Shields at 100%

In science fictional spacecraft the idea of some sort or shield or deflector countering the effect of debris and other hazards in space is common. The military has spent a whole whack of money developing some sort of charged plating to repel enemy fire and has been looking to go even further with active shielding and even invisibility cloaking. Now the boffins at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), the Universities of York and Strathclyde, and IST Lisbon have come up with a cheap and simple method to protect our astronauts from the Solar wind and it's debilitating radiation. I will be honest, I'm not a physics wiz by any means, but this seems such a simple solution. I am constantly amazed about the progress being made to make real much of what we have seen in Star Trek and expect big things in the future. Consider, now we have a handle on deflector shields, holodecks, cloaking and even warp drive. Yes, the research into 'zero point' physics has made the actuality of faster-than-light travel a distinct possibility. When Stephen Hawking visited the Star Trek set some years ago, he remarked, as he passed the warp drive set, 'we're working on that'. He wasn't kidding.The stars await!