Hotpockets, microwave popcorn, and Easy Mac all made possible thanks to Mr. Percy Spencer, inventor of the microwave oven.

Spencer invented the first prototype for the microwave oven after visiting a lab where magnetrons were being tested. While standing close to the magnetrons he noticed a candy bar in his pocket was melting. He wasn’t the first to notice this phenomenon, but he was the first to dig deeper. By 1947 he had the first commercial microwave oven, but it wasn’t anything close to the machine you have sitting in your kitchen. This microwave stood 5 ½ feet tall, weighed over 750 pounds and cost an average of $5,000 each!

"Pre-heating? Hah! I think I'll just SkipIt"

It took years of tweaks and changes to get the microwave oven down to a manageable size and price for the average consumer, but by 1975 microwave oven sales surpassed that of gas ranges, and the world was hooked. So next time you stick something in the microwave for a quick heat up, remember that skipping genius Percy Spencer the microwave oven inventor who made that hot pocket possible.

Beam me up Higgs! Well it isn’t quite Star Trek status yet, but scientists have discovered the Higgs Boson Particle could be the link to actual time travel!  Skipping time would be the ultimate skip, so how close are we to actually accomplishing a trip through a beam of light?

The discovery of Higgs was the first step, the next is figuring out what can be done. “ If I could manipulate a Higgs field, that would be a first step in making a transporter, but the only way I know of to manipulate the Higgs field is to heat the whole thing up to such an incredible temperature that it’s not surprising you’d disappear anyway,” says Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss. So the question then isn’t how do we use Higgs to disappear, but more how would it be utilized to reappear somewhere else?

These questions may be answered in time as more is discovered about the Higgs Field. Until we know more about Higgs we will still tip our hat to the ultimate time skipper!