The conference room of the UC San Diego price center was full Wednesday with an audience wishing to hear about devices that can bend light and sound waves to change what we can see and hear – and perhaps even make things invisible.
It looks like magic, but it’s physics. The presenter was the physicist John Pendry of the Imperial College in London, and the devices are called metamaterial.
“It is a paradigm in terms of new way of thinking about how to control the waves, whatever the type of wave that could be,” said Richard Averett, professor of physics at the UCSD. “So, conceptually, there are so many applications, and this is one of the exciting things about metamaterials.”
The person who has heard, Pendry, is a Kyoto Prize Winner. The prices are awarded each year by the Inomori Foundation in Kyoto, Japan.
The Kyoto Prize was founded by the late scientific and businessman Kazuo Inmori, who had a very strong link with San Diego. He started Kyocera Corporation, whose North American headquarters are in San Diego.
He was once the president of Japan Airlines, and in the late 90s, he became a Zen Buddhist priest.
The San Diego Symposium is organized by Point Loma Nazarene University and UC San Diego. Point Loma Journalism Professor Dean Nelson said prices recognize success and commitment to humanity.
“Dr. Inmori had this very spiritual side for him, as well as a scientist, who said everything we do – a whole new discovery – must really raise the human soul and human experience,” said Nelson.
John Pendry’s theory of manipulation of the light begins with the fact that light in space can be folded and redirected, just as space itself is folded by gravitational forces. Scientists have created devices that can fold the shelves from certain frequencies.
Theoretically, we could use it to ensure that the light rays bypass an object.
“And then you have to send the light in the same direction that it was going before. It is therefore like a skier who goes around a tree, “said Pendry.
The device is called Cloak, a term borrowed from Harry Potter novels. But could you really fold visible waves of light to make something invisible?
“People have done so with the radar frequencies successfully,” said Pendry. “The idea of invisibility – I may have mentioned in my speech – that is to say to people:” Listen, it’s very, very difficult. “This is not a problem that you pose to a doctoral student.”
David Smith – Now professor of physics at Duke University – was a doctoral and postdoctoral doctoral and postdoctoral at UC San Diego when he met the work of Pendry. He is the physicist who managed to fold the radar waves to prove the concept of Pendry.
He said that his laboratory had retained several companies that are engineering capes to manipulate the waves traveling in the air and space.
“All our sensors. All our devices. Everything we do involves waves at a certain level. So, the better you can control the waves, you have access – not just science, but technology and applications of the real world, “said Smith.
And this is something that can raise humanity. This is at least the point of view of the Kyoto Foundation.
As for making things invisible, a senior graduate Francisco Perez, of High Tech High Chula Vista, attended the speech of Pendry and declared itself optimistic.
“Certainly in 50 years, with all the research and commitment, I see him perform,” he said.
The other Kyoto winners of this year are the geologist Paul Hoffman of Victoria University in Canada, who won the basic science category, and the choreographer William Forsythe, who worked with ballet companies in Germany and joined the Faculty of the USC, winning the category of arts and philosophy.