The Future is Now

Sometimes you read a book so powerful, so wise that you feel the duty of spreading the author's words and contribute to a better world.  Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future is a must-read in the night stand of every leader in the planet, every decision maker, everyone with power to influence societies with high decisions.  Actually, I will rephrase this: it should be part of every school curriculum.

If we talk about the future, we talk about the next generation which is going to inherit the very complicated mission of bringing mankind from a Type 0 civilization to a Type I civilization.  A type I civilization is planetary, it controls all sources of energy of the planet and might be able to tame and modify the weather.  This civilization has an incredible life span and enjoys technologies that we could only dream about when we were kids.

We will live in a world where energy is cheap and abundant, where computers are everywhere to assist us in our daily duties, from our clothing to the walls of our houses.  Information will not be only at the palm of your hands, but in front of your eyes.

Nowadays, we are in the transition from Type 0 to Type I and this is the most dangerous moment in history of humanity.  This is because we still have all the savagery, all the fundamentalism, racism and intolerance that marked us through our barbaric stage, yet we have enough destructive power to eradicate ourselves from Earth, thanks to the same advances in technology that have brought us to the top of this planet's evolutionary table.  If knowledge is power, information is the currency and we live in an age where it can be accessed immediately and anywhere.  Anyone can access online data about how to build a nuclear weapon, or where to find all materials needed for it.  In these upcoming times where information will be abundant, the only force that oppose the chaos is wisdom.

Kaku defines wisdom as the ability to identify the crucial issues of our time, analyze them from many different points of view and perspectives, and then choose the one that carries out some noble goal and principle.  As he points, unlike information, wisdom cannot be dispersed via blogs and internet chatter.  It comes from reasoned and informed democratic debate from opposing sides.

George Bernard Shaw once said: "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."  The Internet is an ally of democratic freedom, allowing people to access information that centuries ago would be controlled by some local government in order to keep their dictatorship's hegemony.  Now, youngsters have the power and responsibility of choosing wisely, of deciding how far to take this technology that can change the world, and in what directions it must develop.  This promising generation must be educated overall, must be an informed electorate, but we run into one problem.  How to do that with a dysfunctional and outmoded educational system?

Sir Ken Robinson warned us with a short question on his memorable speech at TED's conference in 2006: "Do Schools kill creativity?"  If the leaders of tomorrow must have common sense, ability of thinking creatively and be problem-solvers, how to develop them in times like these?  Why are we leveling our kids by the bottom and rewarding mediocrity when the great work should be done in those years prior to their academic life?  Let's not be complacent with a wasteful attitude; let's not try to tell them what to do, but help them to develop their way.  We all are responsible for changing the present, we all are parents of the kids of the future; we are the role models of the men and women who will set the destiny our species.  Thousands of generations have lived and died to pass their genes so you could be here today, and you have this weight on your shoulders.

Robinson also said: " I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth, for a particular commodity, and for the future, it won’t serve us.

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children."

. . . . .

What are you going to do today?

Lighting Our Way

Universities and institutions all around the world are researching about different aspects and applications for something so common, but so necessary in our lives that most of the people would not even notice it’s there: light.  With all the advances in science and technology, light is being used in vary fields, such as medicine, communications and weaponry, and it may be a crucial factor in bringing us to a quick start into the future.  We are unleashing the power of light.

Scientists and engineers at the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal are developing a Laser-Induced Plasma Channel (LIPC) weapon to take out targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them.  This future-like laser machine would guide a lightning bolt via laser beam to hit the target with the possible power of 50 billion watts, more power than a larger city needs.

"If a laser beam is intense enough, its electro-magnetic field is strong enough to rip electrons off of air molecules, creating plasma," said Fischer. "This plasma is located along the path of the laser beam, so we can direct it wherever we want by moving a mirror."

Meanwhile, researchers of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a procedure to focus light inside biological tissue which allows doctors to perform surgery without having to cut through your skin, or diagnose cancer by seeing tumors inside the body.

Such a less invasive technique of diagnosing and treating diseases enables scientists to research and develop promising applications for this ultrasound based method, and the benefits for patients are easily recognizable.  

Ok; we are developing weapons and medical technology.  That doesn’t sound so futuristic, right?  What else?

Think about history; think about nowadays.  What is one of the most important factors for human development, for learning and progressing into a more advanced society and going beyond our physical limitations?  Communication, I would say.

Without communication, knowledge would be lost in time and space and we would never be able to reach our potential.  Today, we live in a globalized era where we can share and learn with each other, doesn’t matter where in the world you live.  Computers, internet, cell phones; technology bring us together and it’s the key for our evolution.

The advances in computer technology are widely defined by the amount and speed of data we can storage and share, and microchips and processors nowadays have a great power comparing to, let’s say, last year.  The Moore’s Law isn’t dead yet and new supercomputers – funny term as they always get old – are being developed right now.  But, wait – aren’t you talking about light?  Let’s talk briefly about something else first: superconductors.

Superconductivity can be defined as a phenomenon of no resistance for an electric current with the expulsion of magnetic fields occurring in certain materials when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature, and superconductors are materials which allow these phenomena to occur, with no energy loss.  Superconductors can be used in defense, transportation, energy generation, communication and research, just to summarize a few applications.

A team of researchers from the University of Oxford Department of Physics, Japan and Germany were able to transform a non-superconducting insulator into a superconductor by the use of light.  An infrared laser pulse was used to perturb the positions of some of the atoms in the material, and the compound, held at a temperature just 20 degrees above absolute zero, almost instantaneously became a superconductor for a fraction of a second, before relaxing back to its normal state.

The researchers are hopeful that it could offer a new route to obtaining superconductivity at higher temperatures.  If superconductors that work at room temperature could be achieved, it would open up many more technological applications. 

The applications of these materials are wide and they may even hold the key for the next step in the evolution of processors.  Maybe, in the near future, superconductors can be used to manufacture real quantum computers as first coined by Richard Feynman in 1982; who knows?  The good thing about the future is that it keeps turning into present. 

Boosting You

I don’t know about you, but it amazes me when I see science overcoming the barriers that nature imposes us.  

Human beings are not impressively strong animals – we are definitely not among the fastest and our immune system has considerably deteriorated along the last millenniums – but our brains allow us to get far beyond any other species in this planet would ever dreamed of.  

We are not only able to create and control our personal environment and use technology to ease our lives, but we also use it to enhance ourselves.

Science for the blind

After losing his right eye in a shooting accident, the film maker Rob Spencer decided to implant a tiny camera in his eye socket and now he’s able to film and transmit videos wireless to screens, videos, cameras and hard drive devices.  He started the EyeBorg Project what would be, at least, a very interesting anthropological experiment.

A new technology of bionic eye is being developed to allow the blind to see again.  A camera in a pair of glasses sends a wireless signal to an implant behind the retina which sends a crude black & white image data back to the brain through the optic nerve.  Nowadays, people are receiving a 60 electrode implant, but scientists of the Doheny Institute in California are working on a 1,000 electrode version which should even allow facial recognition.  Electrical engineers of the Monash Vision Group have also begun trialing prototype microchips for powering the bionic eye and the Stanford School of Medicine is working on tiny solar-panel-like cells to be used in those kinds of implants.

Nootropics -- enhancing what you have and the impact on society

On the other hand, perfectly healthy individuals are using nootropics – also referred to as cognitive enhancers or intelligence enhancers – to boost their natural intellect and, said, “reach their true potential.”

If you have seen the blockbuster Limitless starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro you might have an idea of what I’m talking about.

Although these drugs are usually prescribed to treat medical conditions, many people take the risk and buy them over the internet in an attempt to boost performance at work, university and other social environment.  You can find plenty of information online about it – not exactly professional advices – and its popularity is increasing among students.  But what are the impacts on the society?

Imagine if you have to compete against a hyper focused student who wouldn’t get as tired as you and, worse, if that becomes common practice.

"I was able to write a 22-page paper in one day. I revised it over the next couple of days and got an A. Normally, I wouldn't have even been able to get a rough draft done in a week," says one student surveyed about his use of modafinil.

When asked about their potential impact on society, people clearly have concerns beyond safety - about how the drugs might create a two-tier education system in which some can afford the drugs and others can't, as shown on the BBC article Do Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs Work.

"The drugs would get stronger and stronger due to increased demand of performance. Addictions would ensue. People would not be able to live without them. Employers would demand their employees to be constantly using them."

Truth is, science allows us to get the best of ourselves.  The problem is when that also brings the bad side of human nature which is that predatory ability of exploitation and dominance.

Around the World of Science in 80 seconds

While on Earth we are expecting the next-generation 1.3 Gbps router by Netgear at the beginning of 2013 and are also excited to see the new step on evolution of processors as Intel’s Ivy Bridge with its 37 percent more processing speed with the use of just half the energy, outside our cozy planet, science is getting ready to enter a new era.

Welcome to the new God Rush; this one is going to happen far away from California – actually, far above.

Did you ever dreamed about being an astronaut or a miner when you were a kid? Maybe even a combination of both as a space miner? Well, today is your lucky day.

The visionaries from Planetary Resources figured that our planet resources are scarce and they are not gonna last for longer if we keep this rhythm of exploitation – not breaking news, but who’s doing anything about it? – and had a good idea: hey; if there are lots of asteroids floating out there, why don’t we start digging them? After all, all you need is some hundreds millions of dollars to generate tens of billions annually.

“Many of the scarce metals and minerals on Earth are in near-infinite quantities in space. As access to these materials increases, not only will the cost of everything from microelectronics to energy storage be reduced, but new applications for these abundant elements will result in important and novel applications.”

Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc. says that one single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid may contain the equivalent of all the Platinum Group Metals mined in history, for example.

And it is not just about platinum; they may possibly find new materials, develop new technologies, definitely make some pressure on the global economy and hopefully not get any dangerous space bacteria.

We know about approximately 9,000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and there are more than 1,500 that are energetically as easy to reach as the Moon. The company has developed a spacecraft named Arkyd-100 Series that will be used in low-Earth orbit and ultimately help prioritize the first several NEA targets for the company’s follow-on expeditions.

Meanwhile, in the University of Cambridge, astronomers are now initiating a European-wide program, hailed as the premier European astrophysics space mission of the decade, to create the first 3D map made of a colossal picture of our Milky Way Galaxy that reveals the details of a billion stars, BBC News reports. Thanks to the Gaia satellite, due to be launched into space in August 2013 and whose heart is the largest digital camera ever built, they’ll be able to gather billion-pixel video data in three dimensions of a billion stars, galaxies, quasars, and solar system asteroids –which may be useful for our entrepreneurship in asteroid mining.

Gaia’s installation consists of an amazing cluster of 108 identical servers used for the bulk of the data processing, and 9 additional servers used for monitoring, backup and control. The individual servers are connected by a high-speed 40 gigabit Infiniband network to allow rapid communication and transfers of large data volumes and each of the 108 servers have powerful 2 6-core CPUs, 48 gigabytes of RAM and 9 terabytes of hard-disk storage. Therefore, the whole bulk processing system has 1296 processing cores, around 5 terabytes of RAM and nearly 1 petabyte of hard-disk storage for use during the active processing.

Here on Earth, I would be happy just by having a car with anti-fogging and self-cleaning windshields, but who’s inventing that? Oh, the guys from MIT. Thank you!

Smart Cities, Smart Life

After smart phones, now come Smart Cities.

We are so used to have technology in our daily lives, either in form of comfort appliances or security measures. Internet is something so intrinsically connected to our professional and personal life that it is inevitable its use in research, monitoring and control of people - according to Mindflash.com, roughly 45% of employers now reportedly use social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to screen potential employees (and, of course, keep monitoring them); The Telegraph says that Britons spend an average of 15 hours a week online, and the average American spent 32 hours per month in 2010 (note that by average there’s no distinction of online activity by age group or gender).

Both the Shetland Islands Council and Corby Borough Council - among the smallest local authorities in the UK - have more CCTV cameras than the San Francisco Police Department. The borough of Wandsworth has the highest number of CCTV cameras in London, with just under four cameras per 1,000 people. Its total number of cameras - 1,113 - is more than the police departments of Boston [USA], Johannesburg and Dublin City Council combined.

Ok; the Big Brother is watching us, but what else?

Cities tend to reach for progress and the use of technology is inexorable in the pace for the future.

Vehicle-interlock systems that disable automobiles when sensors detect an inebriated driver have been around for some years now and, because people cheat the system (of course they do), a face recognition program is being developed by engineers of the University of Windsor with the use of biometrics.

In Paris, three years ago, 100 people volunteered under the Citypulse project to monitor ozone and noise levels of different areas in order to gather data to prevent and solve present and future problems, making the city a better place to live.

In U.S.A., a new bill (Senate Bill 1813, known as MAP-21) passed by the U.S. Senate in March calls for “mandatory event data recorders” to be installed in all new passenger motor vehicles sold in the U.S. from 2015 on, for recording data before, during, or after a crash.

Everything seems wonderful so far; what’s the matter?

As Amara Angelica eloquently explained on her article about these black boxes, “Maybe the black box in the future will eventually monitor everything happening in the car, with real-time feeds to Homeland Security?” That’s when I ask: where is the limit between security monitoring and privacy invasion? I remember the airport full-body X-ray scanners polemic – I still travel by plane and, every time, it is still uncomfortable.

I am a big fan of science fiction predictions of the future, and there are two that come to mind about that: one is Spielberg’s film Minority Report and the police division of Pre-Crime and the other is the book 1984 by George Orwell which coined the so common term Big Brother (which I have even used on this very article).

Am I going too far by making a link here?

Smart Cities will collect data of all kinds - cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines etc - and use it to connect and control every aspect of life with massive operating systems that will run these cities in their entirety; now, who’s gonna provide all this apparatus and withdraw its benefits? The market is estimated to be worth $16 billion by the end of the decade and big companies like IBM and Cisco are already on it. Yep; the future is going to be owned by monopolies – not breaking news in any society, either capitalist or socialist.

So, technology came to help us to live a better life, I agree; everyone wants some degree of comfort and to be at ease. The problem comes when you get too dependent on it, or when it controls you. How smart are You?

You know you're in the future when...

Today I heard someone saying: “I got an appointment to replace my left knee…” and I thought to myself, “That’s how you know you’re in the future. Then, it occurred to me…

You know you're in the future when parallel parking can occur automatically.

You know you’re in the future when your cell phone has more processing power than your computer, more mega pixels than your camera and you can talk to it.

You know you're in the future when it only costs $15.50 to get corporate secrets, but a bottle of water costs $40.

You know you’re in the future when you can buy a high resolution plasma TV of 59” -- which also happens to be 3D -- for $2.000, but the warranty is for only one year, and it probably won’t last for two.

You know you’re in the future when you read about electronics made of nanomaterials that can rewire themselves on the fly, when a high-school student finds a possible cure for cancer, but you turn on the TV and they are showing “Keeping up with the Kardashians” (sorry, I refuse to link that).

You know you’re in the future when people want to build a space elevator, but there are still people dying by starvation in the world.

You know you’re in the future – and getting older – when kids don’t know the connection between a pencil and a tape.

You know you’re in the future when people go for a break and do nothing but texting, unaware of the world that surrounds them.

You know you’re in the future when you can buy online a personal submarine with over 250hp that looks like a killer whale.

You know you’re in the future when you can buy a car with over 130hp that runs 50mpg.

You know you’re the future when scientists trap antimatter for over 15 minutes and the majority of the world doesn’t give a damn about it.

And what about you? How do you know you’re in the future?

The Poetry in Science

What’s closest to Science than Poetry?  “All other things”, you may say.  I’ll tell you may be wrong, my friend! 

As the Canadian poet Christian Bok said, there’s a long relation between science and poetry since Newton.  Alexander Pope would write “God said let there be Newton and All was Light,” celebrating with his generation the beauty of the new physics changing the view of the world.

The British poet Ruth Padel says eloquently in her article for The Guardian, the science of poetry, the poetry of science: “Scientia means "knowledge:" science, it seems to me, is not about facts; it is about thinking about facts.”  As she also clarifies, poetry and science, both, share the need of an abstract insight to be worked though precision in order to explain the details of a particular idea or point of view.

Poetry was first written to express such questions as why are we here, and what is the world that surrounds us made of?  All the modern science derivates from philosophy and the base was exactly the same – this inherent characteristic of mankind that is the curiosity that brings us beyond where our feet touch.  Metaphors are commonly used as a tool to scientific discovery and to lyric.  Einstein himself would say that imagination is more important than knowledge, and I have to agree that it is the main reason for why we are still here, lingering through the average expectation of the extinction rate of our species and, even better, evolving.

A good scientist and a good poet have one more trace in common that, perhaps, is the most important: both of them know that they might be proved wrong, that their suppositions are only the best explanation for what they are living at the moment.  This self knowledge allows them to question answers and correct mistakes, and that is what takes mankind further than we could only imagine. 

Antonio Ereditato, on his Cern presentation of how they have measured neutrinos traveling above the speed of light – an experiment that could tumble down the pillars of modern science, – said carefully as every scientist should do: “When you don't find anything, then you say 'well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinize this '.  Despite the large significance of this measurement that you have seen and the stability of the analysis, since it has a potentially great impact on physics, this motivates the continuation of our studies in order to find still-unknown systematic effects."

Everything starts with a question, so the joy is in the journey of the search for truth – we probably will always get very close to it, but never there; and that’s exactly the beauty of it.

Super-Earth

Only a few decades ago, if you said in public that life outside Earth was not just possible, but probable, people would laugh at you and talk behind your back.  Thanks to the advances in science, we’re able to see much further than ever in the history of mankind and collect some interesting facts about the subject.  Have you ever heard about super-Earths?

Astronomers working with the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) HARPS instrument have stated and estimation that, only in our galaxy, there are tens of billions of rocky planets not so much bigger than Earth orbiting red dwarf stars within the habitable zones (the area in a star system where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface) of those relatively cool stars.

Being in the habitable zone doesn’t necessarily mean that the planet has a perfect atmosphere or temperature; some may be too hot; others too cold, and the mass of the atmosphere can be really tricky in order to provide the essential means for the creation of life.

New observations indicate that 40% of all red dwarfs have rocky planets orbiting in their habitable zones.  Our own sun is a hotter G V, or yellow dwarf, star and is more than twice as massive as a red dwarf.

There are different types of stars known in the universe.  Because about 80% of stars in the Milky Way are red dwarfs (also referred to as M-class stars), this leads to the conclusion that tens of billions of rocky planets exist in habitable zones in our galaxy.

However, the planets called super-Earths have a better chance of supporting life than planets Earth-sized, and they can have up to 10 times the mass of our planet.  As scientists have also stated that every star in our galaxy, the Milky Way, has at least one planet in orbit around it, we’re able to get for the first time an idea of how many super-Earths might exist out there.

Fortunately, a great number of these exciting planets are relatively nearby neighbors: estimates suggest that there are 100 super-Earths in habitable zones around stars 30 light years or less from us, which is, in cosmological terms, really close.

Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science and physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: "We are sure, though, that because there are billions of stars in our galaxy alone, and because planet formation is a random process, many stars will end up with potentially habitable planets."

Now, the next quest is the study of their atmospheres and search for life – although Stephen Hawking has a very persuasive point of view about that; aliens almost certainly exist but humans should avoid making contact because, in his words, “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

He explained: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."  Draw your own conclusions...

Prometheus

Ridley Scott delights us once more with his ability to make grand science-fiction movies accompanied by intelligent plots.  The upcoming Prometheus will explore the origins of mankind on Earth, with a touch of its own mythology and science; if you are expecting some connection with Alien or Blade Runner get yourself ready for a whole new adventure – although the existence of extra-terrestrial life forms can be a similarity. 

The cast shows competent actors and actresses like Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace and others, and its budget is assumed to be something around $150 million dollars; Scott had initially requested a $250 million budget along with an R rating, but 20th Century Fox was reluctant to invest so much money in a film that was not PG-13, and the studio was pleased because Lindelof's screenplay was found to be more budget-conscious.

The plot follows the crew of the spaceship Prometheus in the year 2085, a team of scientists and explorers, as they explore an advanced alien civilization in search of the origins of humanity on a thrilling journey that will test their physical and mental limits and strand them on a distant world, where they will discover the answers to our most profound questions and to life's ultimate mystery.

Truth is, little is known about Prometheus' plotline; we know that the film is set in space for the most part, and is also largely based on discoveries about the creation of mankind, life and the Earth, but in the process, they threaten the future existence of mankind and are faced with unimaginable horrors.

The movie is scheduled for release on June 8, 2012 (USA) and you can find more information about it on its official website.

Love Books

There’s nothing better for killing time in a constructive way than reading a good book.  Books expand our horizons, fill us up with knowledge, make us laugh and cry and sharp our minds. 

Here are 10 must-read books of different genres for people whose tastes are eclectic – have fun on your journey!

As a disclaimer, the websites chosen for describing the books are merely illustrative, and I do not endorse, nor am I affiliated with any party.

1 - When We Were Gods – Falconer, Colin

Cleopatra VII of Egypt was barely more than a teenager when she inherited the richest empire in the world, fifty-one years before the birth of Jesus Christ.  Colin Falconer did a great job telling her story.

Colin Falconer was born in North London.  He is a former journalist and the author of three previous historical novels, which have been published in many languages throughout the world.  He travels widely to research his novels but now lives in a small coastal town in Western Australia.

2 – The Bourne Identity – Ludlum, Robert

The Bourne Identity was named the second best spy novel of all-time, and the novel was adapted into a 1988 television movie starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith, and a 2002 movie starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente and Chris Cooper.

Robert Ludlum (May 25, 1927 – March 12, 2001) was an American author of 23 thriller novels.  The number of his books in print is estimated between 290–500 million copies.  They have been published in 33 languages and 40 countries.  Ludlum also published books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd.

3 – East of Eden – Steinbeck, John

The masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley.  Follow the intertwined destinies of two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer.  He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937).  He was an author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections of short stories; Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

4 – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Larsson, Stieg

Larsson's regret of not helping a young girl named Lisbeth, whom he saw being raped when he was 15, manifested in his character of the same name, also a rape victim.  Larsson writes within the crime novel, in Chapter 12, "It's actually a fascinating case. What I believe is known as a locked room mystery, on an island. And nothing in the investigation seems to follow normal logic. Every question remains unanswered, every clue leads to a dead end."

Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" (15 August 1954 – 9 November 2004) was a Swedish journalist and writer. He is best known for writing the "Millennium series" of crime novels, which were published posthumously.  Larsson lived and worked much of his life in Stockholm, in the field of journalism and as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.  He was the second best-selling author in the world for 2008.

5 – Sophie’s World – Gaarder, Jostein

Sophie's World is a novel about philosophy by Jostein Gaarder, published in 1991. It was originally written in Norwegian, but has since been translated into English (1995) and many other languages.  It sold more than 30 million copies and is one of the most successful Norwegian novels outside of Norway.  The book has been adapted into a film and a PC game.

Jostein Gaarder  is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world.

6 – Insomnia – King, Stephen

Old Ralph Roberts hasn't been sleeping well lately. Every night he wakes just a little bit earlier, and pretty soon, he thinks, he won't get any sleep at all. It wouldn't be so bad, except for the strange hallucinations he's been having. Or, at least, he hopes they are hallucinations.  For fans of horror books, this one is a masterpiece.

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books.  Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

7 – The Universe in a Nutshell – Hawking, Stephen

If you are an inquisitive person, that’s a must-read.  Hawking exceeds his teaching abilities in this book, where he explains with mastery very difficult concepts of theoretical physics to normal-brained people.

Stephen William Hawking (born January 8, 1942) is a British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author. His key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation).  He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.  Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.  Subsequently, he became research director at the university's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

8 – A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bryson, Bill

Bryson, who’s best known for his travel writing (the both amazing A Walk in the woods and Neither Here, Nor There), entertain and enlighten us through this, sometimes funny, but surely captivating, popular science book; a highly recommendable good read that will sure give you smiles.

William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, (born December 8, 1951) is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science.  Born an American, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before returning to the US in 1995.  In 2003 Bryson moved back to Britain, living in the old rectory of Wramplingham, Norfolk, and was appointed Chancellor of Durham University.

9 – The Lost Symbol – Brown, Dan

This thriller is set in Washington, D.C. and is the follow-up of the world’s best seller The Da Vinci Code; and Brown did it again.  He mixes history, religion, science and art in this electrifying book that is going to keep you up for hours.

Dan Brown (born June 22, 1964) is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code.  Brown's novels, which are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour time period, feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories.  His books have been translated into over 40 languages, and as of 2009, sold over 80 million copies.  Two of them, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, have been adapted into feature films.

10 – The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology – Kurzweil, Ray

In the future of Ray Kuzweil’s prediction, technology will play a role in our lives much more important than we think: it will enable us to reverse aging, boost our cerebral power and fix DNA errors.  The next step in our evolutionary process will be the union of human and machine in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.

Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil  (born February 12, 1948) is an American author, scientist, inventor and futurist. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, technological singularity, and futurism.

Gadgets of the Future, Today

A Bed that floats in the air on magnets; an electric car with over 2,000hp that is ready with technology for hovering in electromagnetic highways; a cell phone made with nanotechnology that folds into a wrist-watch and stretches into a keyboard; piano-gloves to play in the air; a Segway-like dicycle that pops a third wheel on the fly and transforms into a motorcycle.

If you think that I’m talking about some new Steven Spielberg film, think again.  Most of those gadgets are already being produced for sale, for the happiness of millions of future enthusiasts around the world.

According to Moore’s law the advances in technology are growing in such an exponential rate that these improvements have dramatically enhanced the impact of digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world economy, allowing all kinds of new inventions. But let’s talk about the cool stuff!

The magnetic floating bed designed by Janjaap Ruijssenaars is astonishing, but so is its price: it’s expected to cost “merely” $1,200,000. If you are familiar with magnets and are asking yourself how they prevent the bed from floating away, it is held by four very thin wires.

http://hight3ch.com/magnetic-floating-bed/

As a car lover, I was taken by its design, but knowing that the Mithos is a zero-emissions car that goes up to 247mph and has so many other future-focused features made it a must in the list. Designed by the Portuguese designer Tiago Miguel Inacio, this electromagnetic monster is supposed to have specifications such as teleportation, quantum boost, scratch-resistant body material and others.

http://technabob.com/blog/2012/02/15/mithos-electromagnetic-concept-car/

Nokia’s innovation comes with the help of nanotechnology in the Nokia Morph concept. This cell phone fibril protein material makes it flexible, stretchable, transparent and remarkably strong giving you a good hint of what the future of telecommunication technology is going to look like.

http://research.nokia.com/morph

Another interesting device that is probably going to be improved with time is the eletronic piano-gloves by the Chinese manufacturer Thanko; the idea of playing piano in the air sounds fascinating and I am sure it is going to have further applications in other gizmos.

http://www.amazon.com/Thanko-Musical-Instrument-Fingers-Electronic/dp/B0078XE2OC

The sensational Uno 3 scooter is definitely a must-have if you’re tired of finding parking places in big cities.  This little transformer goes from an elaborated Segway into a scooter in about one second as you drive it in the streets, and it is also eco-friendly.  How many people fit in the elevator with their vehicles?

http://www.techi.com/2011/05/your-personal-uno-transformer-can-now-be-pre-ordered/

Cure For Cancer: A High School Student

I’m glad to know that there are still intelligent people out there, despite the stupidity being widely celebrated nowadays.

While most teenage girls spend their time gossiping around, trying to be popular and watching Jersey Shore, the 17-year-old high school student Angela Zhang has written a research paper in her spare time that provides us with, let me put it in a simple way, a possible cure for cancer.

Born to Chinese immigrants, she started reading doctorate level papers on bio-engineering when she was only a freshman.  By sophomore year she'd talked her way into the lab at Stanford, and by junior year was doing her own research projects.

"Cure for cancer -- a high school student," said her chemistry teacher at Monta Vista High School, Kavita Gupta. "It's just so mind-boggling. I just cannot even begin to comprehend how she even thought about it or did this."

"I just thought, 'Why not?' 'What is there to lose?'" said Angela.

“At first it was a little bit overwhelming,” said Angela, “but I found that it almost became like a puzzle, being able to decode something.”

Angela's idea was to mix cancer medicine and nanotechnology; the drugs, mixed in a polymer that would attach to nanoparticles, would then fasten themselves to cancer cells and show up on an MRI allowing doctors to exactly see where the tumors are. 

Then, she thought of using an infrared light aimed at the tumors so the polymer would melt and release the medicine, killing the cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

Although it will be years before scientists run tests on humans, the results on mice were pretty promising – the tumors almost completely disappeared.

Angela has deservedly won the prize of $100,000 in scholarships for college of the 2011 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology.

"Angela created a nanoparticle that is like a Swiss army knife of cancer treatment," said Tejal Desai, a bioengineer at the University of California, San Francisco, and a competition judge.

“This is a Cinderella moment for a science nerd like me,” Zhang told the Mercury News.
 

She also said she’s very excited to learn everything possible in the sciences – biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and even computer science -- to make new innovations possible. We are also very excited that you do, Angela. And Good luck!
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45571082/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/t/students-edge-innovation-win-prizes/#.T2znWMXy_nN

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57358994/calif-hs-student-devises-possible-cancer-cure/

The Strongest Material Known to Man

Don’t you feel excited when you’re able to take a glance at the future?  Materials made of carbon nanotubes give you some taste of it – and they’re coming to stay.  But what are these carbon nanotubes?

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are molecular-scale tubes of carbon atoms bonded together, and when I say “nano” I really mean small – they have been constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1, significantly larger than for any other material.  And that’s not even the most interesting part; what is really cool is what you can do with that.

We are talking about the strongest material yet discovered.  The hardness of the bulk modulus of superhard phase nanotubes is around 462 to 546 gigapascals (GPa), even higher than that of diamond (420 GPa for single diamond crystal).  The stiffness of the best nanotubes can be as high as 1000 GPa which is approximately 5x higher than steel.  The tensile strength, or breaking strain of nanotubes can be up to 63 GPa, around 50x higher than steel, and it also has several other properties like kinetic (an inner nanotube core may slide, almost without friction, within its outer nanotube shell), electrical (multi walled carbon nanotubes with interconnected inner shells show superconductivity), wave absorption (specially microwaves), thermal (good conductors) and others.  Ok, but in the real world, what are the applications of these CNTs?

Current use and application of nanotubes goes from bicycles components to tissue engineering, but their potential reaches from civil engineering to space elevators – Nasa is offering prizes of over $1 million to whoever can come up with materials to make it happen and revolutionize the industry of space tourism trips.

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_stage_innovation/centennial_challenges/tether/index.html

Unfortunately, we can’t yet produce CNTs materials in a scale to do it so; the observation of the longest carbon nanotubes was reported in 2009 of being astonishing 18.5 cm long, but don’t be sad: the good thing about the future is that it keeps turning into present.

Let's Not Talk About It

What’s your religion? Show me someone who has never heard that question before…

People have an enormous need to classify others – it isn’t enough to classify by color, gender or physical attributes; there must be something else to point a finger at.

Religious people always preach that God exists, no matter which (religion or God) one, but that’s another story. Atheists always preach that there is no God at all, and the majority of them base themselves using science as arguments – for science is efficient and based on empirical facts. So, let’s get started.

Can Christians (for instance) prove that God exists? Can they say that there is empirical proof of it, that God has actually saved their lives or something like it? Can they use an equation to prove that there is a force that rules everything and everyone?

Can Atheists prove the possibility of a superior force as not viable? That is because, from my point of view, in order to say that something is possible you better prove it; nevertheless, saying the opposite also demands a reasonable explanation. There are also the Agnostic, subsidiaries of Atheism that prefer not to get involved in deeper conflicts and do not really care for either the question or the answer. If you ask me, as I don’t stand for any specific belief, I am agnostic, in case you want to label me with something: I don’t care.

So, let’s start from premises and develop the reasoning. In order to prove or refute the existence of God first there needs to be considered the existence of distinct religions, and therefore, distinct deities. As the aforementioned deities are forged under different concepts and behave differently as well, that leaves us with two possibilities: they are either true different forces or it is one and only force that is misinterpreted – and there comes the human factor – through various cultures.

However, there is one fact in common: God is a concept, an explanation, a theory. At this particular point religion and science are alike, and it’s worth reminding that they both used to be unwieldingly tangled at the origins of the history of human thinking under the shape of mythologies, and lately, philosophy, which unfolded into the other sciences with the natural evolutional pace of knowledge gathering. As it is a concept we have to know that, after its creation, it cannot be undone or erased, even though it does not exist in the material plan. It’s an idea.

You may say that a unicorn doesn’t exist – although I am pretty sure that you would be able to describe one with precision; that’s because it is an idea fully accepted without any objection. I, at least, have never heard of anyone arguing that the unicorn should have the horn in the butt or anything like it. What is the function of a unicorn? To inhabit people’s minds. Can it be described? Yes. Does it aspire to live galloping among the rodeo horses that we see around? No. As a concept, we can claim it fulfills its purpose and it is as viable as part of theoretical physics that discusses events that can’t yet be proven. “Oh, but in the future we are going to be able to prove the existence of supercords”, you’d say; I ask you then: can you affirm that a mutation that gives horns to horses is never going to be possible, not even if by whim, in laboratory, through advances in genetic engineering?

What I am trying to explain is that a theory, by itself, has life and possibilities, but it is our choice to accept it or not. Yes; there are aspects of science that are irrefutable like the fact that Earth is elliptical and not flat, but some other subjects must be accepted as concepts. Nobody knows exactly what anti-matter looks like, but it is widely believed nowadays that half of the universe is made of it. Is it correct to say that anti-matter doesn’t exist because it’s only theoretical? Or even disbelieve it?

Using scientific reasoning, the possibility of some force that permeates and controls our existence can be proved mathematically; indeed, there are several forces that permeate and control our existence: gravity, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and electromagnetic force – and that’s only talking about the fundamental forces of physics, under the concept of force. However, if we plunge into metaphysic’s questions like “Why are we here” or “what’s the meaning of life”, we may find explanations in other disciplines as biology, chemistry, mathematics, or even by the chaos. Is it possible that everything is merely hap? Yes; who proves the opposite? Religious people? That would be ironic. Talking about irony, at last, I draw an ironic conclusion: regardless of all the collisions about Science versus God – encompassing all modern sciences in one word – apparently, they’re alike. Just think about it. And this useless quarrel maybe could be easily resolved by using one to explain the other. Why nobody does it? Now, THAT is a mystery…