130 reporting by Jillian Mock, Charlie Wood, and Eleanor Cummins / illustrations by Rami Niemi
I WISH SOMEONE
WOULD INVENT...
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And you can always jump ahead: Spend 100 years aboard the
International Space Station, where time passes ever so slightlyslower than on the blue planet, and when you return home, Earth will be
one second ahead of the ISS. Slipping back is more diffi cult. You’d have to
create a warp in spacetime by bringing two ends of a wormhole together,
says John Friedman, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin at Milwau-
kee. Natural ones might exist, but they’d be too small even for an electron to
pass through. Stabilizing a human-size loop would require “exotic matter”
with wonky properties such as falling upward, which is probably impossible.
An electric car that recharges itself
JOSEPH COMPTON VIA FACEBOOK
Current electric vehicles bypass the gas station, but
drivers must wait hours for a charge. A self- reviving
ride is ideal, but there are reasons no one currently
sells them. Photovoltaic cells are heavy, and they
capture new energy inefficiently. In 2017, Iowa
State University students built the first four-
passenger SUV with a solar- paneled roof, but its
maximum speed on sunlight alone hit only 40 miles
per hour. Mechanical engineer and faculty advisor
Emmanuel Agba says the technology to make
lighter cars exists, but we’d likely need government
incentives to spur mass production.Security without the line
JOE BROWN IN THE OFFICE
Forget turbulence. For nearly half of Americans,
check-in and security is the worst part of flying.
Fortunately, a lineless experience is possible, says
Brian Jenkins, a counterterrorism expert at the
RAND Corporation, a global-policy think tank. The
basic technology already exists: In 2018, the Los
Angeles metro employed human-operated remote
scanners to identify weapons from 30 feet away.
But getting the TSA on board is harder because
any change must appear in all airports, which could
take 20 years. By then, Jenkins says, computers
will ID and scan you as you go straight to your gate.A time machine
STEPHEN DIAMOND VIA FACEBOOK