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Artificial Surface and Metamaterial Advancement
A team of researchers in China has manufactured an artificial surface which is capable of bending electromagnetic waves, an advancement in metamaterials that will go far beyond the creation of new antennas that will conform to any shape. The breakthrough that is being called “broadband transformation optics” was reported in the American Institute of Physics journal, called Applied Physics Letters, as being built with small-scale metallic U-shaped structures on a dielectric material that mimic the Luneburg Lens.
Dielectric materials are insulators which can be polarized with an electrical field, and because they do not conduct electricity they can be used to shift the equilibrium in either direction. When a positive charge moves towards an applied electrical field, the negative charge moves into the opposite position. This creates another field within the material that redistributes weakly bonded molecules into symmetrical alignment with the original charge.
The artificial surface was created by Tie Jun Cui and a team at the Southeast University of Nanking, China and it marks a stepping stone in metamaterial advancement, which contain properties not found in nature. Most lenses are made of glass or plastic that bend light in a uniform way, called the “index of refraction.” In 1944, Rudolf Luneburg invented a lens with a gradient index that was parallel on either side, creating a mutual focal point of refraction from opposite directions. This technology has been used to adjust microwave frequencies for antenna and radar calibration, and cylindrical versions have been used to narrow the rays of laser diodes.
The Luneburg lens contains a variable refractive index, making it capable of focusing electromagnetic radiation such as radio waves and microwaves, and will eventually be used with infrared light and visible light. A normal lens transfers waves through the surface, but the Luneburg lens can bend this electromagnetism to an off-axis point at the edge, uniformly channeling it from one side to another in a single path. The shape of the lens was the last obstruction because it had to be curved, but for applications such as radar reflectors this was an inconvenience, so the Chinese developed a metamaterial that could perform the same tasks but with any shape.
With the manipulation of surface wavelengths through geometric optics, holographic optics, and now transformation optics, this metamaterial in other applications in reference to their capacity to guide light around an object will be the next stage of development for invisibility. If light waves bend around an object and proceed in a straight line, the object itself would not cast a shadow. Using this with microwaves from radar, if an airplane can be coated in a layer of the metamaterial, it would be rendered undetectable. Cloaking devices for the human eye will be more difficult to achieve because the electromagnetic radiation that makes up light waves are measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and therefore the material would have to be manufactured on a nano-scale and because different colors are different wavelengths it would have to account for every variation. The United States Department of Defense agency called DARPA, or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will be looking into this artificial surface in a way that will likely create competition equivalent to a technological arms race.
Source: http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/artificial-surface-and-metamaterial-advancement/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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