Ok, I know I’ve already overwhelmed you with new posts, but holy shit, you need to see this:
Archive for March, 2009
Did You Know?
Sunday, March 29th, 2009Singing Tesla Coils
Sunday, March 29th, 2009Wave of the future or decline of civilization? You decide.
Death by Tech: Energy Weapons
Sunday, March 29th, 2009Wired has written extensively about the development of military lasers, and since it was recently announced that such lasers have reached what optimists are calling “military strength” I think it only fitting that this week’s Death by Tech focus on the increasingly likely possibility that your insides will be boiled and fried by advancing armies of laser rifle wielding stormtroopers.
"Pew pew"
What is it?
As of right now, military lasers are pretty innocous. The only likely use they will see in the near future is as countermeasures to mortars and rockets, and 105 kilowatts is barely enough power for that particular application. There are significant obstacles to militarization of lasers, mostly in terms of minaturization. Scientists are still working on getting a powerful laser to fit into a small enough space to militarily viable, and powering such a weapon is still difficult. Still, if such obstacles could be overcome, a laser or similiar energy weapon could make its debut on a modern battlefield in a decade or so. But…
Really, modern war is fought and won by treasuries, and if the prevalence of cheap, reliable AK-47s in the hands of militaries around the world tells us anything, it’s that laser rifles are unlikely to be a mainstream weapon of war (if such a weapon is even ever developed) any time in our lifetimes. It is, however, not impossible to imagine that such a weapon could be useful in one relatively untouched theater of war…
Likelihood?
As mentioned before, it is highly unlikely that any of us will be on the recieving end of a military grade laser any time soon. There are just too many reasons not to build one, not when bullets keep doing such a good job of killing us already. Still, if we act on the assumption that longevity treatments are coming, it is not inconcievable that sometime in the more distant future, a larger, planet or starship scale laser will be pointed in your direction. But don’t hold your breath, good old-fashioned projectile weapons have a lot going for them.
Pain Factor?
Depends. If someone pointed one of those 105 kilowatt lasers at you, I guarantee it will hurt like hell, if it even manages to kill you. It will burn your flesh away in tiny increments, which is, as I understand it, pretty damn painful. As the power of such weapons increases the pain factor will probably go down, in fact, and you’ll die a lot faster. At least you have something to look forward to.
Immortality Becoming More Mainstream
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
No, not like that...
Daily Galaxy recently posted an article on longevity and the possibility of living to 1,000. The article is good, but not remarkable, but what is interesting is that this article made it to the front page of digg, a social news site that get upwards of a million visitors a day. For something that a decade ago was considered science fiction to be considered legitimate news is a huge step forward. Here’s what the article said:
“Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey has famously stated, “The first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today …whether they realize it or not, barring accidents and suicide, most people now 40 years or younger can expect to live for centuries…
…There are many, many different components of ageing and we are chipping away at all of them,” said Robert Freitas at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, a non-profit, nanotech group in Palo Alto, California. “It will take time and, if you put it in terms of the big developments of modern technology, say the telephone, we are still about 10 years off from Alexander Graham Bell shouting to his assistant through that first device. Still, in the near future, say the next two to four decades, the disease of ageing will be cured.”
Actually, even though I said there wasn’t a lot of uniqueness to this article earlier, there is a very interesting of discussion of people who don’t believe longevity is possible or even ethical.
“I just don’t think [immortality] is possible,” says Sherwin Nuland, a professor of surgery at the Yale School of Medicine. “Aubrey and the others who talk of greatly extending lifespan are oversimplifying the science and just don’t understand the magnitude of the task. His plan will not succeed. Were it to do so, it would undermine what it means to be human.” (Emphasis mine)
This is an important point, and one I think we all need to consider. There is no contention that much of what gives life its meaning is the fact that we die at the end of it – without that constant threat, will we be able to produce such beautiful works of art, and will we even have a desire to live if the threat of death doesn’t drive us to succeed and endure?
Of course, most longevity enthusiasts don’t suggest that they can completely defeat death, only stave it off for longer than previously considered possible. I do have some fear that if this comes to pass, then it will mark an end to an era of human productivity, or worse. Yes, would it not be wonderful if Einstein or Michaelangelo or Shakespeare had lived to work and produce for centuries, but what of Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon? What do we have to fear from an immortal dictator, or an undying tyrant?
In any case, I think this article is a little optimistic – it simplifies the process of defeating aging quite a bit, but it bears consideration. As in all things, I think that this is a supremely ethical act. Humans deserve the right to choose to live or not to, if it is within our power to give them that choice. And more than I fear an end to beauty and productivity, I look forward to a marked shift in the paradigm of human existence that will come about through an end to aging.
Check out the article, it’s definitely worth a read. Link.
Weekly Monolith: Lingsberg Runestone
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009This Week’s Monolith: Lingsberg Runestone (U 240)
U 240
Pretty cool looking, right? Those nifty runes must say something important., right?
Translation:
“Danr and Húskarl and Sveinn and Holmfríðr, the mother and (her) sons, had this stone erected in memory of Halfdan, the father of Danr and his brothers; and Holmfríðr in memory of her husbandman.”
Nope, just a headstone.
Edit: There have been some questions about what exactly these weekly monoliths have to do with the blog. Let me put those to rest.
It’s called Angry Monolith, and they’re cool. Deal with it.
Death by Tech: Fermi Paradox
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009This week on Death by Tech I will be featuring another somewhat obscure death scenario: aliens! Stay tuned…
What is it?
The basis of this idea is rooted in the musings of a number of prominent physicists, astronomers and generally smart people. Here is how it goes: first, there is the argument of scale. The Milky Way contains 250 billion stars, and the universe itself has approximately 70 sextillion stars in the visible spectrum alone. Estimates on how many civilizations we might share the galaxy with – based on the Drake equation (which is controversial, at best) – range from 5 to 5000. Enrico Fermi takes this further, assuming that the nature of intelligent life is to explore and expand, and points out that even with slower-than-light space travel, it would take somewhere around five to fifty million years for a civilization to colonize the galaxy. This may seem like a long time, but on a geological time scale it is relatively insignificant. This begs the question, which Fermi so impertinently asks: Where is everybody?
It's quiet. Too quiet...
This may not seem to have anything to do with death, but bear with me. Theories on why we haven’t seen any signs of alien civilization vary (one of my favorites theorizes that it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself) but most people interested in it figure that it is an interesting theoretical problem that will be solved as our technological capabilities increase. But it could be something more insidious. Here are some of my thoughts on why we haven’t heard from anyone:
Aliens ate their brains. And they're coming for us...
Or…
OM NOM NOM
Or…
ZERGLING RUSH KEKEKEKE
You get the picture.
Likelihood?
Well, we’re not dead yet. There’s no way to tell, but there is certainly something ominous about the oppressive silence of the universe. It could be that we’re just not advanced enough for anyone to take notice of us (or maybe they have their own form of prime directive), so while the threat is pretty low, as we advance our technology, space could get very dangerous very fast.
Pain Factor?
Another unknown. If it’s alien facehuggers, probably pretty high. If earth is just going to be bulldozed to make room for a galactic superhighway, you probably won’t notice.
Weekly Monolith – Spellenstein, Germany
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009This Week’s Monolith: Spellenstein Monolith
This monolith comes furnished with its own house!
Sci-Fi Channel Suffers Collective Brain Anuerism, Passes it Off as Marketing Ploy
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
Picard has a message for you SyFy
In a move clearly made by a group of people with more MBAs than brain cells, the Sci-Fi channel has decided to go Web 2.0 all over its core fanbase’s ass and change its name to SyFy. Reasoning?
FTA: “By changing the name to Syfy, which remains phonetically identical, the new brand broadens perceptions and embraces a wider range of current and future imagination-based entertainment beyond just the traditional sci-fi genre, including fantasy, supernatural, paranormal, reality, mystery, action and adventure. It also positions the brand for future growth by creating an ownable trademark that can travel easily with consumers across new media and nonlinear digital platforms, new international channels and extend into new business ventures.”
This means less Battlestar Galactica and Eureka and more Ghost Hunters, ECW, Chase and Mansquito. I am not sure if the people who run the network actually even like science fiction.
Guide: How to Live Forever (Or close enough…)
Sunday, March 15th, 2009Exclusive (Well, not really) information on how to live forever. Secrets of everlasting life revealed! Want to know more? Read on!
Metamaterial Revolution: The New Science of Making Anything Disappear
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
An invisibility device. Sort of.
A new article about the emerging science of metamaterials. The article has an obsessive focus on invisibility, but the applications are far greater than that. These metamaterials (at least in theory) could advance an overwhelming list of technologies, including supermicroscopes, nanotechnology, optical computers, cloaking, and more.
FTA: “…Scientists had long known that they could change the behavior of a material by altering its chemistry. For instance, you can alter the color and hardness of glass by adding lead. But now Pendry saw that he could also alter function by changing a material’s internal structure on a very fine scale, less than a wavelength of whatever he was manipulating…These new, structurally altered materials would soon become known as metamaterials, based on the Greek meta, meaning “beyond.” “We knew we were onto something,” Pendry says.”