Tag: Technology

Singularity Stuff.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Thanks to David Regan for sending me a link to this article about the ‘singularity’. I agree with a lot of what is being said here, like, for example, that technological development is exponential and that Moore’s Law doesn’t just apply to the number of transistors on a microchip. However, this all smells of science-as-religion.

Don’t worry, look at these graphs, everything is going to get all better. Or, Jesus will return and sort everything out.

Our technology is also developing in all sorts of areas, whilst in others nothing has changed and in some cases things are regressing. Yes, we have nuclear reactors and fusion cannot be so far in the future, but all around me people are building fucking windmills. Yes, we can create high-producing GM crops, we have powerful specific insecticides and herbicides and machines that can do the work of hundreds of farm workers of a previous age, whilst lunatics are advocating organic farming that couldn’t feed more than a third of the population we presently have. Yes, we have every kind of contraception possible, even long-lasting implants, but the world population is still heading for seven billion. Yes, we are coming to understand what happened in first few seconds of the big bang, but billions on this planet think some beardy fella in the sky is in charge.

I shan’t belabour the point.

Yes, technological development is fast, but the impact of it is subverted by politics, by religion, and it is undermined by fear and subjected to the drag of human stupidity.

All that being said, I found this very interesting:

For example, it’s well known that one cause of the physical degeneration associated with aging involves telomeres, which are segments of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorter, and once a cell runs out of telomeres, it can’t reproduce anymore and dies. But there’s an enzyme called telomerase that reverses this process; it’s one of the reasons cancer cells live so long. So why not treat regular non-cancerous cells with telomerase? In November, researchers at Harvard Medical School announced in Nature that they had done just that. They administered telomerase to a group of mice suffering from age-related degeneration. The damage went away. The mice didn’t just get better; they got younger.

Energy Catalyser.

Posted on by Neal Asher

More on that reactor I posted about previously. Apparently it’s not ‘cold fusion’. Full interview is here.

[The following interview of Andrea Rossi by blogger Daniele Passerini was originally published on Jan. 25 and is reprinted courtesy of Ventidue Passi D’amore e Dintorni. The English translation is provided courtesy of Shirakawa Akira. Passerini also prefaced the interview with his own comments (not translated here) in a short introduction titled “Toward Infinite Energy and Beyond.” Rossi and Passerini have confirmed to New Energy Times that this English translation is factually and linguistically correct.]

PASSERINI. Good day Engineer Rossi, I thank you for accepting this interview. Everybody is asking themselves how you managed to perfect your Energy Catalyzer? Somebody even suspects that you stole the idea, for example, from Professor [Francesco] Piantelli from the University of Siena, who in the 1990s worked together with Professor [Sergio] Focardi on “cold fusion” research. Could you explain us where, why, how and when you started working on this project?

ROSSI. I started in 1987. As the facts show, my process strongly differs from previous efforts: Nobody has managed to manufacture a working device so far. Facts count, not words.

PASSERINI. 1987 would mean two years before the strongly disputed Pons-Fleischmann experiment. Recently, you stated that it’s not proper to define the reaction occurring in your catalyzer as “cold fusion” and that it’s more correct, at the moment, to generically define it as a weak [force] nuclear reaction – in other words, low energy, or LENR. Are you telling us that you went on a different road, parallel to that of “cold fusion” research?

ROSSI. Exactly. In fact, mine is not “cold fusion” but weak [force] nuclear reactions. Pons and Fleischmann did heavy-water electrolysis with a palladium cathode and a platinum anode. I don’t do electrolysis, I don’t use either platinum or palladium and I use temperatures that manage to melt nickel.

New Fuel

Posted on by Neal Asher

I noted this on the Internet a little while ago and now the snail-media newspapers have caught up with it. You can find articles here at Popsci and gizmag:

UK-based Cella Energy has developed a synthetic fuel that could lead to US$1.50 per gallon gasoline. Apart from promising a future transportation fuel with a stable price regardless of oil prices, the fuel is hydrogen based and produces no carbon emissions when burned. The technology is based on complex hydrides, and has been developed over a four year top secret program at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. Early indications are that the fuel can be used in existing internal combustion engined vehicles without engine modification.

Cella Energy have developed a method using a low-cost process called coaxial electrospinning or electrospraying that can trap a complex chemical hydride inside a nano-porous polymer that speeds up the kinetics of hydrogen desorption, reduces the temperature at which the desorption occurs and filters out many if not all of the damaging chemicals. It also protects the hydrides from oxygen and water, making it possible to handle it in air.

In the papers I’ve seen the price as 90 pence a gallon and 19 pence a litre. This all sound incredible, wonderful and just the sort of thing we need. And I have huge reservations. We’re told in the articles that present day car engines will not need to be modified, but go to the Cella website and we get, ‘it is possible to convert a conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) to run on hydrogen with minimal engine modifications’ which is not quite the same really. Fuel tanks and exhaust systems are not mentioned. I’m presuming that the micro-beads themselves are not burnt, that the hydrogen evaporates from them, so fuel tanks will have to be emptied as well as filled. Think of the infrastructure involved.
 
But for fuel of that price, surely we could set this in motion? Yeah, right, it’s going to be that price. Ho ho. Lest we forget, if we bought petrol at the pump without government taxes it would cost 47 pence a litre. If you go here you’ll see that not only do we pay 59 pence duty, the government then taxes us on the tax we pay on fuel, that is, VAT is charged on the actual fuel price + delivery charge + duty. Does anyone reading this think for one moment that our government would give up on such a lucrative way of screwing the population? Do you think for one moment it would give up on 20 billion in tax? If some cheap new fuel came in the government would just look upon it as a way of increasing its tax take. This basically defines the attitude of all governments to tax.

Cold Fusion?

Posted on by Neal Asher

I really don’t know what to make of this. Is it a load of bullshit or is it true? If it is true it is a major game-changer. It’s the kind of thing that could utterly transform the world. Go and read the article over on WUWT and the ensuing comments.

Cold fusion isn’t usual fare for WUWT, at best it’s not a focus here, at worst it’s sorry science, and we talk about that enough already. However, it never has died, and this week there’s news about it going commercial. Well, it won’t be available for a couple years or so, but the excitement comes from a device that takes 400 watts of electrical power in and produces 12,000 watts of heat out.

Most people regard cold fusion as a black eye on science. It’s credited with the advent of science by press release and its extraordinary claims were hard to reproduce. Yet, unlike the polywater fiasco of the 1970s, cold fusion has never been explained away and several experiments have been successfully reproduced. Neutrons, tritium, and other products kept some researchers working long after others had given up. Even muons (from Svensmark’s Chilling Stars) have been suggested as a catalyst. Everyone agrees that theoretical help would provide a lot of guidance, but for something that flies in the face of accepted theory, little help has come from that.

Bubble Metal

Posted on by Neal Asher

I’ve been using bubble metals in my books ever since Gridlinked, and since I read an article concerning foamed metals. The basic idea was predicated on what could be produced in zero gravity manufacturing. If you foam a metal with an inert gas on Earth the bubbles will rise to the top so the distribution will be uneven. Do it in zero gravity and you have much more control over the process. Here’s a new take on the idea: 

A new material is tested to cut the weight of ships by 30 percent. For an average sized freight vessel with a capacity of 7000 m³ this corresponds to a weight reduction of more than 1000 tons. Researchers from Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, have experimented with an aluminum powder that foams when heated up (Jan ’11)

The new material is lighter than water and has a high stiffness. Within seconds a cube made from aluminum starts to inflate into the shape of a sponge under the impact of heat. The secret of this reaction lies in the compounds of the new material. The metal is a mixture of aluminum and titanium hydride powder, which acts as a blowing agent just like yeast makes dough rise.

The aim of the researchers from the EU research project CREATING was to find a processing method to build large aluminum foam sandwich plates. These compounds could eventually replace steel plates of a vessel. To form such sandwich compounds, the powder is initially pressed into bars. The bars are then placed between two steel sheets and heated in an oven. At a temperature of more than 650° Celsius the new material expands and bonds with the steel sheets without the help of any adhesives.

Consider the implications for aero industries too. I wonder about the possibilities of foaming a metal with helium…

Autoguns.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Thanks to Huan Tan for sending me this link.

Intelligent robot technology is one of the next generation new technologies which will lead the 21st century’s industrial and military science technologies with the development of artificial intelligence (AI). For example, a monitoring and sentry system can be a sophisticated system employing a variety of technologies such as ultra-low brightness camera technology, image recognition technology, image processing and storing technology, voice recognition technology, servo technology, image tracking technology, and system control technology.

In The Departure they are called reader-guns.

Underwater Oil Rigs

Posted on by Neal Asher

This seems like a good setting for near-future SF, something for Peter Watts I reckon:

Petrobras plans to turn science fiction into reality to extract oil from the vast pre-salt oil fields discovered off the south east coast of Brazil.

The plan is to construct ‘cities’ more than 2,000 metres under water, containing machines, giant pieces of equipment and robots that could inspect the systems being used to extract millions of barrels of oil. Many operations would be fully automated while others would be controlled by humans at a distance.

Paul Cornell on E-books

Posted on by Neal Asher

Thanks to Neil Mullins (Skar) for directing me to this. Paul Cornell has some quite apposite things to say about the e-books market and piracy etc. Here’s the first two of his nineteen bullet-points:

1: Publishers have always thought that when you buy a hardback, what you’re paying more for is the chance to own it on the day of publication. Paperbacks are cheaper because they come out a year later. The reading public, on the other hand, always thought what they were paying more for was the extra physical mass and quality. (Actually, a hardback costs, one publisher told me, only from 50p to a couple of pounds more to make.) So obviously publishers think an e-book, out on the day of publication, should cost the same as a hardback. And obviously the reading public think it should cost less than a paperback. From this difference in perception stem all subsequent horrors.

2: British publishers are faced with an additional cost for e-books in the form of V.A.T., Valued Added Tax, currently set at 17.5% of the sale price going to the government, set to rise to 20% next year. This tax doesn’t apply to printed books. I asked Ed Vaizey MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, if this was going to change, and was told there were no plans to alter the V.A.T. rate at the moment.