid the difficulties of choosing between two options can either flip a coin or pull out the old Magic 8-Ball. Those methods aren’t nearly sciencey enough, though. The Schrödinger’s Cat Executive Decision Maker is meant to help with all of those hard choices in the geekiest way possible.

For those unfamiliar with Schrödinger’s cat experiment, it is a thought experiment in which an object (in this case, a cat) can theoretically exist in two states at the same time (in this case, alive and dead) due to the inherent randomness in the universe. This is an extremely rudimentary explanation, but it illustrates why the poor kitty in this little plastic box flickers between dead and alive before settling on one state or the other.

If the kitty lands on alive, the answer to your yes/no question is yes. If it ends up dead, then, well, the answer is no. Who knows what state the kitty is in when the door is closed? The decision maker is available from ThinkGeek for $30.

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It makes sense that a machine or creature with four legs could outrun a machine (or creature) with two legs, but it turns out that this logic doesn’t apply in the quantum world. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have made and studied nanomachines with two legs and others with four legs to prove that more legs doesn’t necessarily mean faster locomotion. The bipedal machines seem to be capable of quantum mechanical tunneling, a rather cool phenomenon of the quantum world that takes advantage of small particles’ ability to go through a barrier rather than over it without harming the barrier. But in true perplexing quantum-world fashion, only a small number of particles can achieve this feat at once. Two-legged molecular machines can pop through barriers with no problem, but four-leggers aren’t as lucky – they have to go over the barrier.

Of course, all that moving over barriers rather than plowing through them adds some travel time for the quadrupeds. In the study, the research group found that four-legged nanomachines moved a million times slower than their two-legged counterparts. According to group leader Ludwig Bartels, “It is like driving on a bumpy road with the wheels of your car going through the bumps rather than over them.” Of course, the study won’t have any real effect on how you live your life or drive to work (sorry to dash those hopes) but the research might some day be helpful in improving data storage or speeding up drug metabolism in the human body.

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