How the gap between science fiction and reality is becoming thinner

In the past, we all believed at some point that most of those high tech gadgets featured in sci-fi movies only end in the movie world and has no place in reality. But this norm is has been breached of recent as we begin to see most of these technologies breaking through the veil between sci-fi and reality thereby making their way into the real world (our world). This may sound funny but here is a list of top sci-fi gadgets and technologies that have are gradually making their way into our world, and the ones we should be expecting in the nearest future.

(1) Invisibility cloak

[image source](www.bbc.com)

You probably have seen that piece of textile in Harry Potter that makes him totally invisible when he puts it on. Some group of researchers from the University of California and the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered a way to bend light with the aid of a piece of material (cloak) which they developed. This cloak contains molecules maid up of meta-materials which is about 80 nanometers wide at the microscopic level, and can be scaled up to large levels bending light around large objects hereby totally concealing them which in turn results to them appearing invisible to the observer. This cloak also has a switch which can change the polarity of the cloak thereby making it invisible and then visible again to the observers.

(2) Laser gun

[image source](www.thelatestnews.com)

   Laser guns and plasmic beam blasters as seen in movies like star wars and iron-man have being discovered in real life y senior researchers and scientists and are still being researched on for improved efficiency. These weapons in the scientific research world are known as Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) which has the capacity to inflict heavy damage on a target with the aid of emission of highly focused energy including laser, microwaves and particle beams. Government agencies in the united states such as the Pentagon, DARPA, the Air Force Research Laboratory are currently carrying out research on technologies such as DEW and rail guns to serve as anti-aircraft weapons.

(3) Phasing through objects

[image source](www.writeups.com)

   Yeah! You heard me right, phasing through objects just like Barry Allen(The Flash) in The Justice League. Flash is the super hero known to possess this ability. Phasing through solid objects can only be explained only with the quantum physics. Physicists in the year 2010 have discovered a means by which quantum particles can transition through objects by finding a means to do so. This ability for subatomic particles to pass through solid objects is known as quantum tunneling. Phasing on the other hand can be said to be achieved in the quantum state whereby the phasing particle has the same phase angle as the particle to be penetrated.i.e. they both vibrate at the same frequency. Don't me how I know this is possible, because I am a physics student and physicist in the making who has a concrete knowledge of wave motion and how waves are formed and operate.

(4) Freeze Rays

[image source](sciencefiction.com)

   Many of us will recall watching Batman Poison Ivy starring Uma Thurman as poison ivy and Arnold Schwarznegger as freeze. The was the bad guy that could not do without the cyborg suit so as to stay alive. Freeze and the likes of Captain Cold( from the Flash, the one in the picture above) makes use of ice guns which we only in science-fictions. Sorry to bust your bubbles but freeze rays/guns exists outside sci-fi movies as a group of German scientists in Berlin are experimenting on acting lasers on high pressure gas so as to knock out the electrons from the orbital of the atoms of the gas. The way it works is that the photons are used to knock out electrons from their orbit ( of which you may know earlier on like in the case of Compton's Effect). The result of this process is that it drops down the temperature of the gas by 119 degrees thereby causing the object to freeze rapidly. This process is also carried out by a group of researchers in Germany to create clouds our Germany's capital city.

(5) Artificial Intelligence

[image source](bbci.co.uk)

   If not all of us but I believe a vast majority of us watched movies like terminator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and I-robot starring Will Smith. These trends are rapidly making their way into our society as big names such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are making their debuts in this area. We will have in one way or the other witnessed people who talk to their iPhone, Android phone or their Microsoft lumia with the aid of AI Siri for iPhone, Google Now for Android and Cortana for Microsoft Lumia phones. These are what i will call AI in some of it's most basic forms. We will have also heard of Google self-driven cars and auto pilots for commercial airliners. We expect to see more and better innovations in the nearest future.

(6) Space-time travel

[image source](blogspot.com)

   We have at one point in time while watching sci-fi movies witnessed what is known as time travel through the aid of a time machine that either is in the form of a Police box like Doctor Who's TARDIS (Traversable Acausel Retrograde Domains in Space Time) or in the form of a circular machine like those we see in both Marvel/DC comics that needs a very powerful nuclear element/material to power it up so as to produce a huge rotating black hole at the center of the circular machine. We may all think all these things are just a pigment of some one else imagination, but mind you book from London to New york were also from Leonardo's ideas of flying machines, so never underestimate the power of imaginations. They believe for time travel to be achieved, one will need to warp space-time continuum which is the connection between width, depth, and height. And this they say can be achieved with the aid of black holes that exhibits heavy gravitational forces which can slow down time and cause objects passing through it to be faster than the speed of light, thereby making it possible to travel back in time. This will lead to a whole lot of breakthroughs in science. In other words you will actually become Barry Allen with this machine.

Catch me next week on more interesting topics @gabbythegenius. Thank you