Technology that's totally impossible

Many things keep us awake at night. Simon Cowell's hair is one. The implausible success of anyone who appears in Big Brother is another. But the thing that really keeps us staring into the darkness is technology. How the hell does it work? Simple gadgets like TVs and mice leave us unperturbed. But there are some things that are just beyond reasoning. 

Science-fiction writer and all-round genius Arthur C Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." On this one issue, we think he might have been wrong -- because it's quite obvious to us that some technology is magic. Or if not magic, at least utterly impossible and somehow a massive confidence trick.

We've ranked the most impossible technologies on the planet in order of their level of impossibility. If you've got all six things on this list, and haven't yet had breakfast, then as Douglas Adams said, you should consider dinner at Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe.