I've witnessed ballistic missiles coming

down;

that make me think that OK what are

the things that I would like to change.

What are the things that they would like to impact them at the

end of the day. I think we'd need to be responsible

for using any technology

in a positive fashion.

If there's anyone out there that could steer the

thrust of technology away

from our own demise

and toward the betterment of humanity

this could be the guy.

My name is Ali Hajimiri.

I'm an educator

and an engineer

and an inventor.

Since a very young age I was really curious to find out how things

work. Any kind of toy I had a

you know within a couple of days

it was ripped apart

and open

and torn into pieces.

And you know my parents were not a huge fan

of that throughout the process.

I tried to then build things myself.

At some point I tried to make a laser when I was

I think like 10 or 11

and I didn't succeed.

But Hajimiri made up for that failure

in his adult life.

Today he holds more than 90 issued

patents and along

with his tenure at Caltech carries a reputation

of making ideas that would otherwise sound

like science fiction a reality.

Things that I work on

are some of the inventions

if you will, that I've been involved

in, they span a large gamut lensless

cameras lensless projectors

and 3-D cameras,

radar on a chip,

self-heating circuits hand-held

diagnostic devices wireless power transfer

space based solar power.

They may appear kind of seemingly unrelated

to each other but they all rely on

this underlying concept

of a phase arrays.

The phase arrays is basically

a large number of small

elements working together.

Hajimiri's inspiration for phased array technology

comes from an unlikely place-

ants.

As a child took a big jar of

glass jar and I

was digging through an ant ant hill,

and then I took a whole bunch

of ants and just dumped them in that jar.

And within a couple of days they started

building the whole nest.

It was really amazing because it showed

how you can achieve very complex

things through interactions

of simple units.

The phased arrays is basically the army

of ants.

Now instead of ants carrying dirt. imagine

millions of tiny signals working

in concert to send energy wirelessly.

This array system is the basis

for Hajimiri's latest

and most ambitious project-

collecting solar power in outer space

and beaming it down to earth.

We are in the wireless power transfer laboratory

and we are looking at

is set up for demonstration

and testing of have wireless

power transfer.

Here you have a small

version of what would be collecting

power. We are basically creating

a beam and focusing of the energy

in this location,

and what you can see is that the energy is

being transferred wirelessly

and this would be the unit building block

making the space-based

generator power station.

This is an extremely important thing because

first of all it gives access globally

to energy and power.

It doesn't introduce any greenhouse

gases or any of that sort.

In the process of making up the energy.

But the idea of sending power to Earth

from space has some pretty high

profile detractors.

Space Solar Power.

OK. The stupidest thing ever.

Skeptics like Elon Musk believe

that after multiple power conversions

and the cost of launches

and the sheer scale of such a project

makes it far too expensive

and inefficient forever trapping it within

the confines of science fiction.

And if anybody

should think, should like space solar it should be me.

All right? I've got to go to rocket company

and a solar company.

But this is of little concern to a man

who has made his living defying conventional

wisdom.

He believes that the greatest innovations

come from an active imagination.

A lot of us are inspired by science

fiction I think science fiction is

essential to the way of thinking about

making useful

and interesting things.

You start with a concept that

doesn't exist that could have been articulated

in science fiction

and you trying to see what can you

do about that.

Can you do it in its entirety.

Can you do a variation of that

and that process that's part of the creative process

right. I mean engineering

is that discipline of creativity.

The key question is that how

can you make it in such a way that it's

feasible

and also economical

and to do that you have to take

a lot of different kinds of technologies

and bring them together.

Like an army of ants all

working together at the unlikely

intersection of science fiction

and reality.

You

know nothing is done in isolation.

No one person really.

And today I think ever was doing

things by themselves. You know

if you want to go fast

go alone if you want to go far take your