Showing posts with label Science Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science Fiction. Show all posts
Monday, March 25, 2013
Where Apple and Dick Tracy May Converge
NICK BILTON
Full Article:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/disruptions-apple-is-said-to-be-developing-a-curved-glass-smart-watch/
Dick Tracy had one. As did Inspector Gadget and James Bond. A watch that doubled as a computer, two-way radio, mapping device or television.
Though such a device has been lost to science fiction comics and spy movies of the era before smartphones, the smart watch might soon become a reality, in the form of a curved glass device made by Apple.
In its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Apple is experimenting with wristwatch-like devices made of curved glass, according to people familiar with the company’s explorations, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not allowed to publicly discuss unreleased products. Such a watch would operate on Apple’s iOS platform, two people said, and stand apart from competitors based on the company’s understanding of how such glass can curve around the human body.
Apple declined to comment on its plans. But the exploration of such a watch leaves open lots of exciting questions: If the company does release such a product, what would it look like? Would it include Siri, the voice assistant? Would it have a version of Apple’s map software, offering real-time directions to people walking down the street? Could it receive text messages? Could it monitor a user’s health or daily activity? How much will it cost? Could Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, be wearing one right now, whispering sweet nothings to his wrist?
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Free Exclusive Digest
Delivered: Bi-monthly
Current Issue Price: $0.00
Monthly Price: $0.00 First 30 days FREE
Amazon URL:
http://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Science-Fiction-Exclusive-Digest/dp/B004ZFZCKY/thekonformist
All Kindle magazine subscriptions come with a free 14-day trial, but this exclusive digest edition of the magazine is always free for Kindle customers.
Extended Edition: Six full issues per year--including everything in the free digest edition, plus all short stories, novelettes, and novellas--for just $12/year ($0.99/month).
Print Edition: Six full issues, in print, for $35.97/year.
Amazon is thrilled to offer Kindle fantasy and science-fiction fans an exclusive free digest to the magazine that Stephen King calls "the best fiction magazine in America." Founded in 1949, Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine is the award-winning original publisher of such classics as Stephen King's Dark Tower, Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, and Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. This free exclusive digest includes:
All nonfiction content: editor's recommendations, "Curiosities" (odd books of enduring interest), film reviews, book reviews, cartoons and humor, and "Coming Attractions" (highlights of each issue).
One full story from the current full issue of the magazine.
Short descriptions of the extended issue's remaining stories and "novelets."
If you are interested in reading the remainder of the stories and "novelets," subscribe to the extended edition.
Kindle Magazines are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you're not wirelessly connected.This magazine does not necessarily reflect the full print content of the publication.
Publisher: Spilogale Inc. (December 13, 2012)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B004ZFZCKY
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Roswell 'was Soviet plot to create US panic'
UFOs: Devotees of science fiction have been convinced for decades that an alien spacecraft crashed in the desert of New Mexico – and that the American government covered up the recovery of extraterrestrial bodies.
Thomas Harding
13 May 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8512408/Roswell-was-Soviet-plot-to-create-US-panic.html
The so-called Roswell Incident of 1947 spawned conspiracy theories by the score.
But now, sadly for UFO spotters, a new book offers an entirely man-made – and some would say even more bizarre – explanation, featuring two of the greatest villains of 20th century history: the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and the infamous Nazi “Angel of Death” Dr Joseph Mengele.
During a powerful storm in July, 1947, an object crashed near a rancher’s home in Roswell, New Mexico.
Roswell army air base initially said that a “flying disc” had come down, but hours later, as government scientists arrived in the area, it was stated instead that a weather balloon had crashed.
The incident went largely unreported until books and documentaries in the 1970s made allegations of alien life forms.
Area 51, the new book by Annie Jacobsen, is based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked in Area 51, the top secret test base in the Nevada desert.
It dismisses the alien story and puts forward the theory that Stalin was inspired by Orson Wells’s famous radio adaptation of the HG Wells novel War of the Worlds, which provoked hysteria across America when broadcast in 1938. According to the book, the plot started after the Soviet Union seized from Germany at the end of the war the jet-propelled, single wing Horton Ho 229 – a fighter said to be the forerunner of the modern B2 stealth bomber.
This is where Mengele enters the story. The Nazi doctor, who experimented on prisoners in Auschwitz and fled to South America after the war, was supposedly enlisted to create a crew of “grotesque, child-size aviators” in return for a eugenics laboratory.
The book says that the plane was filled with “alien-like” children, aged 12 or 13, who Stalin wanted to land in America and cause hysteria similar to the 1938 broadcast. But, the plane, remotely piloted by another aircraft, crashed and the Americans hushed up the incident.
Jacobsen’s source, a retired engineer from the former defence company EG&G, which handled the US government’s most sensitive projects, said he was put on to the Roswell project in Area 51 in 1978.
Miss Jacobsen writes: “They found bodies alongside the crashed craft. These were not aliens. Nor were they consenting airmen. They were human guinea pigs. Unusually petite for pilots, they appeared to be children. Each was under five feet tall.
“They were grotesquely deformed, but each in the same manner as the others. They had unusually large heads and abnormally shaped oversize eyes.”
Two were supposedly found “comatose but still alive”.
The EG&G engineers were told “that seeing the bodies would be a shocking and disturbing experience”.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a spokesman for the US Air Force said: “We have not yet read this book so we are not able to make a comment on it.”
Thomas Harding
13 May 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8512408/Roswell-was-Soviet-plot-to-create-US-panic.html
The so-called Roswell Incident of 1947 spawned conspiracy theories by the score.
But now, sadly for UFO spotters, a new book offers an entirely man-made – and some would say even more bizarre – explanation, featuring two of the greatest villains of 20th century history: the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and the infamous Nazi “Angel of Death” Dr Joseph Mengele.
During a powerful storm in July, 1947, an object crashed near a rancher’s home in Roswell, New Mexico.
Roswell army air base initially said that a “flying disc” had come down, but hours later, as government scientists arrived in the area, it was stated instead that a weather balloon had crashed.
The incident went largely unreported until books and documentaries in the 1970s made allegations of alien life forms.
Area 51, the new book by Annie Jacobsen, is based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked in Area 51, the top secret test base in the Nevada desert.
It dismisses the alien story and puts forward the theory that Stalin was inspired by Orson Wells’s famous radio adaptation of the HG Wells novel War of the Worlds, which provoked hysteria across America when broadcast in 1938. According to the book, the plot started after the Soviet Union seized from Germany at the end of the war the jet-propelled, single wing Horton Ho 229 – a fighter said to be the forerunner of the modern B2 stealth bomber.
This is where Mengele enters the story. The Nazi doctor, who experimented on prisoners in Auschwitz and fled to South America after the war, was supposedly enlisted to create a crew of “grotesque, child-size aviators” in return for a eugenics laboratory.
The book says that the plane was filled with “alien-like” children, aged 12 or 13, who Stalin wanted to land in America and cause hysteria similar to the 1938 broadcast. But, the plane, remotely piloted by another aircraft, crashed and the Americans hushed up the incident.
Jacobsen’s source, a retired engineer from the former defence company EG&G, which handled the US government’s most sensitive projects, said he was put on to the Roswell project in Area 51 in 1978.
Miss Jacobsen writes: “They found bodies alongside the crashed craft. These were not aliens. Nor were they consenting airmen. They were human guinea pigs. Unusually petite for pilots, they appeared to be children. Each was under five feet tall.
“They were grotesquely deformed, but each in the same manner as the others. They had unusually large heads and abnormally shaped oversize eyes.”
Two were supposedly found “comatose but still alive”.
The EG&G engineers were told “that seeing the bodies would be a shocking and disturbing experience”.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a spokesman for the US Air Force said: “We have not yet read this book so we are not able to make a comment on it.”
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Physics of the Future
Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
Michio Kaku
List Price: $28.95
Price: $15.76 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $13.19 (46%)
Kindle Edition $12.99
Hardcover $15.76
Audio, CD, Audiobook, Unabridged $29.70
Audible Audio Edition, Unabridged $26.95 or Free with Audible 30-day free trial
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Kaku (Physics of the Impossible), a professor of physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, gathers ideas from more than 300 experts, scientists, and researchers at the cutting edge of their fields, to offer a glimpse of what the next 100 years may bring. The predictions all conform to certain ground rules (e.g., "Prototypes of all technologies mentioned... already exist"), and some seem obvious (computer chips will continue to get faster and smaller). Others seem less far-fetched than they might have a decade ago: for instance, space tourism will be popular, especially once a permanent base is established on the moon. Other predictions may come true—downloading the Internet right into a pair of contact lenses—but whether they're desirable is another matter. Some of the predictions are familiar but still startling: robots will develop emotions by mid-century, and we will start merging mind and body with them. Despite the familiarity of many of the predictions to readers of popular science and science fiction, Kaku's book should capture the imagination of everyday readers.
From Booklist
Following in the footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci and Jules Verne, Kaku, author of a handful of books about science, looks into the not-so-distant future and envisions what the world will look like. It should be an exciting place, with driverless cars, Internet glasses, universal translators, robot surgeons, the resurrection of extinct life forms, designer children, space tourism, a manned mission to Mars, none of which turn out to be as science-fictiony as they sound. In fact, the most exciting thing about the book is the fact that most of the developments Kaku discusses can be directly extrapolated from existing technologies. Robot surgeons and driverless cars, for example, already exist in rudimentary forms. Kaku, a physics professor and one of the originators of the string field theory (an offshoot of the more general string theory), draws on current research to show how, in a very real sense, our future has already been written. The book?s lively, user-friendly style should appeal equally to fans of science fiction and popular science. --David Pitt
See all Editorial Reviews
Praise for MICHIO KAKU
“Mesmerizing . . . the reader exits dizzy, elated, and looking at the world in a literally revolutionary way.”
— Washington Post Book World
“With his lucid and wry style, his knack for bringing the most ethereal ideas down to earth, and his willingness to indulge in a little scientifically informed futurology now and then . . . Michio Kaku has written one of the best popular accounts of higher physics.”
— Wall Street Journal
“What a wonderful adventure it is, trying to think the unthinkable.”
— New York Times Book Review
“An erudite, compelling, insider’s look into the most mind-bending potential of science research.”
— Chicago Tribune
“Accessible, entertaining, and inspiring”
— New Scientist
“Mesmerizing information breathtakingly presented . . . thoroughly engaging . . . magnificent!”
— Philadelphia Inquirer
“An invigorating experience”
— Christian Science Monitor
“Kaku covers a tremendous amount of material . . . in a clear and lively way.”
— Los Angeles Times Book Review
Product Description
Imagine, if you can, the world in the year 2100.
In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku—the New York Times bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible—gives us a stunning, provocative, and exhilarating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs. The result is the most authoritative and scientifically accurate description of the revolutionary developments taking place in medicine, computers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy production, and astronautics.
In all likelihood, by 2100 we will control computers via tiny brain sensors and, like magicians, move objects around with the power of our minds. Artificial intelligence will be dispersed throughout the environment, and Internet-enabled contact lenses will allow us to access the world's information base or conjure up any image we desire in the blink of an eye.
Meanwhile, cars will drive themselves using GPS, and if room-temperature superconductors are discovered, vehicles will effortlessly fly on a cushion of air, coasting on powerful magnetic fields and ushering in the age of magnetism.
Using molecular medicine, scientists will be able to grow almost every organ of the body and cure genetic diseases. Millions of tiny DNA sensors and nanoparticles patrolling our blood cells will silently scan our bodies for the first sign of illness, while rapid advances in genetic research will enable us to slow down or maybe even reverse the aging process, allowing human life spans to increase dramatically.
In space, radically new ships—needle-sized vessels using laser propulsion—could replace the expensive chemical rockets of today and perhaps visit nearby stars. Advances in nanotechnology may lead to the fabled space elevator, which would propel humans hundreds of miles above the earth’s atmosphere at the push of a button.
But these astonishing revelations are only the tip of the iceberg. Kaku also discusses emotional robots, antimatter rockets, X-ray vision, and the ability to create new life-forms, and he considers the development of the world economy. He addresses the key questions: Who are the winner and losers of the future? Who will have jobs, and which nations will prosper?
All the while, Kaku illuminates the rigorous scientific principles, examining the rate at which certain technologies are likely to mature, how far they can advance, and what their ultimate limitations and hazards are. Synthesizing a vast amount of information to construct an exciting look at the years leading up to 2100, Physics of the Future is a thrilling, wondrous ride through the next 100 years of breathtaking scientific revolution.
MICHIO KAKU is a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, cofounder of string field theory, and the bestselling author of several widely acclaimed science books, including Hyperspace and Physics of the Impossible—the basis for his Science Channel TV show Sci Fi Science—and two radio programs, Explorations and Science Fantastic, broadcasting to over 140 radio stations.
Product Details
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (March 15, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780385530804
ISBN-13: 978-0385530804
ASIN: 0385530803
Hardcover: http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Future-Science-Shape-Destiny/dp/0385530803/thekonformist
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Future-Science-Destiny-ebook/dp/B004FGLX2Y/thekonformist
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Quantum Jumping
http://www.quantumjumping.com/lp/subconscious-1?sr=1&gclid=CKWkkdSq1KYCFRNSgwodSjUWIA
Jump Into a Universe of Infinite Possibilities.
The abundant you. The inventor you. The creative you. In alternate universes, everything you desire has already taken place. Tap into this infinite potential with Quantum Jumping.
What if science fiction became science?
Since the 1920’s, quantum physicists have been trying to make sense of an uncomfortable and startling possibility—that an infinite number of alternate universes exist.
Leading scientists like Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku and Neil Turok, all of whom are responsible for life-changing breakthroughs in the field of quantum physics, have all suggested the existence of multiple universes.
This jaw-dropping discovery was first made when, trying to pinpoint the exact location of an atomic particle, physicists found it was virtually impossible. It had no single location. In other words, atomic particles have the ability to simultaneously exist in more than one place at a time. The only explanation for this is that particles don’t only exist in our universe—They can spark into existence in an infinite number of parallel universes as well. And although these particles come to being and change in synchronicity, they are all slightly different.
But here’s where things get really interesting. Drawing on the above-mentioned scientific theory and merging it with 59 years of study into mysticism and the human mind, Burt Goldman has hypothesized a fascinating idea:
In these alternate universes, alternate versions of YOU are living out their lives.
And with an infinite number of them, it means that anything that can happen, does happen—in another universe. So in effect, there is a universe where Obama never won the election and another where Princess Diana is still alive. There is a universe where you are the King of Scotland and a universe where you are a tea farmer in China. A universe where you are a celebrity musician, and one where you busk on a pavement for spare change.
So how do parallel universes come to be? How, if you are born in this universe, are there now an infinite number of dimensions where you exist simultaneously? The theory is simple:
Every decision you make in life causes a “split” in reality…
Which in turn creates two alternate universes—one where the current version of you is today, and another with the version of you who made a different choice. Now think about your life.
Think about all the decisions you’ve made that led to who you are today. If all these decisions caused a split in your reality, each time creating a new version of yourself in a parallel universe who also goes on to make a certain set of choices thereby splitting their reality, you can begin to imagine the infinite versions of yourself that exist.
The bubble universe theory
Now imagine what you could accomplish if you could somehow tap into these alternate universes to meet and learn from these alternate versions of yourself. Imagine the wisdom you’d learn. The opportunities you’d recognize, the skills you’d acquire, and the pitfalls you’d know to avoid.
By meeting these alternate selves, you’d essentially be tapping into an endless universal sea of knowledge and experience. But how, might you be asking, does one access these alternate realities? That’s where Quantum Jumping comes in.
Welcome to the Infinite You.
Quantum Jumping is the process of jumping into parallel dimensions, and gaining creativity, knowledge, wisdom, skills and inspiration from alternate versions of yourself.
This happens through a phenomenon known as “thought transference.” You see, although the solidity of our world seems indisputable, Quantum Theory suggests that our physical reality is nothing but a very elaborate mirage. A super-hologram of information and energy. A Matrix.
The chair you’re sitting on, your computer, your house, your car, everything that exists around you, is an illusion.
So then how do we see, touch, feel, and smell the things that surround us if none of it really exists?
The answer is that all physical matter is the result of particles vibrating at a certain frequency. A frequency that if you alter, change or amplify in any way, you change your physical and current reality.
We all know from physics class that if you increase the vibrational frequency of water particles through heat energy, you create steam and if you slow them down by removing heat energy, you create ice. And just like heat, our thoughts too are energy...
Jump Into a Universe of Infinite Possibilities.
The abundant you. The inventor you. The creative you. In alternate universes, everything you desire has already taken place. Tap into this infinite potential with Quantum Jumping.
What if science fiction became science?
Since the 1920’s, quantum physicists have been trying to make sense of an uncomfortable and startling possibility—that an infinite number of alternate universes exist.
Leading scientists like Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku and Neil Turok, all of whom are responsible for life-changing breakthroughs in the field of quantum physics, have all suggested the existence of multiple universes.
This jaw-dropping discovery was first made when, trying to pinpoint the exact location of an atomic particle, physicists found it was virtually impossible. It had no single location. In other words, atomic particles have the ability to simultaneously exist in more than one place at a time. The only explanation for this is that particles don’t only exist in our universe—They can spark into existence in an infinite number of parallel universes as well. And although these particles come to being and change in synchronicity, they are all slightly different.
But here’s where things get really interesting. Drawing on the above-mentioned scientific theory and merging it with 59 years of study into mysticism and the human mind, Burt Goldman has hypothesized a fascinating idea:
In these alternate universes, alternate versions of YOU are living out their lives.
And with an infinite number of them, it means that anything that can happen, does happen—in another universe. So in effect, there is a universe where Obama never won the election and another where Princess Diana is still alive. There is a universe where you are the King of Scotland and a universe where you are a tea farmer in China. A universe where you are a celebrity musician, and one where you busk on a pavement for spare change.
So how do parallel universes come to be? How, if you are born in this universe, are there now an infinite number of dimensions where you exist simultaneously? The theory is simple:
Every decision you make in life causes a “split” in reality…
Which in turn creates two alternate universes—one where the current version of you is today, and another with the version of you who made a different choice. Now think about your life.
Think about all the decisions you’ve made that led to who you are today. If all these decisions caused a split in your reality, each time creating a new version of yourself in a parallel universe who also goes on to make a certain set of choices thereby splitting their reality, you can begin to imagine the infinite versions of yourself that exist.
The bubble universe theory
Now imagine what you could accomplish if you could somehow tap into these alternate universes to meet and learn from these alternate versions of yourself. Imagine the wisdom you’d learn. The opportunities you’d recognize, the skills you’d acquire, and the pitfalls you’d know to avoid.
By meeting these alternate selves, you’d essentially be tapping into an endless universal sea of knowledge and experience. But how, might you be asking, does one access these alternate realities? That’s where Quantum Jumping comes in.
Welcome to the Infinite You.
Quantum Jumping is the process of jumping into parallel dimensions, and gaining creativity, knowledge, wisdom, skills and inspiration from alternate versions of yourself.
This happens through a phenomenon known as “thought transference.” You see, although the solidity of our world seems indisputable, Quantum Theory suggests that our physical reality is nothing but a very elaborate mirage. A super-hologram of information and energy. A Matrix.
The chair you’re sitting on, your computer, your house, your car, everything that exists around you, is an illusion.
So then how do we see, touch, feel, and smell the things that surround us if none of it really exists?
The answer is that all physical matter is the result of particles vibrating at a certain frequency. A frequency that if you alter, change or amplify in any way, you change your physical and current reality.
We all know from physics class that if you increase the vibrational frequency of water particles through heat energy, you create steam and if you slow them down by removing heat energy, you create ice. And just like heat, our thoughts too are energy...
Friday, November 26, 2010
Antimatter Atoms Trapped for First Time—"A Big Deal"
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101118-antimatter-trapped-engines-bombs-nature-science-cern
Antimatter Atoms Trapped for First Time—"A Big Deal"
But no applications for bombs, energy sources, or engines.
November 18, 2010
For the first time, scientists have trapped antimatter atoms — mysterious, oppositely charged versions of ordinary atoms — a new study says.
Though the achievement is "a big deal," it doesn't mean the antimatter bombs and engines of science fiction will be igniting anytime soon, experts say.
But the feat, undertaken a couple of months ago at the Geneva, Switzerland-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), paves the way to the potential solution of a fundamental cosmic conundrum.
Theories predict that antimatter particles and matter particles have opposite electrical charges but are otherwise nearly identical. Whenever the matter and antimatter meet, they self-annihilate in a shower of pure energy.
Yet for all the similarities, scientists think matter and antimatter must differ in some other fundamental way. That's because, even though matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts during the big bang, the universe we know is made almost entirely of matter.
"It's a central mystery in physics," said Joel Fajans, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-authored the new study, published today in the journal Nature.
The unprecedented trapping of antimatter atoms for study is a key step toward understanding why nature seems to abhor antimatter. (Read about a new material that may help explain why matter and antimatter are out of balance.)
Cliff Surko, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, called the trapping of antimatter atoms "a big deal."
"This is the next step, and it's a key next step" toward solving that central mystery, said Surko, who did not participate in the research. "It's a relief to have this step in hand."
Antimatter Bonding Activities
For the new experiments, the team used CERN's ALPHA experiment, a tangle of corrugated pipes, electromagnetic "bottles," and other equipment.
First, scientists had to create antiprotons and antielectrons, or positrons, and get them to bond. This formed atoms of antihydrogen, the simplest antimatter element—a feat first achieved in 2002 at CERN.
To make the antiprotons, the team took some of the protons normally used to feed CERN's nearby Large Hadron Collider, smashed them into metal targets, and captured the byproducts. The positrons were captured from a radioactive sodium source.
To get the antiprotons and positrons to bond, the team used an oscillating electric field, nudging the antiprotons into the same energy level as the positrons.
Next came the hard—and unprecedented—part: getting the antimatter particles to sit still.
Aiming for Permanent Antimatter-Atom Incarceration
The major challenge of trapping antimatter is that, once created, the particles are typically too hot and energetic to be trapped.
Fajans likens the task of antihydrogen trapping to games that involve tilting a toy disk to roll a ball bearing into a dimple or hole.
"If the ball is moving too fast, it won't stick in the dimple," Fajans said. "That was our problem with antihydrogen atoms. They were moving too fast to stay stuck in the traps we were making for them."
To slow them down, the team used a series of electric and magnetic fields to cool the antimatter.
Of the millions of antihydrogen atoms the ALPHA team created, only about 38 were cold enough—and slow enough—to be held in a kind of "magnetic bowl" that prevented them from interacting with normal matter.
Because the experiments were intended only to prove that antimatter atoms could be trapped, the team let the antihydrogen atoms go after only two-tenths of a second. But they hope to drastically increase the incarceration time in future experiments.
"Two-tenths of a second is nice, but forever is even better," Fajans said.
And forever may not be so far away. Since the experiments covered in the Nature study, the researchers have created many more antihydrogen atoms and held them for much longer—fodder for a future report.
According to Fajans, "We're doing much better now."
If more antihydrogen atoms can be produced and trapped for longer periods, scientists might finally be able to study them in enough detail to explain their scarcity in our universe, he added.
No Antimatter Bombs?
John Bollinger, of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado, agreed that the new results represent a major step forward—with caveats.
"It is a big deal," said Bollinger, who didn't take part in the experiment, "but more big deals need to be achieved before precise studies can be made—for example, extending the lifetime of the trapped antihydrogen and identifying the state ... of the antihydrogen."
As for real-world antimatter applications, UC San Diego's Surko said that the harnessing of antimatter as an energy source—say, for use in weapons or a Star Trek-style propulsion system—remains a far-fetched idea.
"The problem is that ... it takes so much more energy to make than you get out that it's pretty inefficient," he said. "And you have to go to great lengths to confine it for a long time."
NIST's Bollinger was likewise skeptical. "The amount of antimatter that can be trapped is very small," he said.
"Even if the efficiency of the trapping process is increased, it is fundamentally limited by the amount of antiprotons that can be generated. Therefore I do not see applications in terms of new energy sources or weapons."
Antimatter Atoms Trapped for First Time—"A Big Deal"
But no applications for bombs, energy sources, or engines.
November 18, 2010
For the first time, scientists have trapped antimatter atoms — mysterious, oppositely charged versions of ordinary atoms — a new study says.
Though the achievement is "a big deal," it doesn't mean the antimatter bombs and engines of science fiction will be igniting anytime soon, experts say.
But the feat, undertaken a couple of months ago at the Geneva, Switzerland-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), paves the way to the potential solution of a fundamental cosmic conundrum.
Theories predict that antimatter particles and matter particles have opposite electrical charges but are otherwise nearly identical. Whenever the matter and antimatter meet, they self-annihilate in a shower of pure energy.
Yet for all the similarities, scientists think matter and antimatter must differ in some other fundamental way. That's because, even though matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts during the big bang, the universe we know is made almost entirely of matter.
"It's a central mystery in physics," said Joel Fajans, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-authored the new study, published today in the journal Nature.
The unprecedented trapping of antimatter atoms for study is a key step toward understanding why nature seems to abhor antimatter. (Read about a new material that may help explain why matter and antimatter are out of balance.)
Cliff Surko, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, called the trapping of antimatter atoms "a big deal."
"This is the next step, and it's a key next step" toward solving that central mystery, said Surko, who did not participate in the research. "It's a relief to have this step in hand."
Antimatter Bonding Activities
For the new experiments, the team used CERN's ALPHA experiment, a tangle of corrugated pipes, electromagnetic "bottles," and other equipment.
First, scientists had to create antiprotons and antielectrons, or positrons, and get them to bond. This formed atoms of antihydrogen, the simplest antimatter element—a feat first achieved in 2002 at CERN.
To make the antiprotons, the team took some of the protons normally used to feed CERN's nearby Large Hadron Collider, smashed them into metal targets, and captured the byproducts. The positrons were captured from a radioactive sodium source.
To get the antiprotons and positrons to bond, the team used an oscillating electric field, nudging the antiprotons into the same energy level as the positrons.
Next came the hard—and unprecedented—part: getting the antimatter particles to sit still.
Aiming for Permanent Antimatter-Atom Incarceration
The major challenge of trapping antimatter is that, once created, the particles are typically too hot and energetic to be trapped.
Fajans likens the task of antihydrogen trapping to games that involve tilting a toy disk to roll a ball bearing into a dimple or hole.
"If the ball is moving too fast, it won't stick in the dimple," Fajans said. "That was our problem with antihydrogen atoms. They were moving too fast to stay stuck in the traps we were making for them."
To slow them down, the team used a series of electric and magnetic fields to cool the antimatter.
Of the millions of antihydrogen atoms the ALPHA team created, only about 38 were cold enough—and slow enough—to be held in a kind of "magnetic bowl" that prevented them from interacting with normal matter.
Because the experiments were intended only to prove that antimatter atoms could be trapped, the team let the antihydrogen atoms go after only two-tenths of a second. But they hope to drastically increase the incarceration time in future experiments.
"Two-tenths of a second is nice, but forever is even better," Fajans said.
And forever may not be so far away. Since the experiments covered in the Nature study, the researchers have created many more antihydrogen atoms and held them for much longer—fodder for a future report.
According to Fajans, "We're doing much better now."
If more antihydrogen atoms can be produced and trapped for longer periods, scientists might finally be able to study them in enough detail to explain their scarcity in our universe, he added.
No Antimatter Bombs?
John Bollinger, of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado, agreed that the new results represent a major step forward—with caveats.
"It is a big deal," said Bollinger, who didn't take part in the experiment, "but more big deals need to be achieved before precise studies can be made—for example, extending the lifetime of the trapped antihydrogen and identifying the state ... of the antihydrogen."
As for real-world antimatter applications, UC San Diego's Surko said that the harnessing of antimatter as an energy source—say, for use in weapons or a Star Trek-style propulsion system—remains a far-fetched idea.
"The problem is that ... it takes so much more energy to make than you get out that it's pretty inefficient," he said. "And you have to go to great lengths to confine it for a long time."
NIST's Bollinger was likewise skeptical. "The amount of antimatter that can be trapped is very small," he said.
"Even if the efficiency of the trapping process is increased, it is fundamentally limited by the amount of antiprotons that can be generated. Therefore I do not see applications in terms of new energy sources or weapons."
'Space-time cloak' could conceal events
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/11/16/space.time.cloak
'Space-time cloak' could conceal events
Simon Hooper
November 16, 2010
Scientists compare bending light around an event to enabling a pedestrian to cross a road without interrupting the traffic flow.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Scientists publish theory behind "cloak" capable of masking events
Cloak would use metamaterials to change speed of light
"Proof of concept" experiment possible with current technology, scientists claim
Theoretical cloak could have implications for quantum computing
New materials with the ability to manipulate the speed of light could enable the creation of a "space-time cloak" capable of masking events or even creating an illusion of "Star Trek"-style transportation, according to scientists in London.
The cloak, while currently only existing in mathematical theory, takes advantage of the potential properties of "metamaterials" -- artificial materials designed and manipulated at a molecular level to interact with and control electromagnetic waves.
Scientists have previously demonstrated that one possible use of metamaterials could be to render objects invisible by bending light around them. But Professor Martin McCall of Imperial College London says he has now extended the concept of invisibility to a cloak also capable of hiding events both in time and space.
"In some senses our work is mathematically quite closely related to the idea of invisibility cloaking," McCall told CNN. "It's just that we're doing it in space and time instead of just in space. It's added a new dimension to cloaking, quite literally."
In a paper published in the Journal of Optics, McCall said metamaterials made it theoretically possible to manipulate light rays as they enter a material so that some parts speed up and others slow down. This could create "blind spots" in time, masking an event. While the accelerated light arrives at a space before an event has happened, the rest of the light doesn't reach it until after the event.
"If you had someone moving along the corridor, it would appear to a distant observer as if they had relocated instantaneously, creating the illusion of a Star Trek transporter," says McCall. "So, theoretically, this person might be able to do something and you wouldn't notice."
Alberto Favaro, who worked on the project, compared the process to moving a pedestrian across a highway full of traffic by speeding up those cars already at or beyond the crossing point while slowing down the approaching vehicles.
"Meanwhile an observer down the road would only see a steady stream of traffic," said Favaro.
McCall said the theory could have practical implications in the future for quantum computing by opening up new possibilities for signal processing.
"If you have two channels that are carrying information, one of which has a continuous stream of bits on it, our technique can interrupt that stream and then process the other channel as a priority. So it can act as an 'interrupt without interrupt.' The original channels can then be seamed back together as if they'd never been interrupted."
The authors of the paper also joke that the "technology" would have its uses for criminals.
"A safe cracker would be able, for a brief time, to enter a scene, open the safe, remove its contents, close the door and exit the scene, whilst the record of a surveillance camera apparently showed that the safe door was closed all the time," they write.
The metamaterials necessary to create the perfect cloak are still many decades away, McCall said, while any prospect of upscaling the technology to conceal events even lasting a few minutes remains in the realm of science fiction because of the vast scale of the cloak that would be needed.
"Light travels at 100 million meters per second and in order to cloak it you'd need that many meters (of metamaterial), roughly speaking," he said.
But McCall said current optical-fibre technology could be used to construct a "poor man's cloak" capable of demonstrating "proof of concept" by imperfectly hiding events taking place over a few nanoseconds.
"We've provided a theoretical recipe and suggested how the experiment can be done. We believe the proof of principle experiment is available with current technology that experimentalist groups could achieve. It's up to the experimentalists to rise to the challenge," he said.
Ulf Leonhardt, a physicist working on the theory of invisibility technology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said the paper was theoretically interesting but rejected the practicality of an experiment along the lines described by McCall.
"You'd need a very very strong light source and it's not something you can make with commercially available devices that you can buy for a standard university laboratory," Leonhardt told CNN.
But he said research activities in the field of invisibility had exploded since he first published papers on the subject in 2006. While optical cloaking technologies remained a long way off, there have been some very promising experiments involving cloaking soundwaves, he added.
"In acoustics you can definitely say this is working," said Leonhardt. "But it's still far away from being a practical technology for the optical range of the spectrum."
'Space-time cloak' could conceal events
Simon Hooper
November 16, 2010
Scientists compare bending light around an event to enabling a pedestrian to cross a road without interrupting the traffic flow.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Scientists publish theory behind "cloak" capable of masking events
Cloak would use metamaterials to change speed of light
"Proof of concept" experiment possible with current technology, scientists claim
Theoretical cloak could have implications for quantum computing
New materials with the ability to manipulate the speed of light could enable the creation of a "space-time cloak" capable of masking events or even creating an illusion of "Star Trek"-style transportation, according to scientists in London.
The cloak, while currently only existing in mathematical theory, takes advantage of the potential properties of "metamaterials" -- artificial materials designed and manipulated at a molecular level to interact with and control electromagnetic waves.
Scientists have previously demonstrated that one possible use of metamaterials could be to render objects invisible by bending light around them. But Professor Martin McCall of Imperial College London says he has now extended the concept of invisibility to a cloak also capable of hiding events both in time and space.
"In some senses our work is mathematically quite closely related to the idea of invisibility cloaking," McCall told CNN. "It's just that we're doing it in space and time instead of just in space. It's added a new dimension to cloaking, quite literally."
In a paper published in the Journal of Optics, McCall said metamaterials made it theoretically possible to manipulate light rays as they enter a material so that some parts speed up and others slow down. This could create "blind spots" in time, masking an event. While the accelerated light arrives at a space before an event has happened, the rest of the light doesn't reach it until after the event.
"If you had someone moving along the corridor, it would appear to a distant observer as if they had relocated instantaneously, creating the illusion of a Star Trek transporter," says McCall. "So, theoretically, this person might be able to do something and you wouldn't notice."
Alberto Favaro, who worked on the project, compared the process to moving a pedestrian across a highway full of traffic by speeding up those cars already at or beyond the crossing point while slowing down the approaching vehicles.
"Meanwhile an observer down the road would only see a steady stream of traffic," said Favaro.
McCall said the theory could have practical implications in the future for quantum computing by opening up new possibilities for signal processing.
"If you have two channels that are carrying information, one of which has a continuous stream of bits on it, our technique can interrupt that stream and then process the other channel as a priority. So it can act as an 'interrupt without interrupt.' The original channels can then be seamed back together as if they'd never been interrupted."
The authors of the paper also joke that the "technology" would have its uses for criminals.
"A safe cracker would be able, for a brief time, to enter a scene, open the safe, remove its contents, close the door and exit the scene, whilst the record of a surveillance camera apparently showed that the safe door was closed all the time," they write.
The metamaterials necessary to create the perfect cloak are still many decades away, McCall said, while any prospect of upscaling the technology to conceal events even lasting a few minutes remains in the realm of science fiction because of the vast scale of the cloak that would be needed.
"Light travels at 100 million meters per second and in order to cloak it you'd need that many meters (of metamaterial), roughly speaking," he said.
But McCall said current optical-fibre technology could be used to construct a "poor man's cloak" capable of demonstrating "proof of concept" by imperfectly hiding events taking place over a few nanoseconds.
"We've provided a theoretical recipe and suggested how the experiment can be done. We believe the proof of principle experiment is available with current technology that experimentalist groups could achieve. It's up to the experimentalists to rise to the challenge," he said.
Ulf Leonhardt, a physicist working on the theory of invisibility technology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said the paper was theoretically interesting but rejected the practicality of an experiment along the lines described by McCall.
"You'd need a very very strong light source and it's not something you can make with commercially available devices that you can buy for a standard university laboratory," Leonhardt told CNN.
But he said research activities in the field of invisibility had exploded since he first published papers on the subject in 2006. While optical cloaking technologies remained a long way off, there have been some very promising experiments involving cloaking soundwaves, he added.
"In acoustics you can definitely say this is working," said Leonhardt. "But it's still far away from being a practical technology for the optical range of the spectrum."
Friday, October 29, 2010
Stuff You Should Know: The Future
http://www.thesmokingjacket.com/entertainment/stuff-you-should-know-the-future
Stuff You Should Know: The Future
10/26/2010
Kristi
Just because we’re not flying around on Hoverboard jet cars, ingesting meals in tablet form and still alive despite the Y2K disaster that never happened, doesn’t mean that we’ve completely failed at the future. It only means the future has failed us. Or that we’re really bad at predicting the future. Probably that second one. Here are a few other things you might not know about the future.
1. Newton Got Time Wrong
Isaac Newton saw time as absolute, meaning it flows at the same rate for anyone anywhere in the universe. Einstein disagreed. His theory of special relativity replaced absolute time with spacetime, which is a model that puts time as the 4th dimension of the universe, after length, width and depth. Furthermore, according to Einstein, under the right conditions and with the right tools, time traveling to the future is theoretically possible. Score! Which leads us to…
2. Stephen Hawking Can Totally Build Us a Time Machine!
Kinda. OK, that was misleading. The title should have read, “Stephen Hawking Theoretically Knows What We Need to Do to Build a Time Machine That Will Take Us to the Future.” All we need for time travel, according to Hawking and every other scientist ever, is to go really, really fast. Almost as fast as the speed of light.
Sounds impossible, right? Wrong. Two words: particle accelerator. Over at CERN in Switzerland, physicists are pushing particles to almost the speed of light, and here’s where things get freaky. At that rate of acceleration, time for the particles slooooowwws down, which is why they live 30 times longer than they would in regular time. Apply those principles to a magic train that orbits the earth and boom! Time machine, yo.
3. Ancient People Saw Time as Cyclical
And that’s why they thought they could predict the future; because it’s all happened before. After all, the seasons, the stars, animal migrations and even humans acted in a predictable cycle, why not time itself? The Mayans, the Buddhists, Greek and Romans, Babylonians, Hindus, pretty much everyone, saw time as a wheel with repeating ages. St. Augustine put the kibosh on wheel time for Christians (and therefore the entire Western world) when he asserted that time began at Creation, will end when God says so, and everything and everyone only happens once.
4. But He Didn’t Stop People From Trying Their Darndest to Predict the Future
Not by a long shot. Over the years people have believed they could predict the future using stars, tea leaves, crystal balls, tarot cards, spirit boards, even urine bubbles, cheese shapes and poop.
5. But What People Really Love Doing is Predicting Doomsday
The first Christians believed Jesus was coming back in their lifetime, and that his coming would usher in God’s reign on earth and the end of human time. Over the years, Christians and non-Christians alike have tried to pin a date on when this all will take place. They’re almost always wrong.
New England farmer William Miller thought the Bible pointed to October 22, 1844 as the day Jesus was going to get his return on. Pat Robertson thought 1982 would be the big year. The folks with the Heaven’s Gate cult thought the end of the world was imminent, and that mass suicide would allow them to catch a ride with some aliens trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. In fairness, we’re not entirely sure they were wrong.
Even pop singers who look curiously like Alan Cumming and Steve Zahn have gotten into prognosticating the future act:
"In the Year 2525" by Zager & Evans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhNM2K8cmU8
6. This Just In: The World Will Not End in 2012
No, really. It turns out this big Mayan Calendar thing that everyone’s been talking about is off by 50 to 100 years. Not only will the world not end in 2012, but no one has any idea where they miscalculated when they converted the Mayan calendar to the modern Gregorian calendar. So, technically the end of the world may have already happened, according to Mayan prophesies.
Hope you didn’t already cash in your insurance policies!
7. Even Scientists Can Be Way Off About the Future
In 1974, Time magazine predicted a coming Ice Age, citing global cooler temperatures, “persistent pack ice” and many other dangerous warning signs as their evidence:
“Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend.”
So close. Change one word in that statement and they would have nailed it.
8. Science Fiction Writers, However, are Excellent Future Predictors
2001: A Space Odyssey totally predicted the iPad in 1968. Arthur C. Clarke called it a “newspad.”
“…he would plug in his foolscap-size newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers… he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him…the postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. …”
H.G. Wells called genetic engineering in 1896’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, police are testing out software that predicts crime before it happens, just like in Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report and in 1863 Jules Verne predicted the Internet, gas powered cars, skyscrapers, calculators and the building of the freakin’ Eiffel Tower, 23 years before it was actually built.
9. Futurists are Real World Scientists Who Are Paid to Predict the Future
Not joking, it’s a completely real, not made up job. And the best part of this job is that futurists can just make up whatever they feel like and call it a prediction. I’m going to be a futurist and predict you’ll read on to the the next sentence.
Ha! I did it! Someone get me a turban!
This year, Japanese futurists came up with some pretty cool educated guesses about what our future will look like:
•By 2022, synthetic blood will make blood transfusions unnecessary
•In 2026, we’ll finally have our robot maids.
•In 2031, we should finally be able to orbit the Earth for funsies.
•By 2038, we’ll have aircraft that doesn’t run on fossil fuel.
•And we’ll finally get that moon station we’ve been hoping for since the 1960’s in 2040.
Way to speed things along, science.
10. Other Than the Hoverboard Thing, Back to the Future II is Working Out Nicely, Thank You
Especially in the not-awesome predictions of the movie like constant, highly targeted advertising and surveillance cameras everywhere. But they also got telephone conversations via TV right, and that was just made possible this year. They also nailed hands-free video games, mobile payments and a kind of proto-version of social media. Hellooooo, Facebook.
Friday, October 1, 2010
11 Astounding Sci-Fi Predictions That Came True
http://mashable.com/2010/09/25/11-astounding-predictions
9-25-11
Sarah Kessler
11 Astounding Sci-Fi Predictions That Came True
Many literary forecasts of our technological future have already come to pass: the atomic bomb, the submarine, and even the iPad. Discovering passages of science fiction that turned out to be eerily accurate predictions is certainly quite entertaining.
It’s also a point of controversy among Sci-FI enthusiasts. Eric Rabkin, a professor at the University of Michigan and the 2010 winner of the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction scholarship, explains why.
“First, there’s the infinite monkeys problem. If you have an infinite number of monkeys randomly pounding on typewriters for an infinite length of time, the odds are 100% that at least one of them will … write Hamlet,” explains Rabkin. “In other words, with thousands of [science fiction] writers turning out tens of thousands of visions of the future, in what sense is any coincidence between a future element and what comes to pass a prediction?”
Consider this a full disclosure: the following list is not exactly academic or even scientific. But the members of The Science Fiction Research Association who helped us compile this list agreed that these 11 science fiction prediction passages were entertaining enough to share.
1. The iPad: 1968
We all giggled earlier this year when Apple announced the iPad. Some of us made jokes about certain feminine products. But it looks like Arthur C. Clarke went down the the same naming route with the “newspad.”
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke:
“When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug in his foolscap-size newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers…Switching to the display unit’s short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him. Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination…”
2. Tanks: 1903
The first tank battle in history didn’t take place until 1916, though it’s possible that seminal sci-fi author H.G. Wells was drawing upon Leonardo Da Vinci’s 15th century design when he imagined this scene in 1903.
The Land Ironclads by H.G. Wells:
‘Whit, whit, whit,’ sang something in the air…Bang came shrapnel, bursting close at hand as it seemed, and our two men were lying flat in a dip in the ground, and the light and everything had gone again, leaving a vast note of interrogation upon the night.
The war correspondent came within bawling range. ‘What the deuce was it? Shooting our men down!’
‘Black,’ said the artist, ‘and like a fort. Not two hundred yards from the first trench.’ He sought for comparisons in his mind. ‘Something between a big blockhouse and a giant’s dish-cover,’ he said.
‘And they were running!’ said the war correspondent.
‘You’d run if a thing like that, with a search-light to help it, turned up like a prowling nightmare in the middle of the night.’
…
In that flickering pallor it had the effect of a large and clumsy black insect, an insect the size of an iron-clad cruiser, crawling obliquely to the first line of trenches and firing shots out of portholes in its side. And on its carcass the bullets must have been battering with more than the passionate violence of hail on a roof of tin.
Then in the twinkling of an eye the curtain of the dark had fallen again and the monster had vanished, but the crescendo of musketry marked its approach to the trenches.
3. Virtual Reality Games: 1956
Considering that the first video game wasn’t created until 1958, virtual reality games were a pretty far reach in 1956.
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke:
Of all the thousands of forms of recreation in the city, these were the most popular. When you entered a saga, you were not merely a passive observer…You were an active participant and possessed—or seemed to possess—free will. The events and scenes which were the raw material of your adventures might have been prepared beforehand by forgotten artists, but there was enough flexibility to allow for wide variation. You could go into these phantom worlds with your friends, seeking the excitement that did not exist in Diaspar—and as long as the dream lasted there was no way in which it could be distinguished from reality.
4. The Atomic Bomb: 1914
“Though the term ‘atomic bomb’ had been used before Wells, it seems that he came up with the term on his own, and he was the one who popularized it,” says Dr. Patrick B. Sharp, who discusses this connection in his book Savage Perils. “He was extrapolating from the work of Frederick Soddy, a British chemist who worked on radioactivity.”
Leo Szilard, who participated in the Manhattan Project, cited this specific passage in a letter to Hugo Hirst (which is part of a collection of letters in The American Atom):
“It is remarkable that Wells should have written those pages in 1914. Of course, all this is moonshine, but I have reason to believe that in so far as the industrial applications of the present discoveries in physics are concerned, the forecast of the writers may prove to be more accurate than the forecast of the scientists.”
The World Set Free by H.G. Wells:
The problem which was already being mooted by such scientific men as Ramsay, Rutherford, and Soddy, in the very beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of inducing radio-activity in the heavier elements and so tapping the internal energy of atoms, was solved by a wonderful combination of induction, intuition, and luck by Holsten so soon as the year 1933. From the first detection of radio-activity to its first subjugation to human purpose measured little more than a quarter of a century. For twenty years after that, indeed, minor difficulties prevented any striking practical application of his success, but the essential thing was done, this new boundary in the march of human progress was crossed, in that year. He set up atomic disintegration in a minute particle of bismuth; it exploded with great violence into a heavy gas of extreme radio-activity, which disintegrated in its turn in the course of seven days, and it was only after another year’s work that he was able to show practically that the last result of this rapid release of energy was gold. But the thing was done—at the cost of a blistered chest and an injured finger, and from the moment when the invisible speck of bismuth flashed into riving and rending energy, Holsten knew that he had opened a way for mankind, however narrow and dark it might still be, to worlds of limitless power.
5. The cubicle: 1909
We admit that most cubicles aren’t hexagonal and don’t come with armchairs, but still, those beehive-like, fluorescent-lit cubes where so many of us click away our days didn’t catch on until the late 1960’s.
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster:
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk — that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh — a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.
An electric bell rang.
The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.
“I suppose I must see who it is”, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.
“Who is it?” she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.
But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said:
“Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes — for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on ‘Music during the Australian Period.’”
6. Earbud Headphones: 1950
Apple’s earbuds became the prominent headphone design when they were released with the first-generation iPod in 2001. When Bradbury wrote this in 1950, headphones looked more like this.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury:
And in her ears the little seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind.
7. Video Chat: 1911
AT&T started demonstrating its picturephone at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. The public was invited to place calls to a special exhibit at Disneyland. The first webcam was pointed at the coffee pot in the Trojan Room of the Computer Science Department of Cambridge University. Skype() was founded in 2003.
Ralph 124C 41+ by Hugo Gernsback:
Stepping to the Telephot on the side of the wall, he pressed a group of buttons and in a few minutes the faceplate of the Telephot became luminous, revealing the face of a clean-shaven man about thirty, a pleasant but serious face.
As soon as he recognized the face of Ralph in his own Telephot, he smiled and said, “Hello, Ralph.” “Hello, Edward. I wanted to ask you if you could come over to the laboratory tomorrow morning. I have something unusually interesting to show you. Look!”
He stepped to one side of his instrument so that his friend could see the apparatus on the table about ten feet from the Telephot faceplate.
8. Automatic Doors: 1899
Depending on who you ask, the automatic door was either invented by Heron of Alexandria about 2000 years ago or by Dee Horton and Lew Hewitt in 1960.
When the Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells:
The two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance at Graham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walked straight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. And then came a strange thing; a long strip of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again, and immediately Graham was alone with the new comer and the purple-robed man with the flaxen beard.
9. The Escalator: 1940
Although this is an often-cited example of a science fiction invention, the first escalator-like machine was actually patented in 1892 and the first moving walkway debuted at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.
The Roads Must Roll by Robert Heinlin:
They glided down an electric staircase, and debouched on the walkway which bordered the north-bound five-mile-an-hour strip. “Have you ever ridden a conveyor strip before?” Gaines inquired. “It’s quite simple. Just remember to face against the motion of the strip as you get on.”
They threaded their way through homeward-bound throngs, passing from strip to strip…
After passing through three more wind screens located at the forty, sixty and eighty-mile-an-hour strips, respectively, they finally reached the maximum speed strip, the hundred mile and hour strip, which made the round trip, San Diego to Reno and back, in twelve hours.
10. The Submarine: 1869
Jules Verne’s submarine is similar to the escalator in being frequently misquoted as an invention. According to Rabkin, the Nautilus was actually based on a submarine that had been used with military success by the Confederacy five years earlier.
“Verne didn’t so much predict the submarine as imagine how, in a more capable form, it might bear on social, political, scholarly, and even psychological matters,” explains Rabkin.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne:
For some time past vessels had been met by “an enormous thing,” a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale.
The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books) agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed. If it was a whale, it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science. Taking into consideration the mean of observations made at divers times — rejecting the timid estimate of those who assigned to this object a length of two hundred feet, equally with the exaggerated opinions which set it down as a mile in width and three in length — we might fairly conclude that this mysterious being surpassed greatly all dimensions admitted by the learned ones of the day, if it existed at all.
11. Radar: 1911
The evocation of radar in this passage is to Rabkin’s knowledge, the “one invention that ever appeared first in science fiction in adequate form and detail to count as a true prediction.” Guglielmo Marconi didn’t create a working device that could detect remote objects by signals until 1933.
Ralph 124C 41+ by Hugo Gernsback:
A pulsating polarized ether wave, if directed on a metal object can be reflected in the same manner as a light ray is reflected from a bright surface… By manipulating the entire apparatus like a searchlight, waves would be sent over a large area. Sooner or later these waves would strike a space flyer. A small part of these waves would strike the metal body of the flyer, and these rays would be reflected back to the sending apparatus. Here they would fall on the Actinoscope, which records only the reflected waves, not direct ones.
…From the intensity and elapsed time of the reflected impulses, the distance between the earth and the flyer can then be accurately estimated.
9-25-11
Sarah Kessler
11 Astounding Sci-Fi Predictions That Came True
Many literary forecasts of our technological future have already come to pass: the atomic bomb, the submarine, and even the iPad. Discovering passages of science fiction that turned out to be eerily accurate predictions is certainly quite entertaining.
It’s also a point of controversy among Sci-FI enthusiasts. Eric Rabkin, a professor at the University of Michigan and the 2010 winner of the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction scholarship, explains why.
“First, there’s the infinite monkeys problem. If you have an infinite number of monkeys randomly pounding on typewriters for an infinite length of time, the odds are 100% that at least one of them will … write Hamlet,” explains Rabkin. “In other words, with thousands of [science fiction] writers turning out tens of thousands of visions of the future, in what sense is any coincidence between a future element and what comes to pass a prediction?”
Consider this a full disclosure: the following list is not exactly academic or even scientific. But the members of The Science Fiction Research Association who helped us compile this list agreed that these 11 science fiction prediction passages were entertaining enough to share.
1. The iPad: 1968
We all giggled earlier this year when Apple announced the iPad. Some of us made jokes about certain feminine products. But it looks like Arthur C. Clarke went down the the same naming route with the “newspad.”
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke:
“When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug in his foolscap-size newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers…Switching to the display unit’s short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him. Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination…”
2. Tanks: 1903
The first tank battle in history didn’t take place until 1916, though it’s possible that seminal sci-fi author H.G. Wells was drawing upon Leonardo Da Vinci’s 15th century design when he imagined this scene in 1903.
The Land Ironclads by H.G. Wells:
‘Whit, whit, whit,’ sang something in the air…Bang came shrapnel, bursting close at hand as it seemed, and our two men were lying flat in a dip in the ground, and the light and everything had gone again, leaving a vast note of interrogation upon the night.
The war correspondent came within bawling range. ‘What the deuce was it? Shooting our men down!’
‘Black,’ said the artist, ‘and like a fort. Not two hundred yards from the first trench.’ He sought for comparisons in his mind. ‘Something between a big blockhouse and a giant’s dish-cover,’ he said.
‘And they were running!’ said the war correspondent.
‘You’d run if a thing like that, with a search-light to help it, turned up like a prowling nightmare in the middle of the night.’
…
In that flickering pallor it had the effect of a large and clumsy black insect, an insect the size of an iron-clad cruiser, crawling obliquely to the first line of trenches and firing shots out of portholes in its side. And on its carcass the bullets must have been battering with more than the passionate violence of hail on a roof of tin.
Then in the twinkling of an eye the curtain of the dark had fallen again and the monster had vanished, but the crescendo of musketry marked its approach to the trenches.
3. Virtual Reality Games: 1956
Considering that the first video game wasn’t created until 1958, virtual reality games were a pretty far reach in 1956.
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke:
Of all the thousands of forms of recreation in the city, these were the most popular. When you entered a saga, you were not merely a passive observer…You were an active participant and possessed—or seemed to possess—free will. The events and scenes which were the raw material of your adventures might have been prepared beforehand by forgotten artists, but there was enough flexibility to allow for wide variation. You could go into these phantom worlds with your friends, seeking the excitement that did not exist in Diaspar—and as long as the dream lasted there was no way in which it could be distinguished from reality.
4. The Atomic Bomb: 1914
“Though the term ‘atomic bomb’ had been used before Wells, it seems that he came up with the term on his own, and he was the one who popularized it,” says Dr. Patrick B. Sharp, who discusses this connection in his book Savage Perils. “He was extrapolating from the work of Frederick Soddy, a British chemist who worked on radioactivity.”
Leo Szilard, who participated in the Manhattan Project, cited this specific passage in a letter to Hugo Hirst (which is part of a collection of letters in The American Atom):
“It is remarkable that Wells should have written those pages in 1914. Of course, all this is moonshine, but I have reason to believe that in so far as the industrial applications of the present discoveries in physics are concerned, the forecast of the writers may prove to be more accurate than the forecast of the scientists.”
The World Set Free by H.G. Wells:
The problem which was already being mooted by such scientific men as Ramsay, Rutherford, and Soddy, in the very beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of inducing radio-activity in the heavier elements and so tapping the internal energy of atoms, was solved by a wonderful combination of induction, intuition, and luck by Holsten so soon as the year 1933. From the first detection of radio-activity to its first subjugation to human purpose measured little more than a quarter of a century. For twenty years after that, indeed, minor difficulties prevented any striking practical application of his success, but the essential thing was done, this new boundary in the march of human progress was crossed, in that year. He set up atomic disintegration in a minute particle of bismuth; it exploded with great violence into a heavy gas of extreme radio-activity, which disintegrated in its turn in the course of seven days, and it was only after another year’s work that he was able to show practically that the last result of this rapid release of energy was gold. But the thing was done—at the cost of a blistered chest and an injured finger, and from the moment when the invisible speck of bismuth flashed into riving and rending energy, Holsten knew that he had opened a way for mankind, however narrow and dark it might still be, to worlds of limitless power.
5. The cubicle: 1909
We admit that most cubicles aren’t hexagonal and don’t come with armchairs, but still, those beehive-like, fluorescent-lit cubes where so many of us click away our days didn’t catch on until the late 1960’s.
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster:
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk — that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh — a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.
An electric bell rang.
The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.
“I suppose I must see who it is”, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.
“Who is it?” she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.
But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said:
“Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes — for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on ‘Music during the Australian Period.’”
6. Earbud Headphones: 1950
Apple’s earbuds became the prominent headphone design when they were released with the first-generation iPod in 2001. When Bradbury wrote this in 1950, headphones looked more like this.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury:
And in her ears the little seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind.
7. Video Chat: 1911
AT&T started demonstrating its picturephone at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. The public was invited to place calls to a special exhibit at Disneyland. The first webcam was pointed at the coffee pot in the Trojan Room of the Computer Science Department of Cambridge University. Skype() was founded in 2003.
Ralph 124C 41+ by Hugo Gernsback:
Stepping to the Telephot on the side of the wall, he pressed a group of buttons and in a few minutes the faceplate of the Telephot became luminous, revealing the face of a clean-shaven man about thirty, a pleasant but serious face.
As soon as he recognized the face of Ralph in his own Telephot, he smiled and said, “Hello, Ralph.” “Hello, Edward. I wanted to ask you if you could come over to the laboratory tomorrow morning. I have something unusually interesting to show you. Look!”
He stepped to one side of his instrument so that his friend could see the apparatus on the table about ten feet from the Telephot faceplate.
8. Automatic Doors: 1899
Depending on who you ask, the automatic door was either invented by Heron of Alexandria about 2000 years ago or by Dee Horton and Lew Hewitt in 1960.
When the Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells:
The two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance at Graham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walked straight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. And then came a strange thing; a long strip of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again, and immediately Graham was alone with the new comer and the purple-robed man with the flaxen beard.
9. The Escalator: 1940
Although this is an often-cited example of a science fiction invention, the first escalator-like machine was actually patented in 1892 and the first moving walkway debuted at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.
The Roads Must Roll by Robert Heinlin:
They glided down an electric staircase, and debouched on the walkway which bordered the north-bound five-mile-an-hour strip. “Have you ever ridden a conveyor strip before?” Gaines inquired. “It’s quite simple. Just remember to face against the motion of the strip as you get on.”
They threaded their way through homeward-bound throngs, passing from strip to strip…
After passing through three more wind screens located at the forty, sixty and eighty-mile-an-hour strips, respectively, they finally reached the maximum speed strip, the hundred mile and hour strip, which made the round trip, San Diego to Reno and back, in twelve hours.
10. The Submarine: 1869
Jules Verne’s submarine is similar to the escalator in being frequently misquoted as an invention. According to Rabkin, the Nautilus was actually based on a submarine that had been used with military success by the Confederacy five years earlier.
“Verne didn’t so much predict the submarine as imagine how, in a more capable form, it might bear on social, political, scholarly, and even psychological matters,” explains Rabkin.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne:
For some time past vessels had been met by “an enormous thing,” a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale.
The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books) agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed. If it was a whale, it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science. Taking into consideration the mean of observations made at divers times — rejecting the timid estimate of those who assigned to this object a length of two hundred feet, equally with the exaggerated opinions which set it down as a mile in width and three in length — we might fairly conclude that this mysterious being surpassed greatly all dimensions admitted by the learned ones of the day, if it existed at all.
11. Radar: 1911
The evocation of radar in this passage is to Rabkin’s knowledge, the “one invention that ever appeared first in science fiction in adequate form and detail to count as a true prediction.” Guglielmo Marconi didn’t create a working device that could detect remote objects by signals until 1933.
Ralph 124C 41+ by Hugo Gernsback:
A pulsating polarized ether wave, if directed on a metal object can be reflected in the same manner as a light ray is reflected from a bright surface… By manipulating the entire apparatus like a searchlight, waves would be sent over a large area. Sooner or later these waves would strike a space flyer. A small part of these waves would strike the metal body of the flyer, and these rays would be reflected back to the sending apparatus. Here they would fall on the Actinoscope, which records only the reflected waves, not direct ones.
…From the intensity and elapsed time of the reflected impulses, the distance between the earth and the flyer can then be accurately estimated.
Friday, December 11, 2009
What Drugs Are Our Astronauts On?
http://news.discovery.com/space/what-drugs-are-our-astronauts-on.html
What Drugs Are Our Astronauts On?
By Robert Lamb Thu Dec 03, 2009
Outer space, at least as we encounter it in science fiction, is basically a drug free-for-all. If character's aren’t piloting starships on Melange or Somec, then they're playing with dolls on Can-D or pumping their brains full of Merge Nine, Semuta and whatever passes for rave music 20,000 years from now.
But let's steer clear of the fictional space drugs and consider the buffet of pharmaceuticals that real astronauts might indulge themselves in.
Booze: While coffee continues to be readily available in space, alcohol is more of a gray area. In 1969, Buzz Aldrin consumed communion wine on the moon and, if you believe some of the stories, the Russian MIR space station was practically swimming in vodka. While the ISS is technically a dry operation, NASA came under scrutiny in 2007 amid reports of astronauts hitting the bottle before takeoff. It's hard to argue drinking in orbit is a good idea, but that hasn't stopped scientists from developing space brews. According to New Scientist, a University of Colorado student, with a little help from Coors, actually sent a miniature brewing kit into orbit as part of her thesis on fermentation in space. The results were reportedly rather foul, but it's just as well. Without gravity, you can't get a good head on a pint anyway.
Modafinil: You may know it as Provigil, Alertec, Vigicer or Modalert, but astronauts know it as the upper they take when sleep isn't an option. The Good Drug Guide describes it as "a memory-improving and mood-brightening psychostimulant" that "enhances wakefulness, attention capacity and vigilance." You have to love vigilance-enhancing chemicals. According to a 2009 report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Modafinil helps ISS crew members optimize their performances, no matter how fatigued they feel.
Scopolamine: In order to avoid blasting forth some low-gravity vomit, astronauts sometimes turn to ScopeDex, a speedy cocktail of Scopolamine and Dexedrine to combat nausea. According to Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing, good old Scopolamine is also known as "devil's breath" in Columbia, where criminals use it to turn unsuspecting victims into temporary zombie slaves. The CIA even experimented with the stuff as a truth serum in the ‘60s. Perhaps the lesson here is to use zombie mind-control drugs responsibly while in orbit.
Zoledronate: Bone-mass loss is one of the more detrimental side effects of space travel, so it's only natural that we'd try to dream up a drug to combat it. Enter zoledronate, normally used to prevent secondary bone tumors in cancer patients. According to BioEd Online, the drug showed promise a few years back as a means to slow the effects of low-gravity bone-mass loss. NASA continues to research its potential.
Anti-moon dust pills: Lunar dust is a huge nuisance. It can damage sensitive equipment and, if it coats your space suit during an Earthlit stroll, it can absorb enough solar energy to bake you in your suit. The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) has also pointed out that, if tracked into a low-gravity lunar base, it could wind up inside human lungs. According to Science Daily, there are no known illnesses due to lunar dust exposure, but it has a lot in common with fresh-fractured quartz, a highly toxic substance. The long-term effects could be quite harmful, leading NSBRI researchers to propose the use of target drugs to minimize the effect of tiny particles suspended in the lung.
Tranquilizers: Yes, according to a 2007 report from the Associated Press, astronauts keep a few tranqs on hand in case anyone goes all suicidal or psychotic in space. NASA recommends binding the individual's wrists and ankles with duct tape (ever the space traveler's friend!), strapping them down with a bungee cord and, if necessary, sticking them with a tranquilizer. Sure, it hardly makes for a civilized evening aboard ISS, but it beats someone blowing the hatch because they think they saw a something crawling on one of the solar panels.
Finally, it's important to keep in mind that drugs have a shorter shelf life in space. According to Space.com, NASA has observed that the effectiveness of some drugs decreases after travel aboard the space shuttle or the ISS. So there's another obstacle to manned deep-space exploration.
You can return to your purely imaginary space substances now. Speaking of which, just what fictional space drugs do you find most amusing in film, TV or literature? Can you name the books and films I referenced in the first two paragraphs?
What Drugs Are Our Astronauts On?
By Robert Lamb Thu Dec 03, 2009
Outer space, at least as we encounter it in science fiction, is basically a drug free-for-all. If character's aren’t piloting starships on Melange or Somec, then they're playing with dolls on Can-D or pumping their brains full of Merge Nine, Semuta and whatever passes for rave music 20,000 years from now.
But let's steer clear of the fictional space drugs and consider the buffet of pharmaceuticals that real astronauts might indulge themselves in.
Booze: While coffee continues to be readily available in space, alcohol is more of a gray area. In 1969, Buzz Aldrin consumed communion wine on the moon and, if you believe some of the stories, the Russian MIR space station was practically swimming in vodka. While the ISS is technically a dry operation, NASA came under scrutiny in 2007 amid reports of astronauts hitting the bottle before takeoff. It's hard to argue drinking in orbit is a good idea, but that hasn't stopped scientists from developing space brews. According to New Scientist, a University of Colorado student, with a little help from Coors, actually sent a miniature brewing kit into orbit as part of her thesis on fermentation in space. The results were reportedly rather foul, but it's just as well. Without gravity, you can't get a good head on a pint anyway.
Modafinil: You may know it as Provigil, Alertec, Vigicer or Modalert, but astronauts know it as the upper they take when sleep isn't an option. The Good Drug Guide describes it as "a memory-improving and mood-brightening psychostimulant" that "enhances wakefulness, attention capacity and vigilance." You have to love vigilance-enhancing chemicals. According to a 2009 report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Modafinil helps ISS crew members optimize their performances, no matter how fatigued they feel.
Scopolamine: In order to avoid blasting forth some low-gravity vomit, astronauts sometimes turn to ScopeDex, a speedy cocktail of Scopolamine and Dexedrine to combat nausea. According to Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing, good old Scopolamine is also known as "devil's breath" in Columbia, where criminals use it to turn unsuspecting victims into temporary zombie slaves. The CIA even experimented with the stuff as a truth serum in the ‘60s. Perhaps the lesson here is to use zombie mind-control drugs responsibly while in orbit.
Zoledronate: Bone-mass loss is one of the more detrimental side effects of space travel, so it's only natural that we'd try to dream up a drug to combat it. Enter zoledronate, normally used to prevent secondary bone tumors in cancer patients. According to BioEd Online, the drug showed promise a few years back as a means to slow the effects of low-gravity bone-mass loss. NASA continues to research its potential.
Anti-moon dust pills: Lunar dust is a huge nuisance. It can damage sensitive equipment and, if it coats your space suit during an Earthlit stroll, it can absorb enough solar energy to bake you in your suit. The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) has also pointed out that, if tracked into a low-gravity lunar base, it could wind up inside human lungs. According to Science Daily, there are no known illnesses due to lunar dust exposure, but it has a lot in common with fresh-fractured quartz, a highly toxic substance. The long-term effects could be quite harmful, leading NSBRI researchers to propose the use of target drugs to minimize the effect of tiny particles suspended in the lung.
Tranquilizers: Yes, according to a 2007 report from the Associated Press, astronauts keep a few tranqs on hand in case anyone goes all suicidal or psychotic in space. NASA recommends binding the individual's wrists and ankles with duct tape (ever the space traveler's friend!), strapping them down with a bungee cord and, if necessary, sticking them with a tranquilizer. Sure, it hardly makes for a civilized evening aboard ISS, but it beats someone blowing the hatch because they think they saw a something crawling on one of the solar panels.
Finally, it's important to keep in mind that drugs have a shorter shelf life in space. According to Space.com, NASA has observed that the effectiveness of some drugs decreases after travel aboard the space shuttle or the ISS. So there's another obstacle to manned deep-space exploration.
You can return to your purely imaginary space substances now. Speaking of which, just what fictional space drugs do you find most amusing in film, TV or literature? Can you name the books and films I referenced in the first two paragraphs?
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Sci-Fi's "Forry" Ackerman Is Dead
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&id=6261005-DECEMBER-08
Sci-Fi's "Forry" Ackerman Is Dead
Forrest J. Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term "sci-fi," has died, the Associated Press reported. He was 92.
Ackerman died Dec. 4 of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman's estate, told the AP.
Ackerman was legendary in science fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles, nicknamed the "Ackermansion."
Every Saturday morning that he was home, Ackerman would open up the house to anyone who wanted to view his treasures; everyone knew him as "Forry." He sold some pieces and gave away others when he moved to a smaller house in 2002, but he continued to let people visit him every Saturday for as long as his health permitted.
Forrest J. Ackerman in his memorabilia-crammed "Ackermansion" home in Los Angeles in 1990. (Alan Light)
Ackerman's collection once included more than 50,000 books, thousands of science fiction magazines and such items as Bela Lugosi's cape from the 1931 film Dracula.
His greatest achievement, however, was likely discovering Bradbury, author of the literary classics Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. Ackerman had placed a flyer in a Los Angeles bookstore for a science fiction club he was founding, and a teenage Bradbury showed up.
Later, Ackerman gave Bradbury the money to start his own science fiction magazine, Futuria Fantasia, and paid the author's way to New York for an authors' meeting that Bradbury said helped launch his career.
As a literary agent, Ackerman represented Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and numerous other science fiction writers.
He said the term "sci-fi" came to him in 1954 when he was listening to a car radio and heard an announcer mention the word "hi-fi."
Forrest James Ackerman was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 24, 1916. He fell in love with science fiction, he once said, when he was 9 years old and saw a magazine called Amazing Stories. He would hold onto that publication for the rest of his life. Ackerman, who had no children, was preceded in death by his wife, Wendayne.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The 5 Most Scientifically Plausible Sci-Fi Movies
http://www.newsarama.com/film/081116-top-5-plausible-sci-fi.html
The 5 Most Scientifically Plausible Sci-Fi Movies
By Benjamin Radford, Special to Newsarama
06 November 2008
Great science fiction isn't just about gooey aliens and gee-whiz technologies like teleporters. Unlike, say, the ever-popular fantasy genre, sci-fi is often grounded in the human condition and based on plausible—if speculative—science. Of course, some science fiction films are more plausible than others: Would the Galactic Empire really have enough manpower to build (and then rebuild) the Death Star in the Star Wars films? While legions of sci-fi nerds debate that question, here’s are flicks that stand out:
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
It's no accident that the classic sci-fi film 2001 was rooted in good science, having sprung from the mind of the late, great Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke's background in science informed and inspired the setting in 2001, describing geosynchronous satellites, artificial intelligence, and commercial space travel. Clarke lived long enough to see the satellites he envisioned actually put into orbit, and in the deserts of New Mexico, a "spaceport" is planned that will allow paying passengers to see our pale blue dot from near space.
2. The Truman Show (1998)
It's hard for many young people to remember, but there was a time before the 24-hour news feed and the reality TV craze. The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey as the unwitting star of a voyeuristic television show watched by billions around the planet, foretold the coming of America's weekly entertainment. Not only was close, continuous surveillance plausible, it already exists in current hits like Big Brother and Survivor.
3. Gattaca (1997)
In the not-too-distant future world of Gattaca, children's genes are pre-selected by their upper-class parents for the best traits; those babies whose genes are imperfect are treated as second-class citizens. Today DNA analysis is common, and several companies offer genetic testing for as little as a few hundred dollars. Genetic profiling? Health insurance companies potentially denying claims based on genetic predisposition to a disease? For many, this fear is not science fiction but science fact.
4. Iron Man (2008)
Marvel Comics hero Tony Stark is a genius inventor whose suit of armor—basically a souped-up mechanical exoskeleton run by computers—is probably more scientifically plausible than most superheroes. Though Iron Man's nifty gadgets, including his handy laser repulsors and jet boots, remain science fiction, in many cases the underlying scientific principles are sound. Practical problems, such as the suit's cost and weight, would make a real Iron Man unlikely.
5. Jurassic Park (1993)
Part of what made Michael Crichton an enormously popular writer was his ability to extrapolate current science technology. Science fiction has always been about "What if?", and few modern authors blended science fact with science fiction so successfully. Though scientists are a long way off from cloning dinosaurs—they haven't gone much past Dolly the cloned sheep—the scientific fundamentals are there. By the end of the century, real cloned dinos might just be chasing down tourists!
Benjamin Radford is a writer, columnist for LiveScience, and film critic. He has written and directed two short films, one of which will be released in 2009.
The 5 Most Scientifically Plausible Sci-Fi Movies
By Benjamin Radford, Special to Newsarama
06 November 2008
Great science fiction isn't just about gooey aliens and gee-whiz technologies like teleporters. Unlike, say, the ever-popular fantasy genre, sci-fi is often grounded in the human condition and based on plausible—if speculative—science. Of course, some science fiction films are more plausible than others: Would the Galactic Empire really have enough manpower to build (and then rebuild) the Death Star in the Star Wars films? While legions of sci-fi nerds debate that question, here’s are flicks that stand out:
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
It's no accident that the classic sci-fi film 2001 was rooted in good science, having sprung from the mind of the late, great Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke's background in science informed and inspired the setting in 2001, describing geosynchronous satellites, artificial intelligence, and commercial space travel. Clarke lived long enough to see the satellites he envisioned actually put into orbit, and in the deserts of New Mexico, a "spaceport" is planned that will allow paying passengers to see our pale blue dot from near space.
2. The Truman Show (1998)
It's hard for many young people to remember, but there was a time before the 24-hour news feed and the reality TV craze. The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey as the unwitting star of a voyeuristic television show watched by billions around the planet, foretold the coming of America's weekly entertainment. Not only was close, continuous surveillance plausible, it already exists in current hits like Big Brother and Survivor.
3. Gattaca (1997)
In the not-too-distant future world of Gattaca, children's genes are pre-selected by their upper-class parents for the best traits; those babies whose genes are imperfect are treated as second-class citizens. Today DNA analysis is common, and several companies offer genetic testing for as little as a few hundred dollars. Genetic profiling? Health insurance companies potentially denying claims based on genetic predisposition to a disease? For many, this fear is not science fiction but science fact.
4. Iron Man (2008)
Marvel Comics hero Tony Stark is a genius inventor whose suit of armor—basically a souped-up mechanical exoskeleton run by computers—is probably more scientifically plausible than most superheroes. Though Iron Man's nifty gadgets, including his handy laser repulsors and jet boots, remain science fiction, in many cases the underlying scientific principles are sound. Practical problems, such as the suit's cost and weight, would make a real Iron Man unlikely.
5. Jurassic Park (1993)
Part of what made Michael Crichton an enormously popular writer was his ability to extrapolate current science technology. Science fiction has always been about "What if?", and few modern authors blended science fact with science fiction so successfully. Though scientists are a long way off from cloning dinosaurs—they haven't gone much past Dolly the cloned sheep—the scientific fundamentals are there. By the end of the century, real cloned dinos might just be chasing down tourists!
Benjamin Radford is a writer, columnist for LiveScience, and film critic. He has written and directed two short films, one of which will be released in 2009.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
