FusionMan: Man Flying a Reality

Jet man ready for cross-Channel attempt after 'awesome' test flight

From here.

Pilot Yves Rossy landed safely yesterday after reaching speeds of 180mph strapped to a jet-powered wing

• James Randerson, science correspondent
• guardian.co.uk,
• Thursday August 21 2008 17:58 BST
• Article history

Yves Rossy soars over Switzerland yesterday strapped to a jet-powered wing. The flight was a test run for a cross-Channel attempt next month

A Swiss daredevil's bid to cross the English Channel propelled by a jet-powered wing strapped to his back moved a step closer yesterday with a successful 36km test flight over Switzerland.

The flight proves that his jet-powered wing can take him far enough to make it across the channel from Calais to Dover. He hopes to make the crossing on 24 September if the weather is suitable.

Yves Rossy – who calls himself FusionMan – jumped from a plane above the Swiss town of Bex and reached speeds of up to 180mph during his 12 minutes of jet-powered flight before landing at an airfield in Villeneuve. Rossy first unveiled his jet-powered wing in May with an 8-minute aerobatic display over the Alps.

Rossy and team after his flight

"Everything went well, it was awesome," said Rossy after the flight. "It's my longest flight with this wing. If there are no technical problems, it's OK for the English Channel. I can't wait for this next challenge!"

His attempt had originally been thwarted by a collection of technical failures, including a leaking gas tank and two aborted flights during which the engines stopped within seconds of jumping from his support plane. He blamed these failures – which forced him to deploy his parachutes early – on "electronic interference problems".

The successful flight involved him jumping out of the aircraft at 2,300m, flying horizontally under jet power from a height of 1,700m and then switching off the jet engines before deploying two parachutes at 1500m and 1200m.

The wing does not include moving parts such as flaps to control direction, but Rossy is able to steer by shifting his weight and moving his head.

When he reached the ground he still had 2 litres of fuel left in his wing, suggesting that he would have some margin for error during the cross-channel flight.

Rossy is a former military pilot. His channel flight will be streamed live on the National Geographic Channel.

Holography: The Future of Telecommunication

From here

al gore hologram - live earth tokyo '07

Al Gore launched Live Earth Tokyo in a high-tech, virtual way – as a hologram using Musion Eyeliner Holographic Projection. After a stirring introduction by Lumi, the virtual-reality singer of Genki Rockets, a head-to-toe-likeness of the former U.S. Vice President materialized on stage.

He shared urgent yet hopeful words to the crowd gathered at Makuhari Messe. The holographic Gore had an expression of amazement as he delivered the following words:
What an amazing world we live in – I love it that I can stand here on this stage in Tokyo and speak to you in holographic form. It is astounding that in just these recent few decades we have invented technologies that enable us to connect and instantly communicate our ideas and intentions with people on the other side of the globe.

Because of the communication channels and technologies now available to us, this venue is, at this moment, connected to the entire world. You are all communicating to well over 2 billion people right now – including all the Live Earth audiences in Sydney, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Hamburg, London, Rio de Janeiro and New York and the broadcast audience who will be watching on television and the Internet in over 100 countries.

musion eyeliner 3d technical

Musion Eyeliner System incorporates some very simple video principles and all equipment used is readily available in both the American and European rental markets.

The primary components of a Eyeliner set up are:

• A video projector, preferably DLP with an HD card/minimum native resolution of 1280 x 1024 and brightness of 5000+ lumens.
• For smaller cabinet installations, a high quality TFT Plasma or LCD screen can also be used.
• A hard-disc player with 1920 x 1080i HD graphics card, Apple or PC video server, DVD player.
• Musion Eyeliner Foil + 3D set/drapes enclosing 3 sides
• Lighting and audio as required
• Show controller (on site or remote)

Subjects are filmed in HDTV and broadcast on to the foil through HDTV projection systems, driven by HD Mpeg2 digital hard disc players, or uncompressed full HDTV video/Beta-Cam players.

The setup is erected in either a bespoke cabinet or a self contained four legged ground support. Alternatively, the foil can be stretched into a truss framework and flown from its own hanging points.

In either configuration, Eyeliner allows for a full working stage or set to be constructed behind the foil. In so doing live actors or performers, as well as virtual images are able to interact with other projected images in such a way that it appears to the watching audience that all of the objects they are seeing are in stage.

It is therefore quite conceivable to have a live performer sing a duet with a ‘virtual’ partner, a cartoon character or even his/hers projected double.

All the images used on an Eyeliner system are three-dimensional images, but projected as two-dimensional images (2D/3D) into a 3D stage set. The mind of the audience created the 3D illusion. This means that production costs are minimal, needing only the single camera lens for filming and a single projector for the playback – hence the phrase ‘Glasses-free viewing’.

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation

In theory the discovery could be used to levitate a person

Levitation has been elevated from being pure science fiction to science fact, according to a study reported today by physicists.

In earlier work the same team of theoretical physicists showed that invisibility cloaks are feasible.

Now, in another report that sounds like it comes out of the pages of a Harry Potter book, the University of St Andrews team has created an 'incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together.

Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts.

Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.

The Casimir force is a consequence of quantum mechanics, the theory that describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles that is not only the most successful theory of physics but also the most baffling.

The force is due to neither electrical charge or gravity, for example, but the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together, also explaining a “dry glue” effect that enables a gecko to walk across a ceiling.

Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attact.

Because the Casimir force causes problems for nanotechnologists, who are trying to build electrical circuits and tiny mechanical devices on silicon chips, among other things, the team believes the feat could initially be used to stop tiny objects from sticking to each other.

Prof Leonhardt explained, “The Casimir force is the ultimate cause of friction in the nano-world, in particular in some microelectromechanical systems.

Such systems already play an important role - for example tiny mechanical devices which triggers a car airbag to inflate or those which power tiny 'lab on chip’ devices used for drugs testing or chemical analysis.

Micro or nano machines could run smoother and with less or no friction at all if one can manipulate the force.” Though it is possible to levitate objects as big as humans, scientists are a long way off developing the technology for such feats, said Dr Philbin.

The practicalities of designing the lens to do this are daunting but not impossible and levitation “could happen over quite a distance”.

Prof Leonhardt leads one of four teams - three of them in Britain - to have put forward a theory in a peer-reviewed journal to achieve invisibility by making light waves flow around an object - just as a river flows undisturbed around a smooth rock.

Invisibility cloak

From here

Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley have developed a material that can bend light around 3D objects making them "disappear".

The materials do not occur naturally but have been created on a nano scale, measured in billionths of a metre.

The team says the principles could one day be scaled up to make invisibility cloaks large enough to hide people.

Stealth operations

The findings, by scientists led by Xiang Zhang, were published in the journals Nature and Science.

The light-bending effect relies on reversing refraction, the effect that makes a straw placed in water appear bent.

Previous efforts have shown this negative refraction effect using microwaves—a wavelength far longer than humans can see.

The new materials instead work at wavelengths around those used in the telecommunications industry—much nearer to the visible part of the spectrum.

Two different teams led by Zhang made objects made of so-called metamaterials—artificial structures with features smaller than the wavelength of light that give the materials their unusual properties.

One approach used nanometre-scale stacks of silver and magnesium fluoride in a "fishnet" structure, while another made use of nanowires made of silver.

Light is neither absorbed nor reflected by the objects, passing "like water flowing around a rock," according to the researchers. As a result, only the light from behind the objects can be seen.

Cloak and shadow

The fine structure of the material gives it light-bending abilities

"This is a huge step forward, a tremendous achievement," says Professor Ortwin Hess of the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey.

"It's a careful choice of the right materials and the right structuring to get this effect for the first time at these wavelengths."

There could be more immediate applications for the devices in telecommunications, Prof Hess says.

What's more, they could be used to make better microscopes, allowing images of far smaller objects than conventional microscopes can see.

And a genuine cloaking effect isn't far around the corner.

"In order to have the 'Harry Potter' effect, you just need to find the right materials for the visible wavelengths," says Prof Hess, "and it's absolutely thrilling to see we're on the right track."