Japanese scientists fire the world's most powerful laser

A team of researchers from Osaka University recently fired the most powerful laser on the planet: a 2 petawatt pulse, that's 2 quadrillion watts, albeit for just one trillionth of a second. It's called the LFEX (Laser for Fast Ignition Experiments) and it measures more than 300 feet in length. Interestingly, while the LFEX boasts immense power, it doesn't actually require that much energy to operate.

If you remember your high school physics class, power (aka watts) is energy over time. And since the Osaka team is dealing with a picosecond time span, the device doesn't need much energy to generate a massive amount of wattage. In fact, for this experiment, the LFEX only consumed a couple hundred joules, about as much energy as your microwave does over the course of two seconds. It's able to generate so much power so quickly thanks to a series of glass "lamps" that amplified the laser as it passed through them.

 

Tron virtual reality

It's always fun to laugh at how directors envisioned the future would be and then execute their vision with eighties special effects. There's no greater example of this than the original Tron film. Even the colours were straight out of the '80s. Tron's virtual world that absorbed Kevin Flynn can easily be recreated in 2013. Virtual Reality has taken some huge strides in recent years, with many thanks to crowd-funding programs like Kickstarter. 

The most well known project, Oculus Rift, is on the cusp of release and many developers and journalists - including techradar - have jumped aboard the bandwagon. The devices offers a 90 degree horizontal field of view and a 1080p resolution, which creates an immersive experience. If you don't believe us, check out this charming video of an elderly lady using the Oculous for the first time.

Star Wars Hologram

"Commander Cody, the time has come, execute order 66" said Darth Sidious as he instructed Commander Cody to order him the special fried rice from Noodle Palace. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, sending a Hologram message was as throwaway as sending a text. But the hologram technology used in Star Wars isn't so far, far away any more. 

A company called Asukanet demonstrated a new interactive hologram at the 2013 CEATEC show. The device that displays the hologram is called an Aerial Imaging Plate, which combines reflective surfaces with a tablet interface. A 'floating' hologram is presented and the user can interact with it as they would any real life tangible object. The AIP then detects where your hand is in relation to the hologram and makes the hologram respond accordingly. The actual image can only be seen from one angle, or 'sweetspot', which Asukanet believes is an advantage because it gives the user more 'privacy'. Ewww. 

Driverless car

Total Recall, Demolition Man, Minority Report and I, Robot have all featured driverless cars. According to Hollywood, in an unavoidable dystopian future, cars cannot and should not be operated by humans because we're are too risky and cause accidents. 2013's Skynet, or Google it's currently known, have taken on a similar ethos and begun creating an autonomous car. 

Google are a bit hush on the specifics, but it seems that the car operates by using sensors to detect its surroundings and 360 cameras to map out direction, not dissimilar to the Google Street View car. It is operated by a piece of software ominously called 'Google Chauffeur', which sounds absolutely terrifying. Google's car has already done test runs around San Francisco and it completed over 300,000 autonomous driving miles with no problems.

Ford has also jumped on the driverless bandwagon by developing a car that takes over the steering wheel when you are about to crash, which is great news for drink drivers. 

James Bond's Biometric pistol

007's biometric PPK in Skyfall won't fire unless James is holding it, a safety mechanism to stop would-be criminals turning his own weapon against him (although they could just throw it at him). Biometric weapons (or personalised guns as they're otherwise known) are very much a reality. 

In the US, Dynamic Grip Recognition has been patented by the New Jersey Institute of Technology, which it will use in conjunction with the world's first 100% electronic handgun that uses new ballistic technology. Finding a gun down the back of a car seat and using it to fire off a few rounds at someone's antique cans will be a thing of the past, although large planks of wood with a single nail through it is still a serious problem. 

Robo-room

We've all dreamed about owning a house that turns the lights on when you walk in, or dispenses some perfectly cooked toast into your mouth when you wake up. Not like in Wallace and Gromit, but more like something out of Star Trek. 

This is the aim of Alex Hawkinson, founder of SmartThings (now owned by Samsung), a device that connects everything in your home to the internet. Your smartphone could be the new control centre of everything in your home from turning our lights on to opening doors and activating / interacting with anything electrical in your home.

Dispensing toast directly in your mouth might be a stretch, unless you're prepared to fit a super-strength spring into your toaster sleep with it on next to your head. We do not recommend you do any of it. If you do, please film it. 

Transformers

In the films and erratic Japanese cartoons, Transformers are technologically brilliant mechanical marvels. In real life they are brittle toddler fodder. In execution, Transformer toys have always been a disappointment. Hasbro never really wanted us to 'transform' Optimus Prime any other way than designated. The boundless ways to replicate machines is what attracted us to the metallic aliens in the first place, and a group of researchers at MIT have taken the first steps towards that goal. 

Called 'M blocks', these small cube shaped robots can jump and flip to assemble themselves into certain shapes. Not exactly Megatron - maybe baby Megatron - but we have to start somewhere. Researchers at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT believe that these robots can be used to build solid structures independently. For example, if part of a bridge were to be damaged, the blocks would detect where the damage was and replace it with a solid structure. That's a pretty mundane, but practical use.

Currently, the blocks are controlled by sending instructions to them remotely. But the researchers hope to program algorithms into the blocks and make them entirely autonomous and able to adapt to different situations.