Ever wonder what the future has in store? Well the discovery channel has an entire program devoted to showing what advances are being made and what effect they’ll have on the future. So take a look:

Nokia, has harnessed the power of a phone that can recharge itself constantly based off olf ambient radio waves that travel through the air.

It takes all the waves from TV, radio, and other free-floating wireless signals that just bounce around the air and are either wasted, absorbed or scattered and converts the electromagnetic energy into electrical current which can then recharge the phone’s battery.

Currently Nokia is able to harvest all of 5 milliwatts from the air; the goal is to increase that to 20 milliwatts in the short term and 50 milliwatts down the line. That wouldn’t be enough to keep the phone alive during an active call, but would be enough to slowly recharge the cell phone battery while it’s in standby mode, theoretically offering infinite power — provided you’re not stuck deep underground where radio waves can’t penetrate.

There’s a new invisibility cloak for sound that could not only help doctors find tiny tumors but could also hide submarines from enemy sonar. And this same technology could also be used to create high-def ultrasound pictures or detect tiny tumors that can’t be found by today’s conventional methods.

The way it works is by bending acoustics waves before they can hit a surface and guiding them smoothly around the object. For instance, you would be able to bend sonar around a submarine so that it can’t be detected a enemy. Invisibility cloaks, whether for sound or light, both manipulate waves.

Whatever the wave type, the principle is basically the same; bend a wave around an object without breaking it. The cloak is supposedly to be made out of sonic metamaterial that uses cubes and octagons to create holes that can then bend the wave around the covered object. The most obvious application would be as a coating for submarines that want to avoid detection from enemy sonar.

We’ve also heard chatter that there have been some advances in light invisibly cloaks. As you can see in the picture it maskes the person thats standing there. But in fact this isn’t a true invisible cloak at all. In the image, there is a camera behind the person that films the scene and then a projector shines that real-time movie onto the person’s jacket thus creating a sort of optical illusion.

However, it only works in 2D thus defeating the whole ‘noone can see me’ since someone at a different angle (such as from the otherside) will clearly be able to see the person standing there. But despite this…diappointment, it does show that there are strides being made in the development of invisibility apparatuses that one day may in fact hide us from those we wish to avoid.

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