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Another cool airship just caught my attention, this one a concept vehicle in the form of a hotel in the sky. It looks a bit like how I imagined the flying manta cloud creatures from the Black Company books by Glen Cook.
Rant warning.
Craig Venter is a geneticist who has been working on engineering new organisms and recently spoke at TED. He made news (as every news story you see about him over the past couple days is happy to point out) in 2001 for sequencing his own genome. His current project is in creating a single-celled organism that eats CO2 as fuel. This notion of creating an artificial life form is very hot these days. I’ve seen a number of estimates that say within 3-5 years we will have our first artificial life form. Craig says 1-2 years.
He makes a claim that is fairly Earth-shattering:
“We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy. We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock.”
If he is right, this could mean the end of the peak oil problem. So what about ethical concerns? Like all researchers in this area, he takes the good-human worldview:
“Fortunately, there’s not that many people on this planet wanting to do harm with these tools. Very few biological agents that we work with … could be weaponized. But it is an important issue. Every new technology has the ability to be abused.” [source]
I am, admittedly, cynical. I personally believe that if a technology can be weaponized, not only will it be, but the government is probably already funding it. And also, let’s be honest, it only takes one person wanting to do harm with this technology to be successful for it to be a serious problem. He also points out that only two countries had programs for creating designer viruses and those are supposedly discontinued (the US and the former Soviet Union). Discontinued? Riiight.
Venter also said he performed a large bioethical study involving many religious groups and no one found anything in their “law books” to prohibit the creation of artificial life forms. I take a very dim view of so-called bioethicists and anyone referring to bioethics with authority. They are often-times just so much smoke in the wind, and who are they to say something is ethical or not? I deny their authority. I have never heard the output of any bioethical unit (the drones calling themselves bioethicists) that has struck me as particularly useful or unbiased. They are always reported in the media as “So-and-so, an expert in bioethics, says it’s ok to do X.” Umm, no. I think what I find lacking is the attention by bioethicists to the catastrophic cost of abuse. If you think I’m over-reacting, I have two words for you: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As cynical as I am, I still can’t believe humans have stockpiled as many nuclear weapons as we have. It is madness.
I also won’t deny that this stuff is seriously cool. One way or another, it will change the world.
If there ever is a robot uprising, I fear I may be at ground zero. In a case where reality mirrors art (kinda sorta), Carnegie Mellon researchers (including Seth Goldstein) are working on a swarm of small robots held together by magnetic fields. This will allow them to take on just about any shape. Of course, this is still a long ways off. What Seth et al are currently working on is a control strategy for said microbots. This touches on one of the most fascinating aspects of computer science to me: emergent behavior. Imagine designing an algorithm that will allow a swarm of small robots to do (collectively) a complex task with each robot only obeying simple rules. Good times!
But I would be remiss in my duties if I failed to point out the amusing end-of-the-world aspects of this particular bit o’ research. Seth says:
“I’ll be done when we produce something that can pass a Turing test for appearance. You won’t know if you’re shaking hands with me or a claytronics copy of me.”
Seth, I think we’ll all be done when that day comes. Build a thousand of these claytronic cylons and they will overthrow the world’s most powerful military government (aka USA) in a few short hours. Once the danger has been identified, the following dialogue might ensure at the White House:
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says, out of breath, “Madame President, what are your orders?”
“Declare immunity to the Homo claytronae and stand down all forces.”
“Wha-?”
The Secretary of State steps forward, face rippling, “You heard her. Now on your knees, meatsack.”
Ahh. A boy can dream.
Just came across this very amusing video via the Bad Astronomer. The Large Hadron Collider is one of those things that could produce some amazing science, but has also caused a number of scientists to express worries that it might destroy the planet. Cool, huh? Most scientists consider that to be doomsaying, and that the LHC will be benign while yielding amazing results. The video ignores any mention of dangers at the LHC (it is, after all, a propaganda piece), but I found it very fun to listen to it for what is not said.
Do I actually think the LHC poses a threat to human life? I have no idea, since I’m not a particle physicist, but my suspicion is that we’ll still be here after it fires up. Imagining the end of the world is one of my favorite mental hobbies, though, so one can always hope.
So yesterday was the big race for the DARPA Urban Challenge. The goal is to research technologies that will lead to autonomous battlefield robots that can deliver supplies while navigating traffic. The joint Carnegie Mellon and General Motors team won, completing the race with no major traffic infractions. This strikes me as one of those technologies that in 20 years no one will realize had military origins. We’ll all happily get in our inexpensive robotic taxis running on electricity.
Well, this ain’t no Federation baby. Unlike the world of Star Trek, where money isn’t much of an issue for your average Star Fleet officer, money is an issue in our world. And soon to be off our world, as well. In one of those bizarre, possibly pointless moves, some scientists have created a currency fit for space. Paper bills and metal coins just won’t work. If a metal coin develops a jagged edge, that could be deadly in space. Plus, ever try counting dimes in a spacesuit while the Galactic Burger King drive-thru guy looks at you impatiently? Never again, says I!
The Solution
Rather than using paper, which isn’t durable, or metal, which isn’t safe, or credit cards, which have magnetic strips that may interfere with certain electronics (or be destroyed by the solar wind), scientists have settled on using polytetrafluoroethylene, aka teflon. This currency was developed by a group funded by Travelex, a currency exchange firm. The name is a bit grandiose and nauseating at the same time: QUIDs. Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination. A single QUID will be worth about $12.50 US (£6.25, €8.68). So despite being a bit of a pun, it’s also just plain overstretching. Intergalactic? Not unless we develop FTL (faster than light) drives sometime this eon.
Besides being a load of hype, there could be an actual application for this currency. If Virgin Galactic gets off the ground (or one of the other contenders), and space tourism becomes a real thing, these chips will come in handy. And I propose we nickname them chips. How sci-fi that would be.
Apparently I’m the last one to hear about this since I was the 3166th Digg, but Andy Woerner and a group of friends have built a working X-wing fighter powered by solid-fuel rocket engines. This bad boy is 21 feet long and complete with a model R2D2. It was set to launch yesterday. The results were about what you’d expect. I don’t think R2 managed to eject though, poor little droid.
Space.com: “Spaceport America: First Looks at a New Space Terminal”
So awesome. I’ve been very skeptical of the prospects for this most delicate of industries: space tourism. It seems like it’s probably just one catastrophe away from being set back 20 years or more. Seeing the artist’s rendition (below) of Spaceport America sets afire something in me that has lain dormant since my childhood: hope. Hope that I may go into space one day. Hope that there will be a colony of people living on the moon, in a space station, on an asteroid, on Mars. Is it a sign of my nerdiness that I have to hold back tears?
I love reading an innocuously titled science piece and then coming across an absolute gem like this:
“Australian and French scientists have made another breakthrough in the technology that will drive next generation computers and teleportation.”
Teleportation?
Quantum teleportation as it turns out. Which is much different from the conventional teleportation featured in The Fly or the transporter from Star Trek. Quantum teleportation deals with transmitting the state information of a qubit from one location to another, which I don’t even pretend to understand. So was this just sensationalism on the part of the University of Queensland? Or do I just get my hopes up when I see sci-fi brought to life?
No seriously. Well, progress sort of. Theoretical progress, at any rate, and still hinging on one monster of a caveat: that spacetime is curved appropriately.
A group of researchers led by Amos Ori at the Technion in Israel has developed a theoretical model that overcomes a major hurdle in the current time travel theory. First of all, time travel requires the existence of closed timelike curves (CTC, aka closed timelike loops). In relativity theory, every particle has a worldline that describes its position in space and time throughout its existence. If the particle is in orbit around a mass of very high density that is greatly curving spacetime, it is possible that the worldline of this particle curves back on itself not only in space, but in time. The major hurdle in current theory is that for a time machine to exist, it would have to have negative density (another interesting topic, but I’ll have to save it for some other time). So according to Ori’s new theory, all that is needed is for gravity to have already begun curving spacetime appropriately and then for us to create “a vacuum space that contains a region field with standard positive density material.”
Sometimes I just get this depressing feeling that some research team somewhere is going to finally do us all in. A while back, it was theorized that the Large Hadron Collider could possibly be capable of creating mini black holes. Seriously, one day they are going to do something crazy at the LHC and Bill Murray is going to keep waking up in a little town in Pennsylvania on the same day until Andy MacDowell finally falls in love with him. I’m exaggerating (only) slightly.
So anyhow, another harbinger of doom is the recent progress in wet artificial life. I tend to think of artificial life as being computational in origin, since I’m constantly exposed to AI at school. WAL, as the name suggests, is not computational, but biological. It seems to me that once people are able to create life from scratch and begin to actually get a grasp on how it works, we’re in for trouble. Here is a nice little encouraging quote from Mark Bedau, COO of ProtoLife in Venice.
“It’s going to be a big deal and everybody’s going to know about it. We’re talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict.”
Indeed.
ScienceDaily is reporting that some scientists have managed to erase some long-term memories of tastes from rats. These were the oldest memories ever removed purposely. The researchers also discovered that the brain actively maintains memories and failure to do so results in memory loss. There is still a lot of work to be done before this translates into a viable therapy of any sort. With the recent media hype about traumatic-memory-erasing drugs as treatment for victims of PTSD, this will no doubt find a use in therapy. Why be shackled with the memory of Uncle Herb molesting you? Just zap it.
Well the Department of Mysteries at St. Andrews College has done it again. Last September they described a way to make objects invisible. Now they have found a way to make objects levitate. It doesn’t seem like we’ll be seeing levitating cars any time soon, but it does look like this may be the sort of revolutionary discovery that will take computing, robotics and manufacturing to the next level.
