What the future can look like, if we take charge...

The Universe is Finely Tuned for Life

Gerald Schroeder has several books dealing with this topic, my favorite is The Science of God. In that book he explores the evidence supporting the view that God created the universe and uses the Hebrew Scripture to help support his thesis. I recommend that book for anybody serious about the question of whether or not God created the all that there is.

Meanwhile, here's a fine video approaching the question from a simple, logical point of view employing science to back up the thesis:

Science of Over the Edge: Drinking Hot Beverages in the Summer

In Give Her the Stars, Elise, the heroine, like to drink hot tea in the summer. This practice actually has benefits, provided certain conditions are met.

1) all your sweat will evaporate

2) it's not humid

If you drink a hot beverage on a hot day your stomach's thermo-sensors become overactive and send signals to the hypothalamus that you're hot, causing that organ to trigger sweating. So, if it can all evaporate, you'll lose more heat than you took in when you drank the hot drink.

If it's humid and/or you're already soggy with sweat, choose something cold.

Why Your Weird Friends are Drinking Hot Coffee in the Summer...

Warp Drive, Gravity and Passenger Spaceships

If you can create a warp drive that rides a wave of bent time/space, how do you jump start it and more importantly, how do you turn it off? The leading edge of the wave is not in your time. The proposed design places passengers in a time bubble within a large ring. The time bubble operates on home time while the ring rides a wave of space/time. For more, read the article below:

NASA's interplanetary space ship design

photo credit: sploid.gizmodo.com

 In the Over the Edge series Candan Rubeek is the primary inventor of the gravitational drive, a system that employs gravity to propel ships to near light speeds. Admittedly this author has no idea, at this time, precisely how that might work except to say that it pushes against and pulls depending on the chosen direction--like a magnet pushing and pulling against another magnet. If you've ever played with super strong magnets you know you can get quite a bounce when you force the magnets resisting ends toward one another.

Though we can say a lot of things about gravity, we still don't understand it. In this video we come right to the edge of the answer to the big question, "What is gravity?", and then veer back into known territory again. Why? Because we don't know what gravity is! Check it out, it is worth the watch:



Virgin Galactic is the front leader in the creation of passenger spaceships. The most interesting bit of information for me in the clip featured below is how the ships are constructed without rivets or welds:

An insider's look at Virgin Galactic's passenger space ship

Your Jet Pack Coming Soon

I'll admit it. I'm super tired and I don't want to write even an opening paragraph. Just go to the website and read what these guys have to say, it's easier and faster for both of us: The Martin Jetpack

And while we're on the subject, if you don't want to go to the website, here's a video of the Martin Jetpack, but if you're going to ride this thing, you're going to want hearing protectors:

Measuring Time

Recipes From the "Over the Edge" Universe

In the Over the Edge series characters drink wines, "cofaynee," Ephonian "Blizzards" and this Celian drink reformulated for Earthlings by Chris Colman of Las Vegas, Nevada:

Electric Blue Freeze

Hurricane Glass (ice to top of glass)

1 oz Malibu Rum

1 oz Grey Goose Vodka

½ oz Blue Curacao

Almost fill with Sweet & Sour

Splash of 7-up

Blended

"Lagrangian Real Estate: Places in Space," by J.C. Conway

photo credit: J.C. Conway's blog post

In Over the Edge planets establish space ports where trade and passenger traffic can make connections with the too-large-to-land on the planet surface. Mr. Conway has written a blog post about this potentially valuable space real estate. "Lagrangian Real Estate: Places in Space," by J.C. Conway

The Science of Over the Edge: Flying Cars

Slovakian Flying Car Prototype Takes Off

The link above takes you to a story about the flying cars, but which also includes "Ten Wild Ways to Travel in the Future." But given the present regulatory attitude of the United States, is there anyone out there who really believes ordinary Joes will every be permitted to own a flying car? It's just too easy to kill yourself and someone else with one of those suckers and we can't have that! We are all about safety and security, not about risk taking and innovation these days. If the modern automobile were invented today nobody would be allowed to ride it. Heck, horses are dangerous. We probably wouldn't be allowed to ride them either. Everybody walk!

Humans, if allowed to pursue their dreams, will keep on inventing and finding ways around The Man, that is big, intrusive government. The Slovakian Areomobil, pictured below, is the latest development.  And, the US-based Terrafugia's "Transition" flying car, which was featured in an earlier post on this blog (July 1, 2010), plans to introduce their flying car to the market within a year. We may not have our rocket packs, but it looks like we will have our flying cars!

Photo credit: news.discover.com

In Over the Edge characters drive hover cars, which though similar in that they are also equipped with wheels for on-road travel, use an entirely different means of propulsion.

 Image credit: News.Discovery.com

The Science of Over the Edge: Invisibility

The World's first invisible skyscraper

In the Over the Edge series Minan character employ technology called "chameleon battle skin" which makes them invisible to all forms of detection except physical touch. Robo eyes and snooper robos used in "low tech" (places where infra-red and x-ray detection will not be deployed) settings use micro cameras and screens to hide in plain sight. In Seoul, Korea, builders are now at work constructing the first invisible skyscraper which will use this same technology to hide in plain sight. Because the tower will use cameras and screens to create the illusion of invisibility, they can also turn the entire building into a movie screen or add images to the scenes picked up on one side of the building and projected to the other side. Local birds and airplanes might not find this innovation quite so thrilling.

Photo credit: businessinsider.com

Indepth discussion of the invisibile tower click here

Northern Lights...

The Science of Over the Edge: Micro-needles

In Over the Edge when patients in hospitals need medication, rather than using an IV, doctors use micro-needles, which are essentially gelatin pads embedded with tiny needles that feed the medication from the gel into the patient. When the needle embedded pad is applied to the person, a measured amount of medication is contained within the gel pad. The gel pad's outer layer protects the gel and the medication from normal wear and tear, which includes bathing. This article features a similar product, but in this case, the "microneedle patch" is absorbed into the body over time.

Give Yourself the Flu Vaccine

Science of Over the Edge: 3D Designing and Printing

In the Over the Edge series characters use a "facsimile" machine to create everything from documents identical to the original right down to the fibers and oils found in the paper to garments created beginning with generating the fiber on up. Virgin Galactic designers posted this video explaining the innovations they are developing to facilitate design and fabrication:

The Music of the Stars

"...while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy," Job 38:7

Quantum Mechanics: a Primer

Physicists Amir Safavi-Naeini and Oskar Painter describe how they were able to measure quantum motions of 1 femtometer (0.000000000000001 meters) in a micro-scale object.

Space Oddity covered by Astronaut Chris Hadfield

David Bowie wrote and performed "Space Oddity" in 1969. Chris Hadfield improves on it with lyrics from a true astronaut's point of view. Together they've created one awesome tune!

Flexi-Paper and 3-D Printing: The Science of Over the Edge

In the Over the Edge universe, characters use things called "flexi-docs" that are essentially plastic sheets that display writing and short videos. This sort of document isn't a new idea in fiction. In the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling's characters had newspapers and stand alone photographs in which, by the power of magic, the images moved, repeating short loops. I think Philip K. Dick has some characters employing something similar.

In Over the Edge flexi-docs are used for everything from news magazines to business accounting reports to fiction. And essentially resemble the document featured in this YouTube video: Polymer Vision Rollable 6-inch SVGA display

In the Over the Edge universe 3-D printing is a fact of life. Characters employed as "Artificers" use 3-D printers and other manufacturing capabilities to duplicate or fabricate anything needed and lots of things desired. In Give Her the Stars, Artificers copy a Cadillac Escalade and give it some fine "after-market" upgrades.

 Photo credit: Will 2013 be the Year 3-D Printing Goes Mainstream?

The "facsimile" appears frequently in the series. This is a document, not unlike a fax, sent from one location to another, but the document the recipient prints is identical to the original, right down to the fibers in the paper. In the novels, the facsimile machine recreates the document from a molecular level up so that it even retains the fingerprints and oils from the creator's hands.

In Give Her the Stars, Lendar fabricates a dress for Elise using a 3-D printer to manufacture the fabric and sewing robots to put the garment together. Also, featured in that story is mention of using muscle cells to create cuts of meat rather than having to grow an animal and butcher it. This idea isn't new either, it's been around for awhile. See: Test tube hamburger. This author has no comment on meat produced in this manner other than the reminder that if one is hungry one will eat things that are normally rejected.

In the Over the Edge universe, starship captains are fitted with a device that essentially makes them the controlling component of their spaceship, if they so desire, or at least in touch with its every function and able to observe whatever it can observe. Through a device called a "kaldeskop," characters are able to use mind-control to operate their ship or any device on their ship remotely by thought.

The cyborg idea is not new at all. In truth, eye glasses, contacts, canes, even shoes are cyborg items. Here's an article on a cyborg ear, not unlike some accoutrements found in Over the Edge which readers might find interesting: The Six-Million Dollar Ear

The Bionic Woman, Jamie Sommers (Lindsay Wagner), using her bionic ear for the first time on the show.

 

More articles on 3-D printing:

3-D Printing: The Next Industrial Revolution...

Ferred Magna Leaves Ephon for the spaceship Aquillion...

Ferred would have preferred to sit by himself in the passenger compartment where he could marinate in his gloom, but Captain Peland had invited him and then insisted he sit in the cockpit and observe.

Observe, maybe; understand what was going on, absolutely not.

He wasn’t capable of much, not these days. He had put his affairs in order. The house was leased to a well-respected rental management firm. His sport hover car had been carefully boxed and stored. He had made arrangements for things he thought he’d need in this strange after-life shipped to the Aquillion, but left the particulars to the movers.

As instructed, he’d arrived at the appointed location planetside to join the Pelands for a shuttle ride to the Fabricon space jet manufacturing facility.

He’d stood on the spots where he was told to stand and sat in the places where he was told to sit. And now he pretended to observe while his brain languished in its lugubrious state.

“Seat belts fastened, please,” chirped Peland’s wife, Mrayan, the stunning Areban Kabelian mixed breed lady. She was thrilled, like a child with a new toy. Her brand new space jet, a gift from her husband. She was pilot. She seemed to know what she was doing, confidently giving instructions to Captain Peland who obeyed her orders and responded with official sounding replies.

The other crew member in the cockpit, Fabrican Industries’ chatty, cheerful navigator, sat behind Peland’s wife, handling navigation. Not that this trip would require much navigating. They were scheduled to make only a short jump to the Aquillion, the Pelands’ brand new space ship, parked somewhere out there, not far away in astronomical terms.

The Fabricon navigator, Pheeto Oppel, would also navigate during the journey to Celi where he would board another star vessel due for a refitting and guide it back to Ephon. Apparently, that’s what he did, hopped back and forth from this place and that navigating vessels Fabricon had either sold or contracted to refit.

“This will be my twentieth trip,” a cheerful Pheeto told Ferred, as if being the twentieth trip awarded him a prize.

Twenty trips, each about two years in length (from a planetside point of view), but only a fraction of that time for Pheeto. He'd been gone from his home on Celi for forty years, Celian Standard Time, yet he looked hardly a day over eighteen! At this rate, the man would never age! "Born at the dawn of the age of the gravitational drive," he'd explained, "Jumped into the navigator’s field with the very first graduating class trained to handle this new mode of space flight. Haven't looked back."

If he’d stayed planetside, he'd be older than me, Ferred realized.

The peculiar sensation spacers faced at one time or another dubbed “time psychosis” nibbled at his mind. The man was born years before me, but I’m his senior in age. The concept wasn’t new to Ferred the astronomer, but facing it in living color, breathing and speaking was. He hadn't been prepared for the visceral punch time psychosis could give. Ferred swallowed and distracted himself with a different trail of thought.

Celi was the place for pioneers, for people longing to be free and who didn’t mind adopting the Celian way of life. It was on Celi where the famed Kabelian, Candan Rubeek had done his seminal work inventing the gravitational drive to start with. Now that man, he would be a hundred years old if he never traveled in space.

Celi had, after all, provided the greatest leaps in Somainain science, technology, art and literature in the history of the universe, so why not meld to it? Because it’s not all good, Ferred thought, in a stereotypical, conservative Ephonian way. He grimaced. You're heading right for Celi, directly to Navigator's school. Retaining the good from your previous incarnation when you take on a new one is a real trick. He scowled. I cast off the best of my first incarnation long before this, my third remake.

Pheeto pointed at his screen and explained something he saw there, but Ferred didn’t hear a word. He eyed Pheeto with a scientist's hard gleam and not a little envy. Just look at him, confident, young and able. Those Celians. Embracing the future with enthusiasm. Disgustingly optimistic.

Ferred stared out the window at the launching bay where Fabricon employees and their robot assistants prepared the Criche for launch. Through a great, man-made diamond window, he could see other new jets waiting in queue. Each one acrawl with workers adding finishing touches.

On the other hand, he left no one behind who cared whether he existed. Would it make any difference if he stayed young while his relatives and peers aged? Not one whit. Those days, when his existence mattered to someone, were gone. He had not only burned his bridges, he'd blown up the abutments and the foundations.

Cheerfully, Pheeton went on talking, “I’ve only spent three years planetside since taking this job and that in training on Ephon." He shrugged. "Took some time off while I was there to experience the natural world for a week or so." He added in sign language, "(But mostly I’m a spacer and I like it that way. If I ever meet a lady, well, then we’ll see.)” He grinned like the young fool he so obviously was and focused again on his operation panel.

Spacers: They might never age, but they might never mature either, Ferred decided.

While time passed, the space jet, cockpit control panel became brighter and brighter with blinking lights, luminous dials, illuminated gauges and diode computer screens that flashed recognizable symbols that amounted to gibberish in their totality for Ferred. The space buzzed with computer clicking and whirring, buzzing and other soft, mechanical noise.

Mrs. Captain Peland, what should he call her? She’d said he should call her Mrayan, but such informality was not acceptable. Two captain Pelands was confusing. Captain Peland Number One and Captain Peland Number Two? Ludicrous.

Whatever her title, she was Pilot. Mrayan Peland pushed the stick forward and the engines came to life. Power surged under his feet and vibrated through the jet’s frame rattling his bones. Fear attacked and with it a rush of nausea.You're leaving Ehpon for good!

Was this the right decision?

Would he regret it for the rest of his life?

Nothing would ever be the same again!

Nothing!

 His jowls felt loose and the organs within his ribs strained their moorings, but before he could cry out, “Let me out of here, let me go home,” the jet leapt into space and it was too late.

NASA photo: Shadow of the Dark Rift

Everything already, before now, before you began staying at the space port, before Nali’a died, everything already changed. When you left the Warrior Poet Way, you changed everything. The realization left him feeling cold, as if he’d been out on a winter night without shoes or hat, in the dark, alone.

O Eternal, where are You?

Stars spread in the blackness. He glimpsed the glowing albumen of Ephon before the jet swerved away and the Aquillion dominated the view, a single mercury glass ornament hanging in the black distance surrounded by tiny sparks of light.

Star Wars--uncut!

New Territory for General Relativity

Einstein's Theory of Relativity has held up as long as the examiner does not go too small, then it seems to fall apart. For the ultra-small, it appears we need a separate theory, but that theory has eluded us. And to join the two theories, everyone scrambles to find the holy grail of physics: The Unified Theory. No luck there either. Meanwhile, Einstein's work just keeps working.  Einstein and Beyond

"Astronomers have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope, along with radio telescopes around the world, to find and study a bizarre stellar pair consisting of the most massive neutron star confirmed so far, orbited by a white dwarf star. This strange new binary allows tests of Einstein’s theory of gravity — general relativity — in ways that were not possible up to now. So far the new observations exactly agree with the predictions from general relativity and are inconsistent with some alternative theories. The results will appear in the journal Science on 26 April 2013," John Antoniadis, Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany; Michael Kramer, Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany; Richard Hook, ESO Public Information Officer, Garching bei Munchen, Germany.

Einstein Was Right--So Far: Record Breaking Pulsar Takes Tests of General Relativity Into New Territory