joshbyard:

Cold Fusion Device May Have Been Created

Against all probability, a device that purports to use cold fusion to generate vast amounts of power has been verified by a panel of independent scientists. The research paper, which hasn’t yet undergone peer review, seems to confirm both the existence of cold fusion, and its potency: The cold fusion device being tested has roughly 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the power density of gasoline.

Even allowing for a massively conservative margin of error, the scientists say that the cold fusion device they tested is 10 times more powerful than gasoline — which is currently the best fuel readily available to mankind.

The device being tested, called by Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat for short), was created by Andrea Rossi. Rossi has been claiming for the past two years that he had finally cracked cold fusion, but much to the chagrin of the scientific community he hasn’t allowed anyone to independently analyze the device — until now.

While it sounds like the scientists had a fairly free rein while testing the E-Cat, we should stress that they still don’t know exactly what’s going on inside the sealed steel cylinder reactor. Still, the seven scientists, all from good European universities, obviously felt confident enough with their findings to publish the research paper.

(via Cold fusion reactor independently verified, has 10,000 times the energy density of gas | ExtremeTech)

wildcat2030:

Nanotechnology and religion: a complex relationship

There is much evidence that public views on nanotechnology will be shaped by religious beliefs

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In the science fiction short story Halo, a panel of Muslim scholars discuss a strip of bacon made by a “molecular assembler”, a device capable of producing the meat directly from individual atoms, instead of slicing it from an animal. All meat from a pig is forbidden according to Islam’s halal laws. Synthetic bacon is identical to the real one, but it has never been part of a living pig. Is it still forbidden?

“The story may look like a joke, but it shows how the capacity of nanotechnology to manipulate atoms may change the material world in such a way to raise religious questions,” says Chris Toumey, a cultural anthropologist at the University of South Carolina, who has studied in depth the relation between nanotechnology and faith.

It is mostly secular voices who have expressed their thoughts and concerns on nanotechnology until now, but there is a lot of evidence that public views on it will be shaped by religious beliefs. For example, a 2009 survey found that strength of religious beliefs in the US is negatively related to support for funding of nanotechnology. A study of the same year found that the more religious a country is, the less it tends to find nanotechnology morally acceptable.

Until now, religions have been remarkably silent on nanotechnology, Toumey points out. Nothing compared to the harsh bioethical controversies about in vitro fertilisation in the Catholic world, for example. “Nanotechnology is a heterogeneous body of sciences and technologies: few faith communities have enough universities or journals to examine such a complicated issue,” says Toumey. “Their attention may be attracted if some dramatic event happens: either positive, something like a cure for a cancer, or negative, like an environmental disaster.” The scarcity of official documents makes it difficult to guess religious views, but it is an opportunity for scientists to get prepared in advance.

go read..

(via Nanotechnology and religion: a complex relationship | Science | guardian.co.uk)

joshbyard:

Social Network Analysis of The Iliad and The Odyssey Indicates that They Were Likely Based on Real Events

Today, P J Miranda at the Federal Technological University of Paraná in Brazil and a couple of pals study the social network between characters in Homer’s ancient Greek poem, the Odyssey.

Their conclusion is that this social network bears remarkable similarities to Facebook, Twitter and the like and that this may offer an important clue about the origin of this ancient story.

Miranda and co think of each character in the Odyssey as a node in the network. They say a link exists between two characters when they meet in the story, when they speak directly to each other, cite one another to a third character or when it is otherwise clear that they know each other.

In analysing the Odyssey, they identified 342 unique characters and over 1700 relations between them. Having constructed the social network, Miranda and co then examined its structure.

“Odyssey’s social network is small world, highly clustered, slightly hierarchical and resilient to random attacks,” they say. What’s interesting about this conclusion is that these same characteristics all crop up in social networks in the real world. Miranda and co say this is good evidence that the Odyssey is based, at least in part, on a real social network and so must be a mixture of myth and fact.

(via The Remarkable Properties of Mythological Social Networks | MIT Technology Review)

wildcat2030:

For better concrete, do as Romans did

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Ancient Roman structures that have withstood the elements for more than 2,000 years are showing engineers how to make today’s concrete more durable and sustainable.

Using the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, engineers and geologists examined the fine-scale structure of Roman concrete. The findings showed for the first time how the extraordinarily stable compound—calcium-aluminum-silicate-hydrate (C-A-S-H)—binds the material used to build some of the most enduring structures in Western civilization.

The discovery could help improve the durability of modern concrete, which within 50 years often shows signs of degradation, particularly in ocean environments. (via Futurity.org – For better concrete, do as Romans did)

cutesy:

Isolator - 1925

Invented by science fiction pioneer Hugi Gernsbeck, the “Isolator” was designed to help focus the mind when reading or writing, by rendering the wearer deaf, piping them full of oxygen, not only by eliminating all outside noise, but also by allowing just one line of text to be seen at a time through a horizontal slit.

thenewenlightenmentage:

Humans With Amplified Intelligence Could Be More Powerful Than AI

With much of our attention focused the rise of advanced artificial intelligence, few consider the potential for radically amplified human intelligence (IA). It’s an open question as to which will come first, but a technologically boosted brain could be just as powerful — and just as dangerous – as AI. We spoke to a leading futurist to learn more.

Continue Reading

Khaaaaan!

Where do I sign up… this’ll probably make it even more difficult for me to put up with people.

ikenbot:

Boldly Go? Can Humanity Afford ‘Star Trek’-Like Space Exploration?

The public has no shortage of enthusiasm for fictional spacefarers, as this weekend’s box-office win by the newest “Star Trek” film proves. Yet the real-life U.S. space agency finds itself strapped for cash these days. With federal budgets tightening and NASA feeling the pinch, some space advocates are asking, “Can humans afford to reach the stars?”

Believe it or not, experts are looking into the finances of not just relatively short-term missions to Mars and the moon, but also long-term prospects of ‘Trek’-ian proportions. It may be possible to find the money, they say, but it would likely take some policy changes — and those changes could start today.

Captain, we don’t have the funding!

“Star Trek: Into Darkness” brought in about $84 million in its opening weekend — just a month after NASA cut $200 million from its planetary-sciences budget. (In an odd move, NASA’s newest budget explicitly states that it will notfund any missions to Europa, the ice-moon of Jupiter that stands as one of the solar system’s best candidates for supporting life, noted Casey Dreier, an advocacy and outreach strategist at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to planetary exploration.)

Those cuts come as NASA and the rest of the federal government negotiate sequestration cuts, which could trim $7 billion from NASA’s ledgers next year if the reductions are maintained.

But even without the sequester, NASA hasn’t commanded the kind of money needed for real, ambitious space travel in decades, said Marc Millis, a former NASA propulsion physicist and founder of the Tau Zero Foundation, which is dedicated to interstellar travel.

After hitting an apex with the Apollo moon program, NASA’s purse shrunk considerably and has stayed stagnant since, Millis said. NASA’s funds reached about 4.5 percent of the total federal budget during the Apollo era, Millis calculated. By 2009, NASA’s share had fallen to about 0.5 percent. “The amount that’s devoted to NASA now is enough to keep it going,” he said. “But to do really cool space travel is not possible now.”

Essentially, the agency has floated along on autopilot, clutching at relatively low-hanging fruit, like the space-shuttle missions, said Paul Gilster, who researches and writes about interstellar technologies for Tau Zero. “We should have something else than just going ‘round and ‘round the Earth,” he said.

The title of this is so annoying to me.

HUMANITY CREATED MONEY!!! We can do anything we want if we don’t put a limit on it. Money itself is the limit. Yes we can afford it because money is a concept, money isn’t a physical limiting factor.
 

I think this should read :

Will Humanity choose an outdated concept/philosophy over Star Trek like Space Exploration?

Not to mention our environment, longevity, or any other type of technology.