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Really Cool Science: Vol. 1
I’ve decided to start what will hopefully be a long running series highlighting both basic and applicative scientific breakthroughs that have the possibility of drastically changing our lives in the next 20-50 years. If you see anything you want to add, send it over.
For my first entry, I want to talk about two breakthroughs that might be used to make next generation computing. Computational power has doubled roughly every two years since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958. The majority of the increase in power is due to the increased number of transistors that can be cheaply integrated into a chip. The observation that the number of transistors approximately doubles every two years is known as Moore’s Law, named after one of the co-founders of Intel. This “law” is the reason why computers get so much faster every year. The problem is that we are now placing so many transistors on a single chip that each one has to be very tiny, and we are close to reaching the limits of miniaturization. The most advanced chips from Intel now have features that are a mere 45 nanometers, which is smaller than many viruses. In fact, if they were much smaller, they would be unable to reliably hold current. Due to quantum motion, many electrons would literally “warp” through the barrier and information would be lost.
It is well agreed that the limits of Moore’s Law are near, perhaps within the next one to two decades, and that a new foundation for computing should be devised. In fact, around the turn of the century, there was concern that the limits would be reached around 2012, but subsequent advances in material science has delayed that by a few years. Regardless, chip companies are currently focusing on improving their products by highlighting changes in layout and usage of multiple processors, rather than any stunningly new physical technology. This is a complete reversal from the 90s, where processors had dramatic technological changes, while display and storage technology was little changed.
One of the possibilities is to continue to use electrons as the means of transport, but change the material that comprises the “wires.” Graphene is a possible solution and what is really cool about this is that it is literally just a single atomic layer of carbon and can be produced from graphite. In order to study it, scientists devised a way to produce it using only two items: a #2 lead pencil and scotch tape…well and lots of labor by grad students trying to reduce the graphite to a single atomic layer. Graphene conducts electrons extremely efficiently and its structure if very unique. Not only will electrons travel much faster than they do in metallic transistors, but the electrons will be much more well behaved and so they can be much smaller. This will allow both a speed and density increase, and perhaps enable computers to be millions of times faster. The problem is figuring out how to produce it cheaply and also how to actually integrate it. The desirable properties are lost once the graphene is actually bonded to any substrate, so that’s a bit of a problem. Another unusual replacement for metallic transistors that has been suggested is spinach. Apparently it too far outperforms current materials when it comes to electron transport.
Another possibility is to replace electrons and use photons instead. In fact, we already have this technology to power the internet and cable, this is how fibre optic technology works. The problem is that the current materials for transmitting the photons are very fragile and cannot be bent; thus preventing them from being used on circuits. However, a group has devised an interesting replacement: DNA. The DNA strands are used to provide the framework for the “wires” and chromophores capable of transmitting light naturally attach to them. As the article mentions, the amazing thing about this technology is that it is perfect for self assembly and repair. Unfortunately, they haven’t figured out how to get the chromophores to distribute evenly and thus there is too much variation for practical use. Still, this concept is very similar to how plants perform photosynthesis, so hopefully further research will provide guidance.
Well that’s it for the first installment. I find it fascinating that the future might have supercomputers powered by pencils or DNA. I’m a computer programmer but all this seems really magical to me; I just try to think about how to put a million fold increase in processing power to good use. Surely Word and Windows will leave a little power for me.
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17 Responses to “Really Cool Science: Vol. 1”
Great feature!
Fabulous, Mikkel. Thanks.
My favorite OMG cool science story is replacement body parts grown from your own cells. The recent trachea replacement last week made the news (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7735696.stm) but at least 7 homegrown human bladders have already been implanted. For a look at how far this technology has already come, check out this Wired Science piece from over a year ago.
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/story/47-b…
Oh thanks. I hadn't heard about this. The technology was actually developed where I used to work: The Naval Research Laboratory. I saw the concept in the employee newsletter but didn't know that they had actually made and implanted full organs.
A claimed Scientific Breakthrough by BlackLight Power in Cranberry NJ was confirmed 10/24/08 by Rowan University but they were unable to explain the over unity results. While independently trying to reverse engineer this unexplained anomaly a patent filed May 8,2008 by Caltech was uncovered that almost accounts for the results http://www.calphysics.org/Patent.html the patent describes a method to rectify the vacuum fluctuations of the quantum field using the casimir effect! Theorized in 1948 and only proven to within 5% accuracy in 2003. my blog/animation supplies the missing piece of information (covalent bonding needs to occur in the confinement field) But between the 3 contributions we have confirmed product and working theory to free energy!
An animation of the theory is here http://www.byzipp.com/animation2.htm
and the details here http://www.byzipp.com/energy
http://www.blacklightpower.com/
Please send this news release up thru channels!
A claimed Scientific Breakthrough by BlackLight Power in Cranberry NJ was confirmed 10/24/08 by Rowan University but they were unable to explain the over unity results. While independently trying to reverse engineer this unexplained anomaly a patent filed in May by Caltech was uncovered that accounts for the results and is nothing less than astounding http://www.calphysics.org/Patent.html the patent describes a method to rectify the vacuum fluctuations of the quantum field using the casimir effect! Theorized in 1948 and only proven to within 5% accuracy in 2003.
An animation of the theory is here http://www.byzipp.com/animation2.htm
and the details here http://www.byzipp.com/energy
http://www.blacklightpower.com/
[...] be of interest ComputersNanodot: Nanotechnology News and Discussion » Blog Archive » DARPA …Really Cool Science: Vol. 1Blogs That May Also be of interest Origins Of The Computer46. Origins of the Bureacratic Species, [...]
[...] be of interest ComputersNanodot: Nanotechnology News and Discussion » Blog Archive » DARPA …Really Cool Science: Vol. 1Blogs That May Also be of interest Security Review‘National Security’ Blu-ray Review « Beyond [...]
Green Dreams — yes, the trachea story (the best known one) is encouraging. This was with adult stem cells, incidentally, not the embryonic stem cells on which so many foolishly have naive faith or use politically against other people. (I have no problem with stem cell research and would like to see more complex organs made available — note that using one's own genetic material means there is no need for immunosuppression because the “new” organ is still self, not non-self, so does not induce an immunological response and destruction of the “new” organ — but I am realistic and apolitical except against science-abusers when it comes to what promise there actually is, both with organ recreation and replacement, and in the longer run, correction for apoptosis and control of senescence and other features of aging.)
Mikkel — aside from impatience and poltical taint, as we see with stem cell use now, overall, and this includes the use of computer technology and telecommunications, there is no instant widespread application of new developments. A book I've been reading takes pains to note this with electricity. Research was happening with this in the early 1800s; the world was not promptly electrified. Well into the 1880s there was additional scientific and engineering progress with electricity and at that time, all kinds of people could predict the commonplace electrification of society and the benefits it would bring, but it still didn't happen then. Widespread electrification didn't in fact happen until well into the twentieth century. (One late portion of this, rural electrification, is still something to this day that needs to be done, has yet to be done well or right, in underdeveloped nations where the culture and society have not enabled it to be done, and in fact often inhibited or prevented it.) Radio didn't become widespread overnight; nor television. There is an increase in speed now, with computers notably, compared to previous discoveries, but it still takes time. (Think of the internal combustion engine and automobility in the West. Now consider the rest of the world. Applications must be practical and _affordable_, economically sensible.) In addition, it has normally taken much longer than dreamers or visionaries anticipate, while often not in the form that was envisioned, eventually. (Nobody has ever been able to predict the future.) Often it's taken one or two generations (40 years) for something to truly be used. With techical things, people prefer things to be simple, practical, and even pleasant to use. People can be highly intelligent but come to prefer plainer or pithier words than those an academic would use, and people often want less capability than is possible, just as they may want more than they “need” in the judgment of social engineers or or activists (vehicle size, engine power, number of guns in one's possession, and so on). Things take time to be actually used in society, and won't be in the way so many pioneers and idealists believe.
You'll come to appreciate that if you come to observe things in a realistic way, typically as you get older and more experienced in life.
I might toss some quotes from that book on here — just note that you shouldn't feel deflated or discouraged, just realize that progress isn't as rapid as people often would like. (Compounding this, we're not in the “Golden Age” post World War II up to the first Oil Crisis when life here in the USA, for example, Sixties-strife and all, was optimistic, and even ambitious, few or no limits seen in our way.)
[...] Rich Scherr wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThis “law” is the reason why computers get so much faster every year. The problem is that we are now placing so many transistors on a single chip that each one has to be very tiny, and we are close to reaching the limits of … [...]
“My favorite OMG cool science story is replacement body parts grown from your own cells.”
The thing is, it's not a shocker, Green Dreams, but has long been conceived and desired, because it solves the immune-response, self-vs.-non-self problem in the most logical way. (It is more important as a subject specifically for immunology and, more specifically, for transplant immunology, than for the more general sense of “replacing worn-out cells” that is associated with the true visionaries who want to understand and defeat aging.) The only other logical thing to do is to exploit the mechanism of definition of “self” that occurs as the fetus develops*, wherein the genetic identity of self is established to enable the developing immune system eventually to distinguish self from non-self. (Ask yourself if it's cost-effective — of course, it is not — or even practically possible to expose all developing fetuses to all or most genetic variants or combinations of human leukocyte reactive antibodies while they are developing, so they will not reject any future organs transplanted into them with any of those same genetic codes. Using one's own genetic code is so much more obvious the way to go as well as more elegant intellectually than the alternative of augmenting the genetic determination of “self” during fetal development.)
* You probably know that while most animals form their concept of “self” strictly during embryonic development (that's not all of what the immune system does, but that's the major issue of note here), with mice, “programming” of the immune system to define “self” continues for a short time after birth. That makes mice very useful for experimentation, obviously, on immunological and transplant-related (skin graft) grounds alone! (There are others.)
P.S. I'm surprised that so many AIDS activists and people associated with AIDS other than a few motivated AIDS patients don't try to have even a basic understanding of immunology. Given this site's activist and immoderate clientele, it's worth adding that in passing.
“The Naval Research Laboratory.”
I hope, so it appealed to your head, that you got to be involved on the really _coooool_ stuff that you're not allowed to discuss. That's one bittersweet, frustrating thing about some military project work. (The rest of it can't be revealed for other reasons but is not exciting at all.)
I have a friend you may have heard me discuss before, a very liberal and at-times self-professed radical in the Washington, DC metro area (most interestingly, she moved farther left as she got older, the reverse of the normal way of maturity). One job she held at one time involved environmental testing for military assets, which means she got to massively and meanly irradiate, bake, brutally flash-freeze, and do other ugliness on expensive pieces of equipment. Even she laughed a little about the brutal nature of the testing, and she's an animal-rights and rescue activist. Might have been that laboratory where she worked.
This is the main reason I put 20-50 years, which for our world seems like a long time.
That said, I agree with the premise of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Simply put, technology is both physical and cultural as you mention. I think that it is the cultural aspect that takes a long time to change, while physical technology can be implemented quite readily. For instance, graphene based semiconductors work in the existing paradigm, they are just a different medium. If they were to figure out how to cheaply and accurately replicate current design but with the new material, I can guarantee you we'd see consumer applications within 10 years. It is amazing how quickly the electronics industry is incorporating new designs.
Even photon based computing would not drastically alter our ideas about how a computer works on a fundamental level, and therefore might be adapted relatively quickly. On the other hand, there are ideas to do computing based on recreating Darwinian evolution by using DNA as the basic unit of computation and it would literally evolve to the answer, as well as quantum computing using qubits and quantum superposition. These two concepts have the potential to provide billions if not trillions or more times processing power, but not only are there extreme scientific challenges, the basic nature of what computation is is changed. They've made a quantum computer that can add two numbers, but it is really complicated to understand how to even program that problem. Even if that technology is eventually feasible from a technical standpoint, I'd imagine the fundamental challenges of using it means that it will be at least 60-100 years before adoption.
So yeah I agree with you that huge shifts in intellectual or physical infrastructure take decades to develop. This is why on things like energy policy we need to do a better job of interweaving different timeframes when discussing how to progress.
That said, I believe that cultural technology is highly nonlinear. You can see this perfectly with electricity for instance. Even as it became widespread it had very limited use — primarily for lighting and such. The people that designed it and the people that were the first consumers had a very narrow idea to treat it as a mere technological replacement for lanterns, but as the generation that grew up with it started getting out into the world they were the ones that realized it could do tons of stuff and thus came the age of home appliances.
I think the Internet — and computers in general — are at the same cusp. Right now computers are still just mainly replacements for calculators, typewriters, camcorders etc. and the internet is a mall, library, phones and community billboard. However, it has so much more potential that can be harvested, and now that we have a generation of young adults that are used to computers in every day life, I think that we are close to seeing this. In my day job there is the exact same divide both computationally and mathematically. The younger scientists that have grown up with computers use them with ease and can operate highly abstract programs that provide tons of efficiency and insight, while the older scientists still do most things manually. Also, us youngin's have a more intuitive grasp of nonlinear system dynamics, and so I find it easier to talk about the work I'm doing with younger people than older. The older ones have long recognized that they have observed things that don't make sense in the more classical approach — and are dying to find someone that can do a better job of explaining the possible underlying mechanisms — but they have a much harder time getting the details.
I think that systems theory as a field is going to hit the big time within the next 10-20 years and contribute to rapid changes in society as well.
P.S. you said you'd toss some quotes up from “that” book, which one is it?
Mikkel,
“P.S. you said you'd toss some quotes up from “that” book, which one is it?”
Now, realize that on this Web site you're now back on something like screen (page) #6 as of now (mainly due to the terrorism in India and the many stories about that), but if you're still looking at this thread, here you are. Please read everything as more than one item in this reply is of value to you.
“That book” is the later of two books written by Roger Bootle that have had the quality of premonition as well as forcing the reader to think as one reads, even if the style is a breezy kind of British style and it's easy to overlook things in the book. The two books by him meant for the general public are:
1. “The Death of Inflation: Surviving and Thriving in the Zero Era”
2. “Money for Nothing: Real Wealth, Financial Fantasies, and the Economy of the Future”
http://www.extensor.co.uk/book_reviews/money_fo…
The second, more recent book, is “that book” I have been reading and enjoying currently.
The first book only gently talked about deflation; its theme was the slaying of substantial inflation and changes ongoing in the economy that might be overlooked by most people, including financial officials in governments, and he warned back then about continuing to view the economy with a fear of resurgence of inflation (which is rational, given our experience in the past decades, but which is actually an historical aberration), and the risk of deflation. The book gently brushes with things like people who are in debt, that they are likely to behave in a deflationary sense insofar as they will be defensive if their situation becomes precarious, and so on.
The second book discusses deflation in more detail and constitutes a practical (real-world) introduction to what it might mean, while the book also discusses a number of other things. First and foremost, the breaking first of the stock bubble and now the housing bubble (which was not limited to the USA). Second, it discusses modern technology that can change the economy (and the book distinguishes what is likely and what is historically implied, versus the hype). Third, it discusses the world on the brink of a massive potential improvement in wealth and development in the less-developed nations (something that was largely little but dreams in the 1950s and 1960s, try as hard as we did and despite some good successes then like the Green Revolution). The book lays the case in favor of free trade (which leads to increased trade, a key to progress). It also discusses a few other things like problems with pensions that likely will be made worse by the continued poor performance of stocks, and such. (Also a warning if governments and pensions are redesigned with deflationary expectations, only someday to have inflation reemerge and people experience something like the fixed-income people did in our earlier substantial inflation). There's even something in there that bolsters my own thoughts regarding a definition of poverty and where the federal poverty level (and related to it, say, the federal income tax exemption) should be set.
Both books are worth your time and I'll add here propitiously that hopefully you haven't chosen to write off books (or for that matter other printed material like newspapers and magazines) out of trendy techno-conceit. (Part of the decline in newspapers is simply cultural in the sense that younger people are becoming more and more ignorant and not caring about world affairs; they often cannot name the Vice President or other top public officials, for example, or answer the simplest, easiest geographical questions, for example.)
Used book stores remain the civilized world's gold mines and on the road today, here's what I quickly, merely picked up for a day's or night's reading on today's road trip from a bookstore in downtown Detroit.
Among the books I got just quickly (one handful of books, just for reading tonight and tomorrow):
* A spare copy, hardback, of “The Death of Inflation” by Bootle (see above)
* A spare copy of “Financial Passages,” by Ben Stein — I have told you about getting this book sometime. I also recommend “Bruce G. McWilliams'[s] Under-33 Financial Plan” if you want additional, somewhat dated, but ever useful information about personal finance for young people
* A 1965 book, a set of essays on topics related to the “guaranteed minimum income,” among the most ambitious of economic policy goals during the near-zenith of liberalism in this country (USA in the 1960s) (not necessarily of interest to you — you can look up the phrases “guaranteed minimum income” and “basic income guarantee” on-line to speed up any research and get more contemporary materials if you are interested)
* Two books about kidneys and diseases (not something of interest to you, most likely)
I suggest you visit and patronize your local, sometimes-struggling, always-worth-visiting used book stores and learn what you can find, where (which may include the books I've listed above).
Mikkel, the first part of “that book” (and the back cover) can be seen here. Sorry, not the tech-development-related part.
http://books.google.com/books?id=EUp2jo-3KQkC&d…
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