THE MAD SCIENTIST INVENTS

A ZOOM LENS WITH NO MOVING PARTS - © R.W.D. 1975
A transparent piezo-electric bi-morph is used as either a coating on a thin lens, or as the lens itself. A voltage applied to the bimorph via transparent tin-oxide electrodes on either side makes the lens flex becoming more or less curved, thus altering it's focal length. A number of such elements arranged into a camera lens will make a zoom lens with no moving parts, able to zoom at high speed and with great precision. Focussing could be achieved in a similar way without moving parts.

INVENTION FOR MAKING COPIES OF NEAR PERFECT CAMERA LENSES - © R.W.D 1980
A really good diffraction-limited fixed focal length camera lens is made, at great enormous expense, as only one is required. Then, using a solid cylinder of special glass (a special non-reversible photochromic glass will do) a 3D hologram of the lens is made throughout the volume of the glass cylinder (perhaps using white light, or by using three monochromatic lasers of red, green and blue light [using the same wavelength light that colour films are tuned to is best]). Hey presto, a perfect lens, cloned from the original, just as good as the original, and usable with white light.

A variation on this could make either multiple fixed focal length lenses or a zoom lens in the same cylinder. Simply make a multiple exposure hologram in the glass cylinder with the various lenses, or zoom the lens. This hologram would have to be made two such photochromic glass cylinders whose position was changed in discrete steps whilst changing the reference lenses or moved continuously whilst zooming the reference lens. Upon altering the same relative position of these two glass cylinders when on a camera, the original focal length will be recreated.

INVENTION FOR MAKING MATERIALS WITH ALTERNATE LAYERS OF DIFFERING PROPERTIES - © R.W.D. 1995
Materials with alternate thin layers are becoming increasingly popular because of their unique properties. Such materials are usually made by vacuum deposition of differing substances alternately, or by some other intensive method. My method will produce accurately-spaced alternately-layered films in one operation. Some materials, for example cerium, (and many others) can exist in different phases (like bcc, hcp, monoclinic etc). Cerium has many such phases that are close together, and is able to change phase with just a slight alteration in some parameter (eg pressure). My method uses ultrasound directed through the sample to set up standing waves through the thickness of the sample. This will create alternate layers of low and high pressure. If the temperature of the sample, high at first, is then reduced through a phase transition temperature, the material may crystallise out in a different phase where the pressure was high than where it was low. This will produce a material with alternating layers of differing properties. By varying the frequency of the ultrasound, the spacing of the layers can be controlled.

INVENTION FOR MAKING 3D-STEREO LCD DISPLAYS - © R.W.D. 1999
LCD displays already use optical polarising material (crossed polarisers) to enable them to work, so making an LCD capable of displaying images in 3D-stereo is just a simple matter of arranging for adjacent alternate pixels to have the polarisation direction at 90 degrees to each other. Thus there are two sets of pixels in a grid-like pattern side by side. All that is needed is to address the first set of pixels with image A, and the second set with image B, the images being a stereo pair. To view the 3D-stereo image, you will need a pair of polarising glasses, with each eyes lens set at a mutually perpendicular directions. Hey presto! a full-colour 3D-stereo image, that can also be a moving image, for example, a cinematic film.

INVENTION FOR LAYING NON-WEARING ROAD MARKINGS - © R.W.D. 2002
This is simple, and could be accomplished tomorrow. Make your road laying machine (the thing that lays down tarmac and stones) a huge colour ink-jet printer. The ink will be the colour of the stones and the colour of the tarmac. Note that not all tarmac these days is black, it can now be almost any colour. The road marking pattern is programmed into the road layer, and it prints the road markings as it lays the road. With the road markings having depth throughout the road layer just layed instead of being just a thin layer on top of an existing road surface, the road markings will not wear off like they do at present. Also, it wont take ages drawing complicated shapes like bicycles on the road. Easy peasy! Hey Preston!

BEER FILTER - WHITNEYS RED BARREL © R.W.D. 2001
Forget your water filter, what you really need is a beer filter. Turns dirty water into beer by letting through all the things that aren't in beer, and retaining only the components of beer in the filtrate, all in the right proportions for a really good pint of bitter. Caution - it will not work on clean water - remember the adage 'garbage in - garbage out'. Well, it's exactly the same with the beer filter: the dirtier the water, the better. The amount of water required to produce a pint of best will vary from 10 gallons to 300 gallons, depending upon water foulness. The head on the beer appears automatically from dissolved CO₂ coming out of solution. The inventor is now working on a SCOTS FILTER - which does much the same but produces a bottle of SCOTS WHISKY. First trials suggest that at least 3000 gallons of boggy water are required to fill a bottle. Of course, for it to be genuine Scots whisky, you must do the process in Scotsland, using only highland water.

ULTRA-WIDE ULTRA-HIGH LCD MONITOR © R.W.D. 2005 Ever marvelled at the high display resolution of your landscape digital photograph when displayed on a 2560 x 1600 pixel monitor, only to be disappointed at the much lower display resolution for portrait-format digicam photos? That is because computer monitor screens are not square, but are landscape-format. This is because some people (not most, not even 0.1%!) want to watch TV programs on their computer, when they already have a TV for just that! But a square monitor screen would have zero marketing kudos. What is needed is an ultra-wide but ultra-high monitor screen. I have the answer: a monitor screen in the shape of the British Red Cross, it is both ultra-high and ultra-wide, something to satisfy all users and sellers alike. [Some cynics might say its just a square monitor with all four corners missing, and wouldn't it be better if we didn't have the corners missing. Yes, but that would then be a square monitor and no manufacturer would make one].

A GRAVITATIONAL WAVE LASER - a speculation on the real identity of Quasars

I think that the particles of mass contained within a Black Hole, which can possess just mass charge and spin, must be Higgs Bosons: the conferers of mass upon all other fundamental particles. They are already within a tuned cavity - the Black Hole, which has very a high reflectivity boundary: indeed, nothing can get out. But things can get in. The perfect one-way mirror!

If the population of the energy levels of the Higgs Bosons can be inverted, then the Higgs Bosons would then lase within the Black Hole cavity. An unusual laser indeed. Perhaps one way of pumping the Higgs Bosons to higher energy levels is provided when two such Black Holes collide together. And when they collide, the junction of the two Black Holes, being now convex rather than concave, will reverse the one-way mirror effect, and an extremely energetic beam of gravitational waves will emerge from the lasing cavity at the juncture of the two merging Black Holes. This would be a Gravitational Wave Laser. Astronomers believe that quasars are in fact two colliding Black Holes. Since cosmologist seem to have no idea why quasars emit the most energetic bi-polar opposing beams in the Universe, my explanation seems as good, (or better?), that anyones'...

I can extend my theory here. I predict that astronomers or cosmologists will eventually find that quasars have not just two opposing beams, but four! Why?

Well, gravitons, the perveyor of gravitational waves, are spin-2 particles, which are quadrupole: they have four poles or lobes, two opposing which are positive in sign, and another two at right-angles to those that are opposite in sign. With the merging Black Hole emitting lasing gravitons, they are all in one Bose-Einsten Condensate form, all aligned up together. This means that 4 beams will emerge; the two they have observed, plus another two of opposing sign, which may have differing properties. That's why astronomers haven't before been seen four beams emerging from quasars. Look for other effects at right angles to the two obvious emerging beams and some other effect might be seen.

A prediction that can be tested... Astronomers: get observing...

The four beams, two from the '+' lobes and two from the orthogonal '-' lobes of the collimated stream of gravitons, could, because they are gravitational waves, have accelerating and decelerating properties. One pair of beams, from the '+' lobe, might be accelerating: they would accelerate any particle within the graviton beam (without the usual necessity of the accelerating particles possessing electrical charge). The particles being accelerated would be riding on the accelerating lasing gravitational wave like surfers. This could provide the power source for the intense beam of highly energetic extra-galactic particles which are known to be emitted by Quasars. Thus, here is a mechanism for accelerating cosmic ray particles to energies beyond the 5×¹⁹ eV GZK limit, up to the observed and enigmatic enormous energies of 3×10²² eV (and probably beyond). No one has yet provided a satisfactory explanation for these beams before, could this be one?

But the '-' lobes of the quadrapole might provide something even more interesting: they might be decelerating beams: the 'Tracktor' beams from Star Trek. If so, this would explain why these two beams have not yet been observed from Black Holes: they decelerate any particles within them!

A DOUBLING IN THE NUMBER OF JET-STREAMS ON EARTH - prediction

The facts:
The jet stream seems to snake about in huge meanders, like a river bed, but staying in the same place for a month or more (a so-called blocking high). Blocking-high events are far more numerous this and for the last two years. But they do move. The jet stream suddenly takes a short-cut, shorting out the meander. When it switches, it switches suddenly, like a micro-switch mechanism, with no intermediate positions. It thus exhibits BISTABLE behaviour. It likes to be either north of the UK, or south of the UK. When it switches position, it leaves behind a lot of small eddies, of both low and high pressures, but only shallow ones, without many isobars, and thus little wind. It's like blowing the air, then suddenly stopping. The eddies continue swirling, but are not being maintained any more by an active jet-stream, so they are just slack.

The prediction:
But because the jet-stream seems to prefer one of two positions: north or south of the UK, maybe it really wants to occupy both! To have two parallel jet streams, one north of the UK, the other south. In-between would be a counter-rotating jet-stream, like the bands on Jupiter. Thus this bistable behaviour could suddenly give rise to a bifurcation; a doubling in the number of jet-streams. That is my theory. The weather could get an awful lot worse and become a whole lot less predicatable.

Only time (50/100? years) will tell if I am right that a doubling in the number of jet-streams is set to occur.

End of speculation.

These ideas are all waiting for technology to catch up before they can be implemented. Remember, when you buy one in the shops 20 years from now, you first read about it here 20 years before.

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