ISSN: 2226-048X
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ISSN: 2226-051X
Continue reading “5 new African Journals on Technological Innovation” »
Steamships, locomotives, electricity; these marvels of the industrial age sparked the imagination of futurists such as Jules Verne. Perhaps no other writer or work inspired so many to reach the stars as did this Frenchman’s famous tale of space travel. Later developments in microbiology, chemistry, and astronomy would inspire H.G. Wells and the notable science fiction authors of the early 20th century.
The submarine, aircraft, the spaceship, time travel, nuclear weapons, and even stealth technology were all predicted in some form by science fiction writers many decades before they were realized. The writers were not simply making up such wonders from fanciful thought or childrens ryhmes. As science advanced in the mid 19th and early 20th century, the probable future developments this new knowledge would bring about were in some cases quite obvious. Though powered flight seems a recent miracle, it was long expected as hydrogen balloons and parachutes had been around for over a century and steam propulsion went through a long gestation before ships and trains were driven by the new engines. Solid rockets were ancient and even multiple stages to increase altitude had been in use by fireworks makers for a very long time before the space age.
Some predictions were seen to come about in ways far removed yet still connected to their fictional counterparts. The U.S. Navy flagged steam driven Nautilus swam the ocean blue under nuclear power not long before rockets took men to the moon. While Verne predicted an electric submarine, his notional Florida space gun never did take three men into space. However there was a Canadian weapons designer named Gerald Bull who met his end while trying to build such a gun for Saddam Hussien. The insane Invisible Man of Wells took the form of invisible aircraft playing a less than human role in the insane game of mutually assured destruction. And a true time machine was found easily enough in the mathematics of Einstein. Simply going fast enough through space will take a human being millions of years into the future. However, traveling back in time is still as much an impossibillity as the anti-gravity Cavorite from the First Men in the Moon. Wells missed on occasion but was not far off with his story of alien invaders defeated by germs- except we are the aliens invading the natural world’s ecosystem with our genetically modified creations and could very well soon meet our end as a result.
While Verne’s Captain Nemo made war on the death merchants of his world with a submarine ram, our own more modern anti-war device was found in the hydrogen bomb. So destructive an agent that no new world war has been possible since nuclear weapons were stockpiled in the second half of the last century. Neither Verne or Wells imagined the destructive power of a single missile submarine able to incinerate all the major cities of earth. The dozens of such superdreadnoughts even now cruising in the icy darkness of the deep ocean proves that truth is more often stranger than fiction. It may seem the golden age of predictive fiction has passed as exceptions to the laws of physics prove impossible despite advertisments to the contrary. Science fiction has given way to science fantasy and the suspension of disbelief possible in the last century has turned to disappointment and the distractions of whimsical technological fairy tales. “Beam me up” was simply a way to cut production costs for special effects and warp drive the only trick that would make a one hour episode work. Unobtainium and wishalloy, handwavium and technobabble- it has watered down what our future could be into childish wish fulfillment and escapism.
Continue reading “Verne, Wells, and the Obvious Future Part 1” »
If I can intervene on the polarized opinions posted by some individuals on Lifeboat regarding CERN and particle physics safety debate, wherein I was name dropped recently — the person in question, Mr Church, may find my email address on page one of the dissertation linked in my bio. Regarding the safety conference asked for by the Cologne Administrative Court cited by Prof Rossler, I would suggest that with its ample funds, The Lifeboat Foundation should host a public conference on the subject and invite CERN delegates, critics and journalists alike to attend. In the spirit of the Lifeboat Foundation, however, I would suggest that the focus of such conference should be on discussion of how particle physics can be used to solve problems in the future — and the matter of fringe concerns on MBH accretion rates and so on could be dealt with as a subtext. I think it would be a good opportunity to ‘clear the air’ and could be good for the profile not just of the Lifeboat Foundation, but for particle physics research in general. I would like to hear others thoughts on this, and how Lifeboat manages its funds for such events and conferences…
Wednesday on the Opinion Pages of the NY Times the renowned Vinton Cerf “father of the internet” published an article titles Internet Access Is Not A Human Right. It could be argued that the key word here is “access”, but before I address access again, I should start with the definition of the internet. I had this debate while at Michigan State in October of 2010 with the philosopher Andrew Feenberg. I’ll do my best not to be redundant while everything is still live via the links in this article.
Perhaps the internet requires much more definition, as the roots of the word can be confusing. Inter: situated within – Net: any network or reticulated system of filaments or the like. Its terminology is synonymous with the “web” or a web, which requires multiple linkages to points of initiation in order to exist well. If this is the internet that Feenberg is referring to then I’d think it accurate. However, the internet is not actually a web of ever connected points. Information destinations are not required.
The internet is analogous to space. Regardless of whether or not we access space, its potential exists – we can access or insert entities of sorts into the space regardless of, if another user were present to receive information of sorts from the distributed. Space is a dynamic system of expanding material potential as is the internet’s material potential. The potential of the internet expands as users (or rather, potential users) access to the internet expands – access could come in many forms including, user population(s) growth or by computing speed or by computing power… The internet, regardless of the constraints of the word, it cannot be identified as a specific technology.
Continue reading “The Internet is a Human Right, VINTON G. CERF is Mistaken” »
If a single specialist says “This is an emergency!,” the world MUST listen.
Except when another scientist says in a way that can be upheld by him: “I gave the following disproof.” No such scientist speaks up. The few who tried 4 years ago on the web gave up to defend their arguments against the counterproofs offered immediately, in order to keep their mouths shut in public ever since, also against the much simplified theorem offered two years ago.
Not stopping to check the proof that this is an emergency – but instead continuing the attempt at building undetectable-at-first micro black holes in their “black hole factory” for a year – as CERN did, is undefensible before history. All currently esteemed science journalists are violating their duty. The world’s media might lose their subscribers in the wake of this worst press scandal ever.
Why this strong language here? It is because the media withhold from you, the readers of the world, that not a singlespecialist colleague speaks up against the proofs presented (Telemach theorem, Gothic-R theorem). So every person learns that checking facts is no longer fashionable on this planet: Poor youth, the brightest of history, poor future, poor planet.
The Journal for Biological & Health Innovation is accepting papers for peer review now. This journal is specific to Africa and our thoughts, theory, research, practice could have a huge impact on the expeditious development of the rest of the world technologically.
Allow me to repeat a recent text:
Thank you, dear AnthonyL, for referring to my friend John Wheeler’s incredible impishness when he dared propose the name “black hole.” It took decades to become accepted in France (it long since is). They are being considered as something highly desirable by CERN who do their best to produce them even though their instruments have been proven to be blind to them when fresh.
But I do not want to skirt your important question: Einstein discovered and mentioned in his 1907 paper that c is not constant in an accelerating rocketship, and 5 years later replied to his concerned mentor Max Abraham that he would not respond to the latter’s enticement to repair this inconsistency if possible.
It is a miracle that Einstein was able to work around this weak point in his superhuman effort to make his general theory of relativity congeal. The latter – in the Schwarzschild solution – is so perfect it even formally contains the global constancy of c, as I showed in my 2007 paper on the gothic-R theorem.
[Disclaimer: This contribution does not reflect the views of the Lifeboat Foundation as with the scientific community in general, but individual sentiment — Web Admin]
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Dear Little Planet
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Continue reading “Dear Little Planet (and other Writings)” »
It may be not too late. The youngster was born on achtphasen.net and grew stronger on spanish.lifeboat.com. The Max Planck Institute for Gravitation Physics refuses to assess his health.
Telemach is not a software system but rather consists of 4 simple physical equations, the first given by Einstein himself, the other 3 are new corollaries. The 4 quantities T, L, M and Ch all change by the factor found by Einstein — the first two (time T and length L) go up, the second two (mass M and charge Ch) go down under the influence of gravity. T is very well known because the Global Positioning System (G.P.S.) relies on it.
Two of the 4 can save the planet. The length change L is responsible for the fact that nothing can go down to or come up from the surface of a black hole in finite outer time (so the famous Hawking radiation is non-existent). The charge change Ch is responsible for the fact that micro black holes are initially frictionless inside matter. Both features taken together radically change the properties of the most looked-forward-to fruit of the biggest and most expensive experiment of history, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The experiment’s most feverishly anticipated success hence is inaccessible to its detectors. And: any micro black hole produced which is slow enough not to fly away from earth to stay inside will, after having come close enough to a first charged particle to have it circle-in, grow exponentially inside matter from that moment on – forming a miniature quasar that shrinks the planet to 2 cm in perhaps 5 years’ time.
All of this was published in July 2008, two months before the LHC machine got started but goes unquoted in all of CERN’s scientific publications up to this day. The “safety conference” requested by the Cologne Administrative Court on January 27, 2011 from the German government is a planetary taboo topic much like Telemach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMDSzYZxh6I&feature=player_embedded
Last week I switched to the Facebook Timeline feature and the first thing that I did was stop and gasp about what my life was like in 2005. I was in the second batch of facebook-ers after it initially left the Harvard-Yale scene. I was a recent graduate working in the real world to design vehicle interiors, but my life style was still very undergrad-centric…LOL…it was actually undergrad on steroids because my income changed drastically.
I think that the generations that were far past their undergraduate experience were received the social networking revolution differently than those of us who are 30 and under. Friends that I went to undergrad with who are in the 30–40 year old range continue (6 years later) to say that they are “too old” for Facebook, reluctant to use it as a tool.
Continue reading “Facebook Timeline and a Culture of Transparency” »
