Intelligent Dust, the Time Machine and the Personal Rocket

"Time traveling" is one of the most common subjects we find in our husbands' bedside books, among Mars and all its different colors, trips and even life on that planet, plus a few other endeavors more or less related. Most of them are consuming this kind of books only for playful purposes, while others find science fiction authors to have a deep understanding of political and economical theories in the same sense that our husbands can drink beer and play poker. Others believe that they read something very serious, some fundamental truths hidden by the American government, that by coincidence have erupted to the surface having the shape of a science fiction novel.

There is another theory though, brought on my physicists, which gives truth to what most women would find only to be a catch to draw attention at movies for children: time traveling. Well, ladies, things are not exactly what they seem. A certain scientist named Ron Mallet states that time is just another type of space and that we can actually walk around in it. To prove this, he has invented a time traveling machine.

His studies correlate with some of Einstein's theories, according to which time is something that can be changed. To us, mere mortals, time is defined by having a past, a present and a future. "But if space is twisted hard enough, the temporal line will be changed into a loop, so that we'll actually be able to walk from the future to the past," the scientist says.

The aforementioned time machine would have the same size as a human hair and with it we would be able to send messages into the past. Unfortunately, messages can only be sent into the past not a second earlier than the moment when the time machine becomes functional. So please calm down, you won't be able to live romantic adventures in the nineteenth century. Yet!

Until we'll have a similar machine at home we do have to use some type of transportation, right? And since in the beginning of this article I was talking about some different types of witchcraft the American government is up to, I now have a jet pack for you.

Jet packs were developed in the 1960s to assure a relatively discreet type of flight. They got stuck in development stages though, since in those time the machines were heavy and almost impossible to use. The jet pack is actually a type of rocket which uses hydrogen peroxide as fuel. Another major problem used to be that they can fly for only about 45 seconds before running out of fuel.

Now, the situation has changed, and two engineers going by the name of Troy Widgery and Eric Strauss state that the model they're building is going to make personal flying from your home to your office a reality. They have replaced heavy materials with carbon fiber to make the flying machines lighter and faster, and they have also managed to perfect their turbines. The result is an amazing feat, prolonging flight time to about five minutes, therefore achieving a flight mileage of about 30 kilometers (about 19 miles).

You'll probably say that you have other problems and I'm just nagging you with childish dreams. You just want a practical solution here and now to reach the mall. You're tired of city traffic jams and hours spent behind a slow-moving car. Well, I have good news once again. Intelligent dust has been invented, and its inventor is called Kristofer Pister from the University of Berkley.

Intelligent dust is actually a multitude of wireless sensors the size of dust particles, which has the power to communicate and process data. What use do we have for it? Well, with the help of the so-called "intelligent dust" we can create an almost invisible network to cover all the spaces where we live and administer traffic. Each dust particle will record and compute every movement each car is making. Therefore, we will know how late will the train or subway be, where we will find a pothole on the road and most of all, how to go from point A to point B in the shortest time and in the best road conditions.

Maybe you're now wondering if I started reading science fiction literature. No, although on my boyfriend's bedside table lays a book which I've been meaning to read for a long time. I'm convinced you're in pretty much the same situation and have been thinking about initiating your own trip through your husband's novels, so I thought I would just give you an idea about the world you're about to enter. So I've made a short story from what ideas I could catch watching the Discovery Channel before going to bed each night.