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May 5, 2014

An Encounter with a Famous Physicist

Posted by in categories: disruptive technology, innovation, particle physics, physics, science, space, space travel

In April 2012 I met Lisa Randall while book signing at the National Space Symposium, held every April at the Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs, Colorado. She is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University.

She autograph my copy of her book “Warped Passages” and I showed her the proof copy of my book “An Introduction to Gravity Modification, 2nd Edition” with the g=tau.c^2 massless formula for gravitational acceleration, solving the gravity modification physics.

More in the video …

May 3, 2014

White Swan’s Pandora Versus Cassandra Predictions! By Mr. Andres Agostini

Posted by in categories: big data, biological, complex systems, computing, economics, education, ethics, existential risks, finance, futurism

White Swan’s Pandora Versus Cassandra Predictions! By Mr. Andres Agostini at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

WHITE

Cassandra: What is going to happen in the World as per the Euro-Asian superpower?

Pandora: First, we have Cold War II and a Preconditions of a Global War of Trade and Commerce in place. Second: Let us hope that switches to ascertain M.A.D. are never turned on.

Continue reading “White Swan's Pandora Versus Cassandra Predictions! By Mr. Andres Agostini” »

May 2, 2014

This Is What A Holographic iPhone Might Look Like

Posted by in category: mobile phones

Fast Company

Lasers. Infrared sensors. Parabolic mirror assemblies. These are the technologies that could allow iPhones of the future to project holograms from 3-D screens, according to a new Apple patent application.

Now, whether or not Apple will actually make such a device, no one knows. It’s perfectly common for the company to patent technologies that don’t make their way into finished products.

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May 1, 2014

Fossil Signal from the Earliest Moments of the Universe Reveals New Unknowns

Posted by in category: astronomy

The Daily Galaxy
South-pole-telescope-1600
“There have been hints for a while now that maybe something else is going on,” says Stanford’s Kavli Foundation Deputy Director John Carlstrom, who leads two other experiments that study the universe’s first light. “Maybe we need to… allow some new physics in there. Maybe there are more neutrinos. Maybe they’re more massive than we thought. Or maybe it’s something none of us have thought of yet.”

Last month, scientists announced the first hard evidence for cosmic inflation, the process by which the infant universe swelled from microscopic to cosmic size in an instant. This almost unimaginably fast expansion was first theorized more than three decades ago, yet only now has “smoking gun” proof emerged when the world was stunned by announcement that a telescope at the South Pole (image above) had detected a cosmic fossil from the earliest moments of creation.

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May 1, 2014

Flowing salt water over graphene generates electricity

Posted by in categories: energy, nanotechnology

Yogi Patel - ArsTechnica

Hydroelectricity is one of the oldest techniques for generating electrical power, with over 150 countries using it as a source for renewable energy. Hydroelectric generators only work efficiently at large scales, though—scales large enough to interrupt river flow and possibly harm local ecosystems. And getting this sort of generation down to where it can power small devices isn’t realistic.

In recent years, scientists have investigated generating electrical power using nano-structures. In particular, they have looked at generating electricity when ionic fluids—a liquid with charged ions in it—are pushed through a system with a pressure gradient. However, the ability to harvest the generated electricity has been limited because it requires a pressure gradient to drive ionic fluid through a small tube. But scientists have now found that dragging small droplets of salt water on strips of graphene generates electricity without the need for pressure gradients.

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May 1, 2014

Nanoparticles found to violate second law of thermodynamics

Posted by in category: particle physics

— Gizmag

A rendering of a nanoparticle trapped in a laser and in thermal non-equilibrium (Image: Iñ...

It may be a little late for April Fool’s, but some skepticism is nonetheless warranted when reading that researchers have shown nanoparticles to disobey a fundamental law of physics which dictates the flow of entropy and heat in, it was believed, any situation. Specifically, researchers from three universities theoretically proposed then demonstrated that a nanoparticle in a state of thermal non-equilibrium does not always behave as larger particles might under the same conditions, with implications for various fields of research.

The second law of thermodynamics is the one that makes perpetual motion machines impossible. It states that the entropy – the measure for the disorder of a system – of any isolated system cannot decrease spontaneously, with the system evolving towards the state of maximum entropy (favoring disorder). The team has shown that a nanoparticle trapped with laser light temporarily violates this law. This seeming violation of universal law is transient, something that the researchers first derived as a mathematical model of fluctuations expected at the nanoscale.

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Apr 30, 2014

The Future-Propulsion Community

Posted by in categories: business, defense, engineering, innovation, physics, science, space, space travel

The future propulsion community are those who believe in or are actively researching rocketry, gravity modification & interstellar propulsion engineering & physics.

In this video I discuss the 3 groups within the future propulsion community. These groups are the Nay Sayers — they don’t believe that it is in the near future, Advanced Rocket — that only rockets can do this, & New Physics — that a new physics will solve this soon.

I also discuss briefly the European/French and Chinese interest in my work.

Apr 29, 2014

Bionic Athletes With Exoskeletons, Robotic Limbs, and Brain-Control Devices to Compete in 2016 Cybathlon

Posted by in categories: bionic, cyborgs, engineering, exoskeleton, transhumanism

Jason Dorrier — Singularity Hub

While traditional sports only grudgingly accept technological augmentation, the 2016 Cybathlon, a kind of hybrid between the XPRIZE and Olympics, embraces it with both robotic arms. Disabled competitors (or pilots) will compete using assistance devices like powered exoskeletons, robotic prostheses, and brain-control interfaces.

We’ve chronicled the continuous evolution of such technologies over the years, but they’re still largely out of reach for most folks.

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Apr 29, 2014

How Brazil Has Leapt Ahead Of The U.S. With An Internet Bill Of Rights

Posted by in categories: internet, law, privacy

Neal Ungerleider — Fast Company


Brazil is one of the biggest foreign markets around for Facebook and Google–and it’s one of the places where the NSA loves to snoop on the President’s email accounts. It’s also a place where the Internet landscape is diverging from the United States in a way that benefits ordinary digital citizens: On April 21, Brazil’s congress passed a legally binding “Internet Bill of Rights.”

The Brazilian Internet Bill of Rights, called the Marco Civil and signed by president Dilma Rousseff in Sao Paulo, guarantees net neutrality, regulates government surveillance on the Internet, and places limits on data companies can collect from Brazilian customers. In addition, Internet service providers won’t be held liable for content published by their customers and will be legally required to remove offensive material via court order. The legislation’s signing took place at a global Internet governance conference, NETMundial, in front of executives from Google and several other firms.

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Apr 29, 2014

Superintelligent AI Could Wipe Out Humanity, If We’re Not Ready for It

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Jordan Pearson — Motherboard

Superintelligent AI Could Wipe Out Humanity, If We're Not Ready for It
Impending technological change tends to elicit a Janus-faced reaction in people: part awe, part creeping sense of anxiety and terror. During the Industrial Revolution, Henry Ford called it the “the terror of the machine.” Today, it’s the looming advancements in artificial intelligence that promise to create programs with superhuman intelligence—the infamous singularity—that are starting to weigh on the public consciousness, as blockbuster ‘netsploitation flick Transcendence illustrates.

There’s a danger that sci-fi pulp like Transcendence is watering down the real risks of artificial intelligence in public discourse. But these threats are being taken very seriously by researchers who are studying the existential threat of AI on the human race.

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