Why Don't We Invent That Tomorrow? 439
museumpeace writes "In the NYTimes book review blog, David Itzkoff takes a look at a new book devoted to predicting which 'science fiction' technologies may really fly some day. The author is Michio Kaku, one of the inventors of string theory, so he bears a hearing. His picks include light sabers, invisibility and force fields." Which sci-fi tech do you think needs to get invented over the weekend?
That's an easy one! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't expect much. Time travel of course. D'uh.
Re:That's an easy one! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That's an easy one! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's an easy one! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That's an easy one! (Score:5, Informative)
You also assume that there's an absolute frame of reference... which there isn't.
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Physicists, say the ever reliable Wikipeda (it's okay to use it while mocking it if I check it's sources, right?) are st
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Re:That's an easy one! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's an easy one! (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Traveling backwards in time by going faster than the speed of light you know [(1-v^2/c^2)^.5] (will take infinite energy, but were talking time travel so lets hand-wave that away... maybe you get it back on the return trip or something). So first youve got your machine that can speed you up that fast, also for the sake of argument lets say the force you can generate is so large that you get to the speed of light in less than planck time (the first trick), thereby not interacting with anyone or traveling anywhere before you lose all mass and travel at light speed. From there, if you think about it (to avoid the root of a negative), the direction that light travels must switch, so once again youd be traveling through time at the same speed as now relative to earth and at the same location, only everything would be running opposite. So what you wanna do is once agian use your ultimate acceleration device but turn it on for a fraction of a second less, and this amount of time your accelerating is related to how far back in time you end up when you then decelerate to zero V relative to the earth, now youre at a point backwards in time relative to where you started, but if you try to interact with anything you'll have to do it all backwards, and plus you're not in the right spot which just isnt going to be fun. So heres the second trick, now you once again accelerate to lightspeed and a little bit beyond really quickly. Now youre in the past traveling in the direction of causality as we know it, but in the wrong spot( probably the middle of nowhere, you can check this by sending some smaller time machines ahead of you programemd to come back that can sense the surroundings) so you just travel through space until you get to where you want, and now you do whatever it is you wanted to do back there.
2)You don't actually go back in time, but a copy of you does. If the state of every subatomic particle in your body could be detected very near to the time before youre sent back, you wouldnt know the difference. So we take that information, compress it in some way (your DNA is basically a compressed human being, think about that), then send that signal through a microscopic wormhole moving at relativistic speeds relative to its nearby partner who you keep in a safe location, with some way for it to decompress itself. When you exited the slow moving partner you would end up in the same location but in the past.
Re:That's an easy one! (Score:4, Interesting)
I think "alternate universes" could probably be explained with time/space warping though. They may not be alternate universes, but alternate planets that happen to interfere with your little time warp phenomenon. That wouldn't really be time travel, but a "natural" form of transportation without destruction.
The question that begs to be asked for time travel though: If you do travel back in time, and let's say you know exactly where you will end up. How do you get back? Let's say you build a device in the past (now present)... you've used resources from that time that could have been used for something else, creating the famous paradoxical situations. You could, by using a wrong plank of wood or stepping on a bug that might scare your ancestors into each others arms, change the course of your history, rendering you nonexistent. It would happen so fast, it would be like stepping off your time machine and vanishing into thin air. Along with your device. Not even mentioning airborne viruses that you could carry back with you.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/ [imdb.com]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/ [imdb.com]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181852/ [imdb.com]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118689/ [imdb.com]
No rational car driver, sane bird or other sentient being would want to pass through that!
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It has some limitations but it already works!
Limitations are following: it drives in one direction only (forward), and with speed no faster than 60 seconds a minute!
This in 60 seconds you can travel 1 minute in future!
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Re:That's an easy one! (Score:4, Insightful)
Layne
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People are quite happy to accept that we cant travel faster that c, but soon forget that all frames of reverance are all equal. There is no aether, no absolute position, no zero velocity, hell there aint much apart from acceleration!
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People are quite happy to accept that we cant travel faster that c, but soon forget that all frames of reverance are all equal. There is no aether, no absolute position, no zero velocity, hell there aint much apart from acceleration!
Unfortunately, the coordinate system you're suggesting we use is not an inertial one: it is accelerating under many influences, the most significant of which is gravity from the sun. Picking an inertial reference
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We just need solar flares and a star gate for time (Score:2)
and the SGC has laser guns and FORCE FIELDS.
The hard thing with laser guns is POWERING them.
There are being tested at area 51.
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Smeghead.
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My brain just came up with a scenario whereby a bunch of NASA scientists sit around a boardroom table and plan such an experiment. It'd go something like:
week 1: build/program receivers on earth
week 2: listen for signal
week 3: build probe
week 4: send probe back in time to week 2, and record precisely what time and date you did it so... you can analyse signal
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I can't remember any teleportation or time travel story that mentions this obvious thing.
The tabletop RPG Traveller took all of this into account. It was possible (although very unlikely) to get abilities like teleportation, but the rules were so hard-assed about the actual physics to make it practically useless. For instance, it calculated the amount of potential energy that you get from teleporting up or down in Earth gravity. This was assumed to be applied to you as a near instant change in body temperature which meant in the end that any attempt to actually go much faster than the stair
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Re:That's an easy one! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's an easy one! (Score:5, Funny)
That sounds like something my Dad would say....hey wait a minute!
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Von Neumann Machines (Score:3, Insightful)
At any scale. But nanoscale is my preference.
Ideally of types that interface cleanly with the human nervous system.
But that's just me.
Been Done (Score:5, Funny)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Kaku bears a hearing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Moved and seconded... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kaku bears a hearing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the delusion of grandure. I do agree that futurologists are guilty of this - but what we have even today is really quite grand.
What he's doing though seems to me to be mere extrapolation. Let us go back a few thousand years and try to explain to your average hunter/gatherer that in the future we have an arrow which can shoot all the way around the world and completely obliterate 50 square miles of whatever we aimed it at. That's pretty godlike, and that kind of technology came along with the microwave oven and color television.
The hunters arrow creates a hole a few inches in diameter - the hydrogen bomb creates a crater many hundreds of meters in diameter, so a weapon of a few thousand years from now should be able to create a blemish in matter approximately 1000 miles in size, a few thousand years past that and the weapon would make a big hole almost 6 million miles in size.
thousands of years are not long periods of time to the universe, I won't continue to extrapolate into the millions of years of humanities progress.
I think, if we survive and continue to progress like this, that we will be pretty bad-ass indeed.
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The hunters arrow creates a hole a few inches in diameter - the hydrogen bomb creates a crater many hundreds of meters in diameter, so a weapon of a few thousand years from now should be able to create a blemish in matter approximately 1000 miles in size, a few thousand years past that and the weapon would make a big hole almost 6 million miles in size.
Yay for extrapolation through two points! Apparently, several thousand years ago, hunters' darts could actually *fill up* craters!
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Not that simple, I believe. Impacted area increases in a quadratic manner (remember A = PI.r^2). It is very likely that the energy needed to blast that area/volume is on higher polynomial (ie, being a r^4 or r^5). Much like getting a spaceship near c, there is a point where energy requirements get prohibitive.
Unfortunately our potential has limitations. There is just so much energy we can extract from our environment (read: sun). Maybe our best shot is building something like a dyson killer star [xkcd.com]
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Both!
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I endorse the above post. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh sure... we'll just ignore how something the size of an atom is supposed to contain any sort of parts capable of manipulating the environment
String Theory (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey man, you know what would be awesome? What if the whole Universe was really made up of a bunch of vibrating strings?"
"Whoa...I think you just blew my mind man...Hey, don't bogart that!"
Re:String Theory (Score:4, Funny)
motions a bunch of other scientists over to look in the microscope
"Duuude... why're we staring into a bong?"
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Obligatory Van Wilder quote:
"That's no bong! That's for my schlong!"
(Sorry, just watched it again last night =])
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Ovheard at Hotel Coral Essex (Score:2)
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Of course, this smacks of urban legendry - but snopes nor wikipedia seem to offer definite refutations, just lack of support.
Teleporters (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Mr Fusion" (Score:2)
Re:"Mr Fusion" (Score:5, Funny)
Already been invented. Called a gun.
Re:"Mr Fusion" (Score:5, Funny)
How about an identical accordion 180 degrees out of phase with the offending accordion?
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Fight fire with dynamite, if the accordion playing annoys you, drown it out with bagpipes!
Just make sure you're the closest to the door, and it's open, AND you have a get-a-way car right outside the door, with its door open and motor running.
More weapons?? (Score:3, Insightful)
And invisibility? Nothing good would come of that either.
I'd be happy for a cure for the cold personally.
Easy: Method of Locomotion to another Solar System (Score:5, Interesting)
No, not by itself (Score:5, Informative)
We'd still need great improvements in reaction drives, for example, to overcome the velocity differences between different star systems.
Lacking magical Star Trek style sensors, we'd need to find ways to detect and analyze planets.
Life support systems. Expedition craft that can handle a takeoff as well as a landing. Power sources. Cripes, it goes on and on.
Really, it's not like Masters of Orion or some other 4x game.
Me, I'd settle for that Mr. Fusion someone mentioned uptopic.
One word (Score:5, Funny)
Fembots
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Either that, or the holodeck. Either one could have some....uh....interesting....possibilities...
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Of course, we'll need a way to reproduce asexually (or proper robot-human interaction education), because soon the world would start depopulating from people only mating with robots.
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-G
Obligatory (Score:4, Insightful)
But seriously I think that we should invent a real HUD system that could work through contacts but be powered just with body heat.
bears a hearing? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:bears a hearing? (Score:5, Funny)
The author is Michio Kaku, one of the inventors of string theory, so he bears a hearing.
After all, an inventor of string theory must be an expert on science fiction...
Re:bears a hearing? (Score:5, Funny)
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Mr.Fusion (Score:5, Insightful)
I could certainly use... (Score:2)
a. GM plants that make money grow on trees.
b. GM microbes that make violent impotent. IN whatever way is most effective.
c. GM Animals that hunt and chase fat people.
Re:I could certainly use... (Score:5, Funny)
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In North America they're called bears and they don't work so well. In India they're called tigers and they work VERY well (Ever see a fat Indian? I know I haven't...)
Obviously we just need tigers in North America.
Michio Kaku and Discovery (Score:3, Informative)
Worth to see IMHO.
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Now that you mention it, I remember seeing that episode. It was absolutely terrible.
"Base code so old that no one remembers how to modify it?" Apparently, the host knows absolutely nothing about how large scale software projects are managed, and how incredibly fragile they become when not actively maintained. And even if we accept his premise, I think you'll find that "The City" (SPOOOOON!) would have patched ag
Linkage. (Score:5, Informative)
My pick (Score:5, Insightful)
Physically staying 27 until I die from something other then natural causes.
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You've probably already seen it, but...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/39 [ted.com]
Re:My pick (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you need to be allowed to retire. I'm going to retire as soon as I have enough money invested to live on the interest plus some extra to grow the principle enough to offset inflation each year. That's well before "official" retirement age, which is good considering how few of my male relatives even lived to their sixties.
It's not even really hard to save up that money, the key seems to be "don't have kids", which would be even more important in a world with immortality.
My pick ... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sick of those damned teenagers hanging out on my lawn.
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Me, I would much rather have a gelatinous cube. so I can see there expressions as they dissolve.
If you think that doesn't apply to a technology question, I refer you to Art:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Duh (Score:5, Funny)
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It says "...which 'science fiction' technologies may really fly some day." - not pigs.
Dr. Michio Kaku also has a radio show (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.mkaku.org/radio/ [mkaku.org]
Apparently, he also has a myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/mkaku [myspace.com]
sure (Score:2)
Yes, as much as he "bears hearing" on string theory.
Descartes (Score:2)
I think therefore I am. (Loose translation).
I believe that his basic premis can be extended: "If it can be thought, it can be done." It almost seems that we (as humans) can only envision that which is possible - within some undefined metalogical framework. What I mean is, if it can be expressed in a way that is ultimately not contradictory in , then it is possible.
Never use psuedo tags (Score:2)
My bad for putting that in an HTML tag like expression (and not previewing first).
Screw that, I want space colonies (Score:5, Interesting)
I want to live in an O'Neill cylinder!
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O'Neill's reference design ... consists of two counter-rotating cylinders each two miles (3 km) in radius, and twenty miles (30 km) long
I'm not going to do the maths, but you can imagine how much metal goes into a 3x20 mile long cylinder. Now imagine cutting that up into 20x5 metre sections and launching it into space. It might take a while.
I think we need to invent smelting in space before we can try these things, not to mention doing some proper research into closed ecosystems.
Faster than light travel. (Score:2)
CowboyNeal replicator (Score:2, Funny)
It won't happen tomorrow or over the weekend but (Score:2)
Stop Aging (Score:2, Interesting)
I predict that at some point in the distant future, the idea that people let themselves die when they didn't really
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I'm pretty familiar with the topic and you're simply wrong. There's no apathy and there's not a lot of progress. Unless you have some new research I'm unfamiliar with and could provide a link?
A peace ray. (Score:4, Funny)
Although if someone could recreate the "camera" that Oliver Wendell Jones [wikipedia.org] first built, that'd be good for some laughs, too.
I'd settle for a teleporter, if worse came to worse.
Down and out (Score:2)
Needs inventing by Saturday night (Score:3, Funny)
At last! (Score:3, Insightful)
Parts of the book relating to wormholes, time travel and teleportation have been adapted by Kaku himself and published in the March 2008 ("Special Einstein") issue of Discover magazine. You can get an unadulterated taste of the book and a bunch of other nifty stuff about Einstein, relativity and such all in one package.
I think the claim he was an inventor of string theory isn't entirely accurate. However, he was co-author of the first paper on string field theory, which showed the five versions of string theory to be different versions of the same underlying mechanism. I think "rescurer" would be more accurate than "inventor" as well as being worth more credit.
Despite publishing other popular books previously including a best seller, hosting a 4 part BBC special, a 3 part Discovery Channel special and two different weekly radio shows, he's so far managed to dodge the inevitable unwashed masses and supposedly washed whiny insiders who show up to tip the ivory tower of popularizers of science. Last time it was Brian Greene. Even Sagan was so assailed until he forced their forgiveness by dying at them. Let's see how Kaku weathers the storm following the massive attention this new book is getting him. Including one picture of the Stargate and one of a Kirk led landing party being beamed down in the Discover article should help bring them out of the woodwork.
ZPM (Score:5, Insightful)
Broiled tongue in cheek. (Score:3, Insightful)
A Windows release that actually works as advertised.
True story (Score:4, Interesting)
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Sounds like a win to me all around *grin*
Re:Lightsabers... (Score:4, Interesting)
Take a high-powered infra-red laser that can be focused with a lens so that the focal point is energetic enough to ionize air.
Now get a lens whose focus can be changed electrically (Quartz and germanium are two possibilities that come to mind, I know germanium is transparent to infrared, not too sure about quartz)
Put laser and lens in a handle, sweep the focus of the lens from just past the hilt out to about three feet and back, several times a second.
Voila! Nice hissing, glowing column of energy that looks like a sword, cuts like a plasma torch, and can be yielded with one hand.
Caveats: Beams wont block other beams like a real sword.
Wear safety goggles to protect remaining eye from laser.
Please just ignore the power cable running to the wall outlet.
PS, if you're silly enough to do this, please post video of mishaps on You Tube AND Darwin Awards!
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Thank you, Sir Rodney, [wikimedia.org] for that very important piece of information.
Re:Fembots... (Score:4, Funny)
Crap... now I want to create a lulzcat image of a 300lbs, slick skinned, unshaven geek with exaggerated, plaintive eyes and the caption "U Has Bene Gesserits?"