Chips would still be made of traditional materials.. you print the circuitry that would normally be an a sheet of silicon onto the paper using conductive inks.. the theory works quite well and has been used for years on mylar. Buttons and such would be made by printing half a connection on one sheet and the other half on another with a third sheet between them.. that way when you press down on one it bridges the gap and completes the circuit. All these paper-based circuits lead into one or two chips which translate the data into a digital stream which would then be sent through a small RF transmitter (also made of normal materials) or a small modem. Because the chips and transmitter could be made very small and thin for the most part it's a sheet of specially treated paper. You couldn't fold it in a certain spot because of the chip, but otherwise it'd just be paper.
Of course, you'd have to use a thick, slightly corrosive ink so that it is actually semi-etched into the paper, otherwise when you fold it the ink would crack, breaking your circuit.. but it wouldn't effect production costs much. Dreamweaver
First, it wasn't my example with the blender.. i was responding to the blender example.
As for the way he did it.. whether or not he's created 'hydrinos' is up for grabs. From the article and his webpage, it seems that while the general weight of physics says it's impossible, the people who have done actual tests on the stuff he's created say that while they're not ready to confirm all his ideas yet, something new is going on that they don't entirely understand. The article mentioned other labs where similar lines of research had been developed but ultimately lost funding and that another lab had used a copy of his power source to get energy. It didn't go into detail, but that's to be expected in a pulp publication.. No, nobody's ripped the thing open, pointed, and said "That's a hydrino". But how could you? I'm no physicist and to tell the truth i don't understand the methods used for observing things like changes in the configuration of electrons in an atom. Is there even a way to prove that a hydrogen atom has had it's electron shoved down to an energy level lower than previously believed possible? If there is, i'd imagine that showing that the things combined with other elements creates an unexpected substance would be one of them.
Perhaps Mills really is just a snake oil salesman and he's paid off the other labs to say what he wants said and is running his power cell off of energizer D batteries. But if he's not, if he's not falsifying his results.. well, even if his theories are way off base, he's still got something going on. Perhaps it's just a new energetic chemical reaction, but it'd still revolutionize the power industry.. and that by itself would be great. So far the only apparent evidence against the guy is that scientists don't want to believe they're wrong. Admittedly he doesn't have a mountain of evidence to support him either.. but he's got enough results that i dont think you can just throw it all out the window as bunk. Science all through history has been repressed by the public not wanting to believe that what they think to be true is wrong. The worst thing that could happen to the scientific community is if this guy really did have the unified theory in his hangar and thanks to overwhelming opposition it was abandoned, making us all go another century before someone got up the guts to try it again.
Give the poor guy the benefit of the doubt until there's enough proof against him to overwhelm the proof he's got to support him. If he's wrong he, or someone else, will prove it. If he's not, it'd be the most important scientific achievement ever. Dreamweaver
Somebody has to believe 'em. For all we know he could be the greatest genius the world's ever known.. i mean, if he was That big a crackpot could he really write a thousand page technical book on quantum physics and have it discussed intellectually by the leaders of the field? I mean, if he just said "I have a theory that explains everything and will also create thinking machines, anti-gravity, super-nukes, and self-toasting bread.. but I won't tell you about it" i'd say yeah, he's insane.. but this guy's published his work and built working models.. and not All the physicists out there disagree. Even if he's only 10% correct (for instance, all his astrophysics stuff is wrong, but he got the bit about electron shells right.. or the other way around or something) he's Still made a huge breakthrough.
*shrug* science has always progressed by leaps.. cause-effect thinking, aristotlian physics, einsteinian physics, quantum mechanics.. it's just been a matter of time before someone came along and shoved everything we thought we knew down the drain. Maybe Mills isnt him, but i'd rather give the more promising ones the benefit of the doubt rather than burn 'em at the stake for being too ambitious.
Look at Thomas Edison. Admittedly he was more of a tinkerer than a scientist, but he lept from project to project.. sometimes he would forget to sleep or eat because he had so many ideas in his head that he had to try. So this guy has gone from power to chemicals to programming to whatever rather than delving into the depths of theory. Is that so horrible? If he gets results (which he is so far) where's the harm? Dreamweaver
Ohhh, that's not so bad then. I just hate it when people knee jerk at things. I'd hate to think we missed out on a cheap, clean, limitless energy source because someone decided to cut funding since "That whole cold-fusion thing will never work". Dreamweaver
Apparently you didn't read the article very carefully.. He specifically said it was *not* cold-fusion and if you read the description of the energy creation process it's nothing like cold fusion.
Supposed cold-fusion is the process of creating a fusion reaction at manageable temperatures and pressures, rather than the enormous ones traditionally required. This guy's energy source comes from a chemical reaction causing the collapse of electron shells, emitting UV light (as opposed to radiation all across the spectrum and plasma as generated by fusion.. cold or otherwise).
As for the artificial intelligence part, he said one of the new chemical compounds could revolutionize computer manufacturing (which it could.. a conductive, magnetic sythetic would be great) and that he was supporting a project by the university of southern florida which is Trying to create true AI. Why's he doing that? Because he thinks it's nifty basically.. if you had created a new energy source that you thought could change the world, wouldnt You throw some money at artificial intelligence?
Well, nobody's going to read this since it's all the way down in the 200's, but hey..
What everybody who's posted that i've read seems to be missing is: It doesnt matter if he's right. If his theory is accurate, it'll change science in huge ways.. but what the guy is essentially saying here is: "Hey, this is my theory. I think it works, but I may be wrong. But just in case I'm wrong, here: have a cheap, clean power source and some chemical compounds that nobody's ever seen before." So does it Really matter if his theory is correct or not? In a scientific sense, yes it's important.. but he already has a working prototype of his energy cell that Is putting off energy. If it's because of collapsing electron levels, or because of a never-before seen chemical reaction, does it matter? It's using cheap, widely available chemicals to produce clean energy and he managed to build the thing on $25 million, which is Much less than has been poured into other energy schemes.
It'd be great if he really could make anti-gravity devices and explain away all the weirdness that is quantum mechanics, but even if not he'll still probably change a significant portion of the world just with the stuff he's already got. I say let the scientists screw with the theory and abstract portions of it until they can decide if he's right or if he's nuts, and give me my flying car that runs on water in the meantime(and i don't mean one of those cheesey little VTOL mini-plane things.. god those are stupid looking).
If you said it, i wouldnt do it. But if you said it, build the big, complicated blender, got a bunch of government and private-sector establishments interested, and then gave out samples of your bug-free code to other programmers.. then i think i'd give it a shot.
The guy's proven he can make substances that nobody has seen before and has a device that's kicking out UV energy and nobody knows why.. it might not prove that he's turned science on it's head, but i think saying "No! It's a fraud! It has to be because if it's not i'm wrong, and *I* Can't be wrong!" is a bit closeminded of the guy.
I mean, if Mills flies up to him in on of his anti-gravity flying saucers and gives him a rust-resistant suit made of magnetic plastic, will he still say "It's all bunk. Gimme my 11 dimensional strings back!" or what?
Dreamweaver
Re:How does this mock religion?
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Planet Gattaca
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Actually i have heard other beliefs.. many, many, many other beliefs. I was a devout protestant unti about the age of 12. The fact that the catholic, baptist, and even protestant 'hell's were so scripturally inaccurate was one of the many things that led me to give up on religion.
I dont refuse to look at anything candidly.. i've already looked at it all candidly and decided that it's a bunch of superstition and self-serving rationalization for actions otherwise disfavorable. I'll never convince you that god (or jhwh, or vishnu, or buddha, or allah, or uhura-mazda, or An, or Ra, or Quixo..the bird-snake thing, or The Great Spirit, or Zeus, or Jupiter....) doesnt exist because throughout history those who need religion find it and it gives them..something. A sense of meaning where it otherwise doesnt exist, something to lean on in time of need, or just something to do on sunday. Whatever it may be, the people who 'Find God(tm)' will Never give it up due to outside influence because whatever it's giving them will go away and they'll have to face it full in the face. I gave up what religion gave me because i realized it was all a fallacy. If you still need your security blanket for whatever reason, hang on to it.. it makes life alot fuzzier, but dont throw it in the faces of people who don't need it when they want to improve their world in a way that's quantifiably real. If creating new life forms.. or creating new matter/energy, or hell.. creating a whole new universe makes life better for whatever duration we get, leave your god out of it. Him and you can go in a closet somewhere and trade warm-fuzzies 'till your doomsday while the rest of us get on with life. Dreamweaver
Re:How does this mock religion?
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Planet Gattaca
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I never said life Did exist on another planet. Just that it was completely possible and the odds were nowehre near bad. You're right, the possability that no life exists anywhere else is completely within the frame of available events in the universe. If it turns out that way.. well.. it'd suck but we'll have to deal with it. Of course, if you go with modern quantum mechanics events don't have to have causal chains.. they can exist and cease to exist in miniscule fractions of a second or not exist at all until something forces them to. Perhaps life wont exist elsewhere until we find it. Perhaps tomorrow we'll all be green.. it's all possible:) Dreamweaver
Re:How does this mock religion?
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Planet Gattaca
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Actually no.. gene's aren't alive. They're chemicals which are interpreted by parts of the cell and used to create a new one. Basically like writing the code for an interpreter and storing it inside itself so that the compiler can create new copies of itself as needed. And even if you dont consider this 'creating life' it doesnt matter.. the point is that this is an Enormous advance in genetic engineering. As it is now anything we engineer has the potential to go wrong because it has parts we don't understand the function of. These would have nothing but the very basics (which we still dont entirely understand.. but we're close enough that we Can learn what they do). Dreamweaver
Re:How does this mock religion?
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Planet Gattaca
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What reasons against life forming? Simple life is basically a long-chain molecule.. those form by themselves quite happily under the right conditions and given the big universe you mentioned there probably Are billions of puddles of goo out there for amino acids to form in. I'll say it again, all of that has to happen *at the same time*. All of what? All the molecules in a living organism are stable, why shouldn't they form slowly until you end up with that one particular chemical that is 'alive'? Or do you mean intelligent life? All intelligent life is is one of those combinations of long-chain molecules that happens to contain a standing pattern of electrcity. Hell, it might not even require that.. we only have one example to go off of afterall. Saying life didn't form spontaneously because it didnt have to if there's a god is less than no argument. As for needing life on other planets because of emotional dependency.. come off it. People say life likely formed on other planets because if you dont have a big happy dude in the sky worrying about whether or not you're eating his son's muscle tissue every seventh planetary rotation or not, and you go with logic then an event that has happened and been sustained once is increasingly likely to have happened twice. I'm not afraid of god, i'm afraid of people who need a god because they can't find meaning in their lives otherwise. Humanity as an event isn't the center, or likely even a major node, of the universe so get over your fear of being insignificant and make your personal existence a node in the existence of humanity.. Do good becasue it's what you want to do instead of becasue you're afraid you'll be tortured for eternity otherwise.
Dreamweaver
Re:How does this mock religion?
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Planet Gattaca
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Not quite.. the old 'long odds' argument for god is probably the least logical of 'em all. Take a look at the universe. It's damn big. It's bigger than big, it's so huge it might as well be infinite (or if you ascribe to certain religions and/or philosophies it Is infinite). How can you possibly justify the argument that something couldn't have happened because the odds against it are too high? In our galaxy alone there are enormous numbers of stars that have existed for billions of years. In all that time it's impossible for life to have spontaneously formed? Even if you give it a 1 in 1x10^50th chance of occuring it'd Still happen somewhere in the universe. Heck, if you throw in modern quantum mechanics even things that are contrary to the normal laws of physics have a chance of happening.. take a near-infinite universe and literally almost everything happens at least once. Maybe for a picosecond 3 billion years ago the universe even was created by your particular god.. then that particular arrangement of points in event-space fell apart and it was created by a man named Bob who lived alone on a planet made of orange peels.. for another picosecond. The universe is a complicated place because it has to be. If it wasn't we wouldnt be here to observe it being complicated and (assuming that particular theory is correct) there are probably a near-infinite number of universes where we Dont exist because the universe wasnt big and complex enough for the right molecules to bang together on a planet in the right spot at the right point in time. In other words.. the world is the way it is because if it weren't it wouldn't be the world, not because god said so. Religion is the great downfall of humanity because it is the outlet for the fear of understanding. If you dont want to have to understand something you can say it's god's will and not even try. God created humanity because god's worshippers can't stand to beleive they might not be the center of the universe while still being scared of what it means if they're the Most important thing around. Probably the only repository of overachievers with a fear of success.
Dreamweaver
Re:How does this mock religion?
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Planet Gattaca
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That's not really the point.. if we can make an organism that does absolutely nothing but live, grow, and reproduce we can later add more genes to it to do other things.. rather like the invention of the steam engine. By itself it's basically useless.. it's a big tank with some hot water in it. Attach it to a piston, wheel, and axel and you get a train.. attach it to the same piston, axel, and a screw and you can drive a boat. We take our basic organism and attach a voracious appetite for crude oil and an in-built reproduction limit of a few million generations and drop a few into an oil spill..
Well, i havent read the book so i can't say what their actual level of technology is but.. Water power is covered under medieval technology, they used water-powered mills quite alot. Same for horses (although given 2000 years of winter i'd be surprised if any horses were still around). Natural gas-burning lamps wouldnt work well because 1) you need to get the stuff and that sort of drilling requires higher technology than would be available and 2) you need to pressurize it in a tank to be released via a valve for the lamp, which again requires technology that wouldnt be around (not to mention the ability to machine an air-tight tank to put the gas in). As for the religious prohibition thing, in a pre-industrial society religion carries alot more weight. How much depends on a number of things. If this religion is, as it sounds, based around the prevention of another apocalypse, most people would probably willingly support it. If they've re-invented the process of creating cheap paper and the printing press then there'd be wider access to information and religion would lose power, if not then religious leaders would hold sway in information distribution. If the largest portion of the population believes in the god or gods worshipped then they'll probably abide by the prohibition whether they agree with the church's ideaology or not, on the off chance that the church may have gotten it right and they'd be smited. As for shooting down or avoiding a satellite using pre-industrial technology... i dont see it happening. Those satellites would be, at least, in LEO which would require a missile (or cannonball) moving at mach 25 (escape velocity) to hit them. They'd have to predict orbits very precisely since you have to account for the fact that the projectile takes time to reach the satellite and moving at escape velocity it would not be affected by the earth's gravitation pull and so wouldnt actually go 'straight' up relative to the firer. Then there's making sure you actually destroy the satellite.. if you're trying to hit a small satellite with a solid projectile without targeting computers or self-propulsion (solid propellants take a good bit of engineering and chemical knowledge) in the right spot to destroy it from about 400 miles away... well, good luck. So you'd need to build a fuse that'd burn for the entire flight and explode when it reaches an unknown altitude (and wouldnt go out when it leaves the oxygenated portion of the atmosphere.. requiring an oxyidzer which couldnt be produced by a pre-industrial civilization). It just wouldnt work.. yes, they could probably build little rockets using gun powder, but they'd be horribly innacurate at more than short ranges and would have No hope of hitting something 400 miles up. Dreamweaver
Dante got killed? How'd that happen? *has apparently only seen the edited version* And it wouldnt be the first thing to go off an edited version.. ever read the 2001 series? I had to go rent the movie to figure out what the hell they were talking about in 2010 after reading 2001 'cause it was based on the movie rather than the book. Dreamweaver
Well, everybody needs cash and while you're right about Dogma not really offending anybody View Askew needed at least one boxoffice hit to help fund movies like Clerks 2:) Dreamweaver
A lunar colony is relatively pointless right now.. The moon doesnt have enough in common with us to provide anywhere near the scientific data mars does and we're still not even sure if there's any water to be mined on the moon (and if there's not, or not enough, the colony would be doomed from having to import literally everything from earth). Mars we know we can get water, metals, and even a little atmosphere to suppliment recycled air with big enough condensers. There may even be places on mars capable of growing plants engineered to stand up to the atmospheric conditions outside a habitat. And from a purely 'gee that's nifty' point of view, if i had a choice between seeing a lunar colony (people living for some period in space.. which we've already done.. alot) or someone actually standing on another planet (which we've never done).. i'd go with the planet. Dreamweaver
Re:Dosn't this fall in the realm of dome form of..
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Interface Zen
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No more a disorder than not having to think about moving your arm.. you think "Where's my can of dew? Oh, over there" and up goes the arm without consciously thinking "Arm-up, arm-swing-right-z-axis-45degrees..." Similarly, given enough usage and the right state of mind you can think the words you want to type and your fingers do it without any instruction. If you get good enough with a programming language, you can begin to think in it (like learning any spoken language to fluency) and then when you think the code your fingers type it like they would regular language.. it's not a deficiency or special powers, it's just becoming used to certain muscle movements to the extent that they become unconscious, like breathing. Dreamweaver
Re:I wish he had just sent normal letters
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Having Fun with Y2K
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Which was my point.. they're not Supposed to dogfight. Saying that they're no good because they cant dogfight is like saying a formula-1 racecar is no good because it cant make it through an offroad course. It was never designed to go through offroad conditions, but it can beat the hell out of a dirt bike in its own element. The stealth was made to go fast and drop bombs.. nothing does that better than it does. There are other planes to be sent in when a dogfight is expected. Dreamweaver
Stealth planes dont dogfight, it doesnt work. The plane is designed for speed and undetection. The undetection so it can get in and get out (hopefully) without being seen and the speed so that if it Is seen it can get away without a fight. Stealth planes dont even have guns.. this may be an urban legend, but supposedly they tried to stick a chaingun on the front of one and it ran into its own bullets. Finding the plane precisely is important because you have to launch a missile well before it gets to you so that the plane essentially runs into the missle, since no missile can actually Catch one. Oh, and there's no such thing as a 'stealth fighter'. Dreamweaver
I remember seeing a device a while back in a magazine. I forget the name of it, but it was essentially a joystick in a box with wires attached to it at various points. The wires could be tightened by the computer to simulate resistance when you try to turn the stick. Well, obviously that particular arrangement wouldnt work, but you could use something like it.
You get a pair of boots or even just pads that lock on to the bottom of your own shoes (like skis, but shorter). When the person picks up their foot, it draws on these wires which are on spools inside the device. When the wire is drawn out, the computer measures the distance of wire drawn and the speed at which it's drawn and produces the equivalent foot motion (you'd have to have a few of the wires on each side of the foot to measure it going in various directions.
There are 3 obvious problems with this though and i can only think of ways to solve about 1 and a half: 1) Rotation. When you turned you'd be drawing the wires along with you. This could be solved by putting the base (where the wire spools are) in 2 sections which are, in turn, on motor controls on a platform. Like if the computer sees you're moving your foot to turn left, it rotates and moves the right base to be under your foot when it comes down. If you're stepping forward, the base is there when your foot gets there. 2) Distance. When you're actually moving forward, you'd Be moving forward.. so you'd need to compensate somehow. I picture a sort of diminishing returns system. Like if you step forward, the whole base still moves forward.. but at the same time both bases and thereby your whole body are being moved backward.. like walking forward on a treadmill moving in the oposite direction at about the same speed you're walking. It'd probably have an upward bound for how fast you can move forward and it'd have to have a hell of a forward-looking algorithm to figure out when you're likely to stop.. but it could work. 2b)You could also just use something like a ski machine. When you put for foot down and move the other one forward, the first one is free to slide backward over the surface. The walking motion would not be exactly right and it'd probably take a while to get used to using though so you dont fall on your face (i have a hard enough time coordinating myself on the damn ski-machines, and you dont even lift your feet on those). 3) This has to do with #2.. but acceleration. A few other people have mentioned your sense of acceleration controlled by the inner ear. While you would, technically, be moving forward you're being drawn backward.. so your inn ear would get all futzed up because you're walking in one direction and your body says it's moving the opposite way. I cant think of any way to compensate for this, and the whole 'sense of motion' thing is probably the most difficult problem in the exercise.
Oh, and a sort of side problem not associated with the actual movement. It'd make a hell of a lot of noise. Between the sound of wires being pulled in and out of spools and the motor controls on the platform it'd be quite a racket. I suppose you could just use really good headphones or something that keep out external noise though. Dreamweaver
Was this just a badly executed joke? You rant on and on about how the pentagon is distorting history, but dont give any examples. You then say that they're using a wide variety of methods to mislead people through their documents, but again give no examples. I can imagine the pentagon using deceit, oppression, etc to mislead people, but lust and chicanery? This is the US government.. source of possibly the world's most boring documents..
"...contribute to the intellectual and spiritual health of the body politic. To deny this is to deny science..." To deny what? That you're going to contribute, or that it's good that you're going to, or possibly even that it needs doing? And exactly what are you planning on contributing? You've made all sorts of undefined, vauge, unsupported statements about the pentagon but not stated your own views. Are you saying they need to find religion? If so, which one? Perhaps you just want to correct some historical errors? What do you believe to Be errors?
"One of the most unenlightened is the pentagon's discussion of witless hackers." Are you saying that hackers Are witless, or that the pentagon called them witless? What exactly is it that the pentagon discussed? When was this? It certainly wasnt in This article.. this one was about opposing armies using image alteration to fool each other into believing there's a cease fire.
"The world is suffering from the Pentagon's lack of faith in a transcendental truth." The world is, eh? So now the pentagon is some evil world-spanning operation that's making everybody suffer, rather than just the US? And precisely what IS a transcendental truth anyway? Or are you just trying to throw together big words to sound impressive?
If this was all a joke, i apologize for ranting at you. Otherwise, quit being a troll and learn the concept of supporting sentences.
Slashdot Mirror
Chips would still be made of traditional materials.. you print the circuitry that would normally be an a sheet of silicon onto the paper using conductive inks.. the theory works quite well and has been used for years on mylar. Buttons and such would be made by printing half a connection on one sheet and the other half on another with a third sheet between them.. that way when you press down on one it bridges the gap and completes the circuit. All these paper-based circuits lead into one or two chips which translate the data into a digital stream which would then be sent through a small RF transmitter (also made of normal materials) or a small modem. Because the chips and transmitter could be made very small and thin for the most part it's a sheet of specially treated paper. You couldn't fold it in a certain spot because of the chip, but otherwise it'd just be paper.
Of course, you'd have to use a thick, slightly corrosive ink so that it is actually semi-etched into the paper, otherwise when you fold it the ink would crack, breaking your circuit.. but it wouldn't effect production costs much.
Dreamweaver
First, it wasn't my example with the blender.. i was responding to the blender example.
As for the way he did it.. whether or not he's created 'hydrinos' is up for grabs. From the article and his webpage, it seems that while the general weight of physics says it's impossible, the people who have done actual tests on the stuff he's created say that while they're not ready to confirm all his ideas yet, something new is going on that they don't entirely understand.
The article mentioned other labs where similar lines of research had been developed but ultimately lost funding and that another lab had used a copy of his power source to get energy. It didn't go into detail, but that's to be expected in a pulp publication..
No, nobody's ripped the thing open, pointed, and said "That's a hydrino". But how could you? I'm no physicist and to tell the truth i don't understand the methods used for observing things like changes in the configuration of electrons in an atom. Is there even a way to prove that a hydrogen atom has had it's electron shoved down to an energy level lower than previously believed possible? If there is, i'd imagine that showing that the things combined with other elements creates an unexpected substance would be one of them.
Perhaps Mills really is just a snake oil salesman and he's paid off the other labs to say what he wants said and is running his power cell off of energizer D batteries. But if he's not, if he's not falsifying his results.. well, even if his theories are way off base, he's still got something going on. Perhaps it's just a new energetic chemical reaction, but it'd still revolutionize the power industry.. and that by itself would be great.
So far the only apparent evidence against the guy is that scientists don't want to believe they're wrong. Admittedly he doesn't have a mountain of evidence to support him either.. but he's got enough results that i dont think you can just throw it all out the window as bunk. Science all through history has been repressed by the public not wanting to believe that what they think to be true is wrong. The worst thing that could happen to the scientific community is if this guy really did have the unified theory in his hangar and thanks to overwhelming opposition it was abandoned, making us all go another century before someone got up the guts to try it again.
Give the poor guy the benefit of the doubt until there's enough proof against him to overwhelm the proof he's got to support him. If he's wrong he, or someone else, will prove it. If he's not, it'd be the most important scientific achievement ever.
Dreamweaver
Somebody has to believe 'em. For all we know he could be the greatest genius the world's ever known.. i mean, if he was That big a crackpot could he really write a thousand page technical book on quantum physics and have it discussed intellectually by the leaders of the field?
I mean, if he just said "I have a theory that explains everything and will also create thinking machines, anti-gravity, super-nukes, and self-toasting bread.. but I won't tell you about it" i'd say yeah, he's insane.. but this guy's published his work and built working models.. and not All the physicists out there disagree. Even if he's only 10% correct (for instance, all his astrophysics stuff is wrong, but he got the bit about electron shells right.. or the other way around or something) he's Still made a huge breakthrough.
*shrug* science has always progressed by leaps.. cause-effect thinking, aristotlian physics, einsteinian physics, quantum mechanics.. it's just been a matter of time before someone came along and shoved everything we thought we knew down the drain. Maybe Mills isnt him, but i'd rather give the more promising ones the benefit of the doubt rather than burn 'em at the stake for being too ambitious.
Look at Thomas Edison. Admittedly he was more of a tinkerer than a scientist, but he lept from project to project.. sometimes he would forget to sleep or eat because he had so many ideas in his head that he had to try. So this guy has gone from power to chemicals to programming to whatever rather than delving into the depths of theory. Is that so horrible? If he gets results (which he is so far) where's the harm?
Dreamweaver
Ohhh, that's not so bad then. I just hate it when people knee jerk at things. I'd hate to think we missed out on a cheap, clean, limitless energy source because someone decided to cut funding since "That whole cold-fusion thing will never work".
Dreamweaver
Apparently you didn't read the article very carefully.. He specifically said it was *not* cold-fusion and if you read the description of the energy creation process it's nothing like cold fusion.
Supposed cold-fusion is the process of creating a fusion reaction at manageable temperatures and pressures, rather than the enormous ones traditionally required. This guy's energy source comes from a chemical reaction causing the collapse of electron shells, emitting UV light (as opposed to radiation all across the spectrum and plasma as generated by fusion.. cold or otherwise).
As for the artificial intelligence part, he said one of the new chemical compounds could revolutionize computer manufacturing (which it could.. a conductive, magnetic sythetic would be great) and that he was supporting a project by the university of southern florida which is Trying to create true AI. Why's he doing that? Because he thinks it's nifty basically.. if you had created a new energy source that you thought could change the world, wouldnt You throw some money at artificial intelligence?
Dreamweaver
Well, nobody's going to read this since it's all the way down in the 200's, but hey..
What everybody who's posted that i've read seems to be missing is: It doesnt matter if he's right.
If his theory is accurate, it'll change science in huge ways.. but what the guy is essentially saying here is:
"Hey, this is my theory. I think it works, but I may be wrong. But just in case I'm wrong, here: have a cheap, clean power source and some chemical compounds that nobody's ever seen before."
So does it Really matter if his theory is correct or not? In a scientific sense, yes it's important.. but he already has a working prototype of his energy cell that Is putting off energy. If it's because of collapsing electron levels, or because of a never-before seen chemical reaction, does it matter? It's using cheap, widely available chemicals to produce clean energy and he managed to build the thing on $25 million, which is Much less than has been poured into other energy schemes.
It'd be great if he really could make anti-gravity devices and explain away all the weirdness that is quantum mechanics, but even if not he'll still probably change a significant portion of the world just with the stuff he's already got. I say let the scientists screw with the theory and abstract portions of it until they can decide if he's right or if he's nuts, and give me my flying car that runs on water in the meantime(and i don't mean one of those cheesey little VTOL mini-plane things.. god those are stupid looking).
Dreamweaver
If you said it, i wouldnt do it. But if you said it, build the big, complicated blender, got a bunch of government and private-sector establishments interested, and then gave out samples of your bug-free code to other programmers.. then i think i'd give it a shot.
The guy's proven he can make substances that nobody has seen before and has a device that's kicking out UV energy and nobody knows why.. it might not prove that he's turned science on it's head, but i think saying "No! It's a fraud! It has to be because if it's not i'm wrong, and *I* Can't be wrong!" is a bit closeminded of the guy.
I mean, if Mills flies up to him in on of his anti-gravity flying saucers and gives him a rust-resistant suit made of magnetic plastic, will he still say "It's all bunk. Gimme my 11 dimensional strings back!" or what?
Dreamweaver
Actually i have heard other beliefs.. many, many, many other beliefs. I was a devout protestant unti about the age of 12. The fact that the catholic, baptist, and even protestant 'hell's were so scripturally inaccurate was one of the many things that led me to give up on religion.
I dont refuse to look at anything candidly.. i've already looked at it all candidly and decided that it's a bunch of superstition and self-serving rationalization for actions otherwise disfavorable. I'll never convince you that god (or jhwh, or vishnu, or buddha, or allah, or uhura-mazda, or An, or Ra, or Quixo..the bird-snake thing, or The Great Spirit, or Zeus, or Jupiter....) doesnt exist because throughout history those who need religion find it and it gives them..something. A sense of meaning where it otherwise doesnt exist, something to lean on in time of need, or just something to do on sunday. Whatever it may be, the people who 'Find God(tm)' will Never give it up due to outside influence because whatever it's giving them will go away and they'll have to face it full in the face. I gave up what religion gave me because i realized it was all a fallacy. If you still need your security blanket for whatever reason, hang on to it.. it makes life alot fuzzier, but dont throw it in the faces of people who don't need it when they want to improve their world in a way that's quantifiably real. If creating new life forms.. or creating new matter/energy, or hell.. creating a whole new universe makes life better for whatever duration we get, leave your god out of it. Him and you can go in a closet somewhere and trade warm-fuzzies 'till your doomsday while the rest of us get on with life.
Dreamweaver
I never said life Did exist on another planet. Just that it was completely possible and the odds were nowehre near bad. You're right, the possability that no life exists anywhere else is completely within the frame of available events in the universe. If it turns out that way.. well.. it'd suck but we'll have to deal with it. Of course, if you go with modern quantum mechanics events don't have to have causal chains.. they can exist and cease to exist in miniscule fractions of a second or not exist at all until something forces them to. Perhaps life wont exist elsewhere until we find it. Perhaps tomorrow we'll all be green.. it's all possible :)
Dreamweaver
Actually no.. gene's aren't alive. They're chemicals which are interpreted by parts of the cell and used to create a new one. Basically like writing the code for an interpreter and storing it inside itself so that the compiler can create new copies of itself as needed.
And even if you dont consider this 'creating life' it doesnt matter.. the point is that this is an Enormous advance in genetic engineering. As it is now anything we engineer has the potential to go wrong because it has parts we don't understand the function of. These would have nothing but the very basics (which we still dont entirely understand.. but we're close enough that we Can learn what they do).
Dreamweaver
What reasons against life forming? Simple life is basically a long-chain molecule.. those form by themselves quite happily under the right conditions and given the big universe you mentioned there probably Are billions of puddles of goo out there for amino acids to form in.
I'll say it again, all of that has to happen *at the same time*.
All of what? All the molecules in a living organism are stable, why shouldn't they form slowly until you end up with that one particular chemical that is 'alive'? Or do you mean intelligent life? All intelligent life is is one of those combinations of long-chain molecules that happens to contain a standing pattern of electrcity. Hell, it might not even require that.. we only have one example to go off of afterall.
Saying life didn't form spontaneously because it didnt have to if there's a god is less than no argument. As for needing life on other planets because of emotional dependency.. come off it. People say life likely formed on other planets because if you dont have a big happy dude in the sky worrying about whether or not you're eating his son's muscle tissue every seventh planetary rotation or not, and you go with logic then an event that has happened and been sustained once is increasingly likely to have happened twice.
I'm not afraid of god, i'm afraid of people who need a god because they can't find meaning in their lives otherwise. Humanity as an event isn't the center, or likely even a major node, of the universe so get over your fear of being insignificant and make your personal existence a node in the existence of humanity.. Do good becasue it's what you want to do instead of becasue you're afraid you'll be tortured for eternity otherwise.
Dreamweaver
Not quite.. the old 'long odds' argument for god is probably the least logical of 'em all. Take a look at the universe. It's damn big. It's bigger than big, it's so huge it might as well be infinite (or if you ascribe to certain religions and/or philosophies it Is infinite). How can you possibly justify the argument that something couldn't have happened because the odds against it are too high?
In our galaxy alone there are enormous numbers of stars that have existed for billions of years. In all that time it's impossible for life to have spontaneously formed? Even if you give it a 1 in 1x10^50th chance of occuring it'd Still happen somewhere in the universe. Heck, if you throw in modern quantum mechanics even things that are contrary to the normal laws of physics have a chance of happening.. take a near-infinite universe and literally almost everything happens at least once. Maybe for a picosecond 3 billion years ago the universe even was created by your particular god.. then that particular arrangement of points in event-space fell apart and it was created by a man named Bob who lived alone on a planet made of orange peels.. for another picosecond.
The universe is a complicated place because it has to be. If it wasn't we wouldnt be here to observe it being complicated and (assuming that particular theory is correct) there are probably a near-infinite number of universes where we Dont exist because the universe wasnt big and complex enough for the right molecules to bang together on a planet in the right spot at the right point in time. In other words.. the world is the way it is because if it weren't it wouldn't be the world, not because god said so. Religion is the great downfall of humanity because it is the outlet for the fear of understanding. If you dont want to have to understand something you can say it's god's will and not even try. God created humanity because god's worshippers can't stand to beleive they might not be the center of the universe while still being scared of what it means if they're the Most important thing around. Probably the only repository of overachievers with a fear of success.
Dreamweaver
That's not really the point.. if we can make an organism that does absolutely nothing but live, grow, and reproduce we can later add more genes to it to do other things.. rather like the invention of the steam engine. By itself it's basically useless.. it's a big tank with some hot water in it. Attach it to a piston, wheel, and axel and you get a train.. attach it to the same piston, axel, and a screw and you can drive a boat. We take our basic organism and attach a voracious appetite for crude oil and an in-built reproduction limit of a few million generations and drop a few into an oil spill..
Dreamweaver
And how does one get a dense cloud of gravel into orbit without modern rocketry?
Dreamweaver
Well, i havent read the book so i can't say what their actual level of technology is but..
Water power is covered under medieval technology, they used water-powered mills quite alot. Same for horses (although given 2000 years of winter i'd be surprised if any horses were still around). Natural gas-burning lamps wouldnt work well because 1) you need to get the stuff and that sort of drilling requires higher technology than would be available and 2) you need to pressurize it in a tank to be released via a valve for the lamp, which again requires technology that wouldnt be around (not to mention the ability to machine an air-tight tank to put the gas in).
As for the religious prohibition thing, in a pre-industrial society religion carries alot more weight. How much depends on a number of things. If this religion is, as it sounds, based around the prevention of another apocalypse, most people would probably willingly support it. If they've re-invented the process of creating cheap paper and the printing press then there'd be wider access to information and religion would lose power, if not then religious leaders would hold sway in information distribution. If the largest portion of the population believes in the god or gods worshipped then they'll probably abide by the prohibition whether they agree with the church's ideaology or not, on the off chance that the church may have gotten it right and they'd be smited.
As for shooting down or avoiding a satellite using pre-industrial technology... i dont see it happening. Those satellites would be, at least, in LEO which would require a missile (or cannonball) moving at mach 25 (escape velocity) to hit them. They'd have to predict orbits very precisely since you have to account for the fact that the projectile takes time to reach the satellite and moving at escape velocity it would not be affected by the earth's gravitation pull and so wouldnt actually go 'straight' up relative to the firer. Then there's making sure you actually destroy the satellite.. if you're trying to hit a small satellite with a solid projectile without targeting computers or self-propulsion (solid propellants take a good bit of engineering and chemical knowledge) in the right spot to destroy it from about 400 miles away... well, good luck. So you'd need to build a fuse that'd burn for the entire flight and explode when it reaches an unknown altitude (and wouldnt go out when it leaves the oxygenated portion of the atmosphere.. requiring an oxyidzer which couldnt be produced by a pre-industrial civilization). It just wouldnt work.. yes, they could probably build little rockets using gun powder, but they'd be horribly innacurate at more than short ranges and would have No hope of hitting something 400 miles up.
Dreamweaver
Dante got killed? How'd that happen? *has apparently only seen the edited version* And it wouldnt be the first thing to go off an edited version.. ever read the 2001 series? I had to go rent the movie to figure out what the hell they were talking about in 2010 after reading 2001 'cause it was based on the movie rather than the book.
Dreamweaver
Well, everybody needs cash and while you're right about Dogma not really offending anybody View Askew needed at least one boxoffice hit to help fund movies like Clerks 2 :)
Dreamweaver
A lunar colony is relatively pointless right now.. The moon doesnt have enough in common with us to provide anywhere near the scientific data mars does and we're still not even sure if there's any water to be mined on the moon (and if there's not, or not enough, the colony would be doomed from having to import literally everything from earth).
Mars we know we can get water, metals, and even a little atmosphere to suppliment recycled air with big enough condensers. There may even be places on mars capable of growing plants engineered to stand up to the atmospheric conditions outside a habitat.
And from a purely 'gee that's nifty' point of view, if i had a choice between seeing a lunar colony (people living for some period in space.. which we've already done.. alot) or someone actually standing on another planet (which we've never done).. i'd go with the planet.
Dreamweaver
No more a disorder than not having to think about moving your arm.. you think "Where's my can of dew? Oh, over there" and up goes the arm without consciously thinking "Arm-up, arm-swing-right-z-axis-45degrees..." Similarly, given enough usage and the right state of mind you can think the words you want to type and your fingers do it without any instruction. If you get good enough with a programming language, you can begin to think in it (like learning any spoken language to fluency) and then when you think the code your fingers type it like they would regular language.. it's not a deficiency or special powers, it's just becoming used to certain muscle movements to the extent that they become unconscious, like breathing.
Dreamweaver
Well, it Is a comedy net-zine thing..
Dreamweaver
Which was my point.. they're not Supposed to dogfight. Saying that they're no good because they cant dogfight is like saying a formula-1 racecar is no good because it cant make it through an offroad course. It was never designed to go through offroad conditions, but it can beat the hell out of a dirt bike in its own element. The stealth was made to go fast and drop bombs.. nothing does that better than it does. There are other planes to be sent in when a dogfight is expected.
Dreamweaver
Stealth planes dont dogfight, it doesnt work. The plane is designed for speed and undetection. The undetection so it can get in and get out (hopefully) without being seen and the speed so that if it Is seen it can get away without a fight. Stealth planes dont even have guns.. this may be an urban legend, but supposedly they tried to stick a chaingun on the front of one and it ran into its own bullets.
Finding the plane precisely is important because you have to launch a missile well before it gets to you so that the plane essentially runs into the missle, since no missile can actually Catch one.
Oh, and there's no such thing as a 'stealth fighter'.
Dreamweaver
I remember seeing a device a while back in a magazine. I forget the name of it, but it was essentially a joystick in a box with wires attached to it at various points. The wires could be tightened by the computer to simulate resistance when you try to turn the stick. Well, obviously that particular arrangement wouldnt work, but you could use something like it.
You get a pair of boots or even just pads that lock on to the bottom of your own shoes (like skis, but shorter). When the person picks up their foot, it draws on these wires which are on spools inside the device. When the wire is drawn out, the computer measures the distance of wire drawn and the speed at which it's drawn and produces the equivalent foot motion (you'd have to have a few of the wires on each side of the foot to measure it going in various directions.
There are 3 obvious problems with this though and i can only think of ways to solve about 1 and a half:
1) Rotation. When you turned you'd be drawing the wires along with you. This could be solved by putting the base (where the wire spools are) in 2 sections which are, in turn, on motor controls on a platform. Like if the computer sees you're moving your foot to turn left, it rotates and moves the right base to be under your foot when it comes down. If you're stepping forward, the base is there when your foot gets there.
2) Distance. When you're actually moving forward, you'd Be moving forward.. so you'd need to compensate somehow. I picture a sort of diminishing returns system. Like if you step forward, the whole base still moves forward.. but at the same time both bases and thereby your whole body are being moved backward.. like walking forward on a treadmill moving in the oposite direction at about the same speed you're walking. It'd probably have an upward bound for how fast you can move forward and it'd have to have a hell of a forward-looking algorithm to figure out when you're likely to stop.. but it could work.
2b)You could also just use something like a ski machine. When you put for foot down and move the other one forward, the first one is free to slide backward over the surface. The walking motion would not be exactly right and it'd probably take a while to get used to using though so you dont fall on your face (i have a hard enough time coordinating myself on the damn ski-machines, and you dont even lift your feet on those).
3) This has to do with #2.. but acceleration. A few other people have mentioned your sense of acceleration controlled by the inner ear. While you would, technically, be moving forward you're being drawn backward.. so your inn ear would get all futzed up because you're walking in one direction and your body says it's moving the opposite way. I cant think of any way to compensate for this, and the whole 'sense of motion' thing is probably the most difficult problem in the exercise.
Oh, and a sort of side problem not associated with the actual movement. It'd make a hell of a lot of noise. Between the sound of wires being pulled in and out of spools and the motor controls on the platform it'd be quite a racket. I suppose you could just use really good headphones or something that keep out external noise though.
Dreamweaver
Wow, cool. Where can i get one?
Dreamweaver
Was this just a badly executed joke? You rant on and on about how the pentagon is distorting history, but dont give any examples. You then say that they're using a wide variety of methods to mislead people through their documents, but again give no examples. I can imagine the pentagon using deceit, oppression, etc to mislead people, but lust and chicanery? This is the US government.. source of possibly the world's most boring documents..
"...contribute to the intellectual and spiritual health of the body politic. To deny this is to deny science..."
To deny what? That you're going to contribute, or that it's good that you're going to, or possibly even that it needs doing? And exactly what are you planning on contributing? You've made all sorts of undefined, vauge, unsupported statements about the pentagon but not stated your own views. Are you saying they need to find religion? If so, which one? Perhaps you just want to correct some historical errors? What do you believe to Be errors?
"One of the most unenlightened is the pentagon's discussion of witless hackers."
Are you saying that hackers Are witless, or that the pentagon called them witless? What exactly is it that the pentagon discussed? When was this? It certainly wasnt in This article.. this one was about opposing armies using image alteration to fool each other into believing there's a cease fire.
"The world is suffering from the Pentagon's lack of faith in a transcendental truth."
The world is, eh? So now the pentagon is some evil world-spanning operation that's making everybody suffer, rather than just the US? And precisely what IS a transcendental truth anyway? Or are you just trying to throw together big words to sound impressive?
If this was all a joke, i apologize for ranting at you. Otherwise, quit being a troll and learn the concept of supporting sentences.
Dreamweaver