This is definitely filed under “Coolest News This Week”: it is apparently now theoretically possible to create ‘wormholes’ (ala Star Trek or Stargate) on Earth, and use them as point-to-point relays.
Oh Yeah!
Not Exactly…
If you read into the article, you may get highly disappointed. Let me save you from the trouble: we’re not talking about the ability for people to “teleport” or anything. It was made clear that the most practical application would be in the medical world, moving or inserting very small objects into certain places, or for computers’ calculation processes.
Yeah, But
Who cares, right? The fact that you could do something like this would, itself, be awesome, regardless of whether people could go through it or not. Let’s pretend that, as the article mentions, computer components could be “sent” through such a wormhole…
Instant Delivery
If every household had a small portal, or wormhole device, it would have endless uses. The most obvious? The destruction of traditional mail services! No longer would you have to wait 5-7 days for a letter to come from your grandma! No longer would you have to wait for “somewhere around the 15th of the month” for that electricity bill to show up! It would be instantaneous. Maybe even package delivery too, so you could get your shipment of steroids from Mexico faster…
Other Applications
Here’s some other applications I see coming from this:
Really creepy things like spy on people, easier than it is now
“Losing” something now becomes a reality if you don’t exactly know where your wormhole goes
What if you set up two wormholes in series? Throw a ball through it… would it fall? Or go infinitely throughout the loop?
Not The Space-Time Kind, But The EMF Kind
A Long Ways Away
Anything like this is a long ways away, much like quantum computing or that invisibility cloak, but it’s cool to think about anyways. But it’d be even better if it had uses like human transportation, or interstellar space travel…
posted on November 15th, 2007 at 2:47 pm by Kyle - Comments
Recently, I came across a release from Harvard University that’s titled “Engineered weathering process could mitigate global warming”. I was pretty interested, so I read on.
The Basics
I won’t get into all the details, since you can read for yourself, but it’s “simple” to understand, at least in a broad concept (I have no idea how it’s actually done). Long story short, the title is a little misleading, because this is not a way to control weather, but rather to manipulate our environment to slow/reverse global warming. How?
Burn, baby, burn.
It involves a topic that has been discusses many times: the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In this case, they claim to be able to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and permanently transfer it to the ocean (a pool of water in a lab?), by some complicated process. Apparently, this happens naturally, and they are only replicating this process on a faster time-table.
The Benefits
The benefits of such a process, were it to be implemented, should be pretty obvious. A slowdown of global warming (”if it exists!”), or even a reversal, would be highly lauded around the world… especially by greedy corporations, and China, who have a large footprint, yet don’t care to do anything about it unless forced.
Hello, Exxon.
The Negatives
In other research projects / thought-experiments on such processes, there have been a few “problems” with such a process [Note: I won’t link to any specific one, but if you Google it, you’ll find many valid results]. The biggest one? It should be the most obvious… the effect on oceanic life.
It’s common knowledge that fish take oxygen out of the water to breathe, right? What happens when you add an over-abundance of CO2 to the same water? Many scientists claim you’ll end up hurting, if not killing, many fish and other ocean-based creatures, as well as making shrimp questionable to eat (because of poisoning).
The Answer?
I’m not sure there really is an answer to this, as to whether or not humanity should inflict it’s problems on other life-forms of the same planet, but I do know this: out of global warming “control” / “reversal”, it’s quite possible that we will see complete weather control, ala “Weather” in Frank Herbert’s Dune books.
Not really what I had in mind…
Why? If you can control the amount of CO2 in the air, it then follows that you can directly control the temperature. (If you didn’t follow that: global warming is occurring because we are trapping excess heat within our atmosphere due to gases. If you remove those gases, less heat is trapped.) This, at least to me, would seem to be the first step in weather control.
Now if only we could figure out how to make hurricanes disappear…
posted on November 12th, 2007 at 6:44 am by Kyle - Comments
There’s only a few, shall we say, minor problems with getting this to work, aside from those mentioned in the article:
Satellite Position
Transfer Mechanism
Ownership
Defensibility
Satellite Position
Modern times have made the Earth’s rotation as common knowledge, and yet something like this appears. Will the satellite be in a stationary orbit, so as to have contact with the Sun at all times? If so, how do you collect something that is always moving in relation to you? Or will the satellite be orbiting at the same speed as Earth (having a relative velocity of zero)? If so, where is this energy beamed to?
Not too close, eh?
One could imagine that, for practical and efficiency reasons, the satellite would remain in a stationary orbit so it would have contact with the Sun at all times (unless it was far enough away that Earth’s shadow was negligible… but we’ll pretend that’s impossible). How would the energy be collected?
Transfer Mechanism
Since we’re assuming the satellite will remain in a stationary orbit, the transfer mechanism to Earth would be very complicated. The most sensible method (since we can’t yet transfer power via radio waves) is a high intensity beam of energy/light, or a laser. That’s all well and good, but the Earth is rotating below the satellite…
Some solutions:
a subset of satellites that bounces the laser around the Earth and always targets one specific location
a network of something akin to a wireframe, on which the collection mechanism can “slide” around the Earth to receive the transfer
a huge line of receivers that encircles the Earth, always having contact from the satellite’s laser at one point on this line
As you can see, there is no easy answer.
Energy says “Beam me down, Scotty!”
Ownership
Who would own this satellite? The U.S. Government is the one with funding interest at the moment, but what about it’s reality? Do the American energy companies, who already charge exorbitant amounts of money, add this to their energy arsenal? Is it owned by the United Nations, in an effort to be a “global society” and transfer the power around the world? Does it become temporarily “owned” by the country to which it is beaming energy at the moment?
Short of having one of these energy grabbers for each country that wants one (and maybe for each energy company), there will be huge debate, and possible fighting, over an item such as this.
Defensibility
How do you defend a giant satellite that you, as a country or corporation, may come to depend on for energy? Attack rockets and lasers-that-don’t-yet-exist to the satellite, with an auto-targeting computer? What about meteors destroying something that costs so much? What happens when, say, a Chinese satellite is unknowingly armed with missiles comes close… and attacks? Solar flares? The slight “wobble” of Earth? Ground-based attacks? Spaceships? Debris?
Me R SpaseCatz. Me eet SpaseMise!
My Point
My whole point is this: it sounds like a good idea, and is really cool to think about… but there is no way this can be designed and built without spending alot of money, and causing worldwide problems on many levels.
Maybe you should work on global warming first…
posted on October 13th, 2007 at 11:08 am by Kyle - Comments
Let me see if I understand this. A guy, named Itzhak Bars, thinks there are 2 “dimensions” of time, which would result in having to add another dimension of space to accommodate some weird equations only a few people in the world are aware of (that’s assuming that your general college physics class sticks to the whole 3-dimensional + gravity thing).
Wow. You’re a genius. Thanks for the observation Dr. Talksalot.
Didn’t Einstein say this years ago?
I’m not sure, but that name sounds Russian. I hear that in Russia they don’t have very good public access to books, outside of school, in a public library sense. Or at least they didn’t, maybe they do now. Anyways, that would explain a lot. Come, follow me backwards through time…
Books
Hasn’t humanity learned yet? The things we typically dream and create, on a science fiction/fantasy level, are more or less based on a present or future reality. I don’t know why, but that’s what happens. Asimov imagined little robots in human veins, Orwell created the modern day security system, Wells typified a robot extistence in the future, and others envisioned traveling to the moon and beyond. Any of those sound familiar? Let’s take a look at space-time throughout literature, and why this scientist guy is a little slow.
“Lord of the Rings” [approx. 1938]
Have you heard of these books? They’re not very popular, and semi-unknown, but they’re written by a guy named J.R.R. Tolkien a very long time ago. Before computers were even imagined. There are some characters in these books, called “elves”, and one of their main characteristics are their long life, which in fact is an immortal life. If you read these books closely, and maybe some of the associated ones that are even more unknown (like “The Rillanon” for example), you find that the elves do not believe in space-time as we know it… but rather that time is more akin to a circle. Additionally, the wizard “Gandalf” is very obviously seen playing with space-time when he magically reappears from being dead/falling-through-a-never-ending-hole-with-a-giant-demon-monster.
“WoW” is a blatant theft from Tolkien. Wow.
“Ender’s Game” [1985]
By Orson Scott Card, this is another book that is slightly underground. Few have heard of it, even fewer have read it. The main gist of the story is that there’s aliens attacking humanity, and we fight back via some pre-teens who have a higher IQ than anyone in the world. Towards the end of the book, the main character (”Ender”) communicates with the enemy of future-past through his dreams… and in doing so is not only communicating across thousands of light-years, but also time.
“Dune” [1965] (and the rest of the series)
Frank Herbert. A man with a vision that no-one reads. What a shame. Long story short (and without getting into many complicated details like unpronounceable character names), across many many books one of the main characters from the first turns himself into a god via some sand-based lifeforms. He then marries his sister. Odd things continue down this line until he becomes immortal. Eventually he dies. And then is reborn / goes into the past to change things. That’s really the best I can do in a few sentences.
Edit: Apparently I need to re-read Dune, “go back in time” doesn’t apply here. But he does live a really really long time. And the books are still awesome.
Whowhatnow?
I really don’t think I can make this any clearer without listing every popular and groundbreaking scifi/fantasy novel ever written: those of use of at least average intelligence have considered the possibility of space-time being non-linear… Hell, even Star Trek touched on it at least once a season. The scifi/fantasy community will be happy to know that you finally are able to prove what many of us have already believed in, but your ideas and concepts are by no means original. Even the Bible, “written” at some point 2000 years ago, has a space-time issue.
Nerds: “You depend on us … don’t fuck with us.”
I’m not trying to be harsh or mean, but instead I’m realistic. But when you discover how to travel through time or how to visualize/interact with the 4th dimension (quantum physics, anyone?), I will be truly excited.
And I bet many other nerds, geeks, dorks, and non-norms will be too.
posted on October 13th, 2007 at 10:36 am by Kyle - Comments
Granted, they’re a long way from being even remotely useful, let alone human sized, but it still presents an interesting question…
How will you control a population (and by association, the military) that has access to invisibility? How do you prevent rampant bank robberies by invisible people? How do you fight an enemy that is invisible? How does a cop pull over your car if it suddenly disappears?
“Big Brother”? More like “Worthless Brother”.
This is bordering on the “cloaking” used in Star Trek (on a large scale), and the invisibility cloak seen in Harry Potter (on a personal scale). On one hand, the cloaking is very useful and very much a defense mechanism (i.e. Star Trek), but it can also be used for mischief and cause immense problems (aka Harry Potter… depending on how you view his activities, of course).
There’s only two real ways this can play out in the future, and still have a functioning non-apocalyptic world:
Government Control
A Change in Defense Architecture
Government Control
The microwave, satellite communication, cell phones, the Internet, and many many other devices have all started as devices created, controlled, and kept confidential by the U.S. Government / Military. However, they were eventually made public and declassified for general use… a good thing. But what if the U.S. Government wants to treat this similar to, say, rocket launchers and outlaw them for public use? Realistically, it would be an exercise in failure, because the moment Special Agent Johnson brings one home to show his kids… someone’s going to find it and replicate it. And this doesn’t even take in to consideration other countries that may have access to, or license, the engineering plans (Russia, China, England, etc.)
A Change in Defense Architecture
You’ve heard about how England has spent immense amounts of money creating and monitoring a large CCTV network, becoming the “most watched” country in the world? Well, here’s a newsflash: those fancy cameras become pretty worthless once portable invisibility is possible. The only way cameras could still be useful, from a security standpoint, is to have a filter on them to monitor things other than the visible spectrum: infrared (for body heat), sonar-ish (brain waves), or some other biometric configuration.
So… is it worth it to develop an “invisibility cloak”? Are you kidding? Definitely! But it has the potential to cause many many problems, especially if there’s an attempt to control it’s usage (the drug situation, anyone?).
It goes over your clothes… duh.
A piece of business advice: if you’re in the security / monitoring / CCTV area, start developing systems that are more dependent on things other than the visible spectrum. Maybe those giant XRay scanners you see in movies with The Governator. Or “breach detection” systems of epic proportions you see in movies like Star Wars or Star Trek.
Maybe celebrities should start hiring people to protect them from invisible things. Tom Cruise already has.
posted on October 4th, 2007 at 2:07 pm by Kyle - Comments
Apparently human beings can now control the physical structure of water, without having to worry about pesky things like gravity, walls, or any sort of “normal” restriction of a liquid.
Pretty cool, I think. Granted, it’s limited to a minuscule length and width, and surface tension wasn’t even mentioned. But think of the implications…
Having a problem designing and building an earthquake-proof bridge?
Are you 9 years old, and want to build a bridge to your neighbor’s bedroom window?
In the military, trying to get troops across a moat, lake, or other body of water?
This has major implications. Imagine if instead of spending years and millions of dollars building highways, the government instead used the already-existing network of electricity to stabilize a small amount of water to server as a road? Or, imagine small islands in the Caribbean… the water already exists, electrify a small portion!
However, this may not be limited to “just” water. If water has this property, why not sand? Or dirt? Or even air? One of the things that are rehashed in science fiction and fantasy novels/movies/comics/games the world over is control over the elements… maybe there’s a grain of truth in that.
Are we that much closer to becoming gods? Awesome.
posted on September 30th, 2007 at 8:49 am by Kyle - Comments
