:Reasonable Force

While initially being produced for video gaming applications, a new device that is purported to actually be able to read your brain has all kinds of other potential uses.

According to the above-linked AP article, the device, by Emotiv Systems, Inc., reads the brain’s electrical signals, allowing it to “detect emotions such as anger, excitement and tension, as well as facial expressions and cognitive actions like pushing and pulling objects.”

It will be interesting to see how accurate it is and what its response times are, but this device could conceivably be used for anything that can be interfaced through a computer.

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‘We have broken speed of light’ – Telegraph

According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.

However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons – energetic packets of light – travelled “instantaneously” between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.

I’m not sure exactly what this would mean, but it sounds pretty cool to a sci-fi geek. If what they claim is true (and if I understand what I’m reading), the only thing that has actually gone faster than light to this point is… well, light.

But that’s a start!

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I’m pretty excited about this breakthrough by researcher Marin Soljacic at MIT. He and his team have devised a method to transmit power wirelessly that should enable homes of the near future to forgo the usual sockets and cables that have become so essential to powering the myriad of devices we depend on everyday.

From an MIT press release:

Imagine a future in which wireless power transfer is feasible: cell phones, household robots, mp3 players, laptop computers, and other portable electronics capable of charging themselves without ever being plugged in, freeing us from that final, ubiquitous power wire. Some of these devices might not even need their bulky batteries to operate. A team from MIT’s Department of Physics, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN) has experimentally demonstrated an important step toward accomplishing this vision of the future. The team members are Andre Kurs, Aristeidis Karalis, Robert Moffatt, Prof. Peter Fisher, and Prof. John Joannopoulos (Francis Wright Davis Chair and Director of ISN), led by Prof. Marin Soljačić. Realizing their recent theoretical prediction, they were able to light a 60W light-bulb from a power source seven feet (more than 2 meters) away; there was no physical connection between the source and the appliance. The MIT team refers to their concept as “WiTricity” (as in Wireless Electricity). The work will be reported in the June 7 issue of Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science.

Think about it… wireless power! Awesome.

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In Singapore, scientists have created a means of transmitting tactile stimulation over the internet via a wireless “vibration jacket” that has been tested on chickens, according to an article at Reuters.com. They propose that their technology could be next used to fashion pajamas for children that would allow them to receive “cyberspace hugs” from traveling parents similarly equipped.

Does this thought give anybody else the willies? I mean, call me a cynic, but I find it hard to believe that this was the first thought of researchers sitting around thinking up uses for a technology that allows for virtual caresses.

With internet p***ography an already skyrocketing problem, it is not difficult at all to envision a cripplingly addictive phenomenon arising from people making use of such technology to enhance their online thrills.

Of course, gamers could also make use of body suits that would enhance the realism of their gameplay. Both potential uses bring to my mind the disturbing account of the Korean man who died after 50 hours of video-gaming in August of this past year.

Up until now, virtual reality has been mere hyperbole, used to describe electronic environments that could only be experiened in terms of sight and sound. Adding the sense of touch to that virtual world presents the potential for forms of escapism that I fear many will find tempting enough to forsake the real thing.

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Okay, I admit that I’m probably a bit too nationalistic when it comes to things like this, but I consider it a colossal embarassment that in order to keep sending men and materiel to the International Space Station some are proposing that we buy Russian spacecraft.

What ever happened to American ingenuity and know-how? What happened to the spirit that put American footprints on the moon before any others? Dagnabbit, I refuse to believe that the geniuses at NASA don’t have something else in their hip pocket that could provide a solution without sending up unsafe Shuttles.

Pay me no mind. I’m just disgustipated.

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While going through some boxes at the house a week or two ago I came across a manilla envelope from my childhood. On the front I had drawn a picture of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Bold, black text proclaimed the debut of “America’s First Re-usable Space Craft!” Inside the envelope, labeled “File 136″ (so identified as to simulate the existence of a vast file repository. I actually underlined the number “1″ on the envelope as a clandestine way of indicating to those with need-to-know that this was, in fact, file number 1 of 1), were newspaper clippings from the launch of the first shuttle.

Having grown up on a diet of Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas, I was ready for the future. Among the highlights of my youth were trips to the Kennedy Space Center and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I figured it was highly probable that I would be able to live on a big rotating ring in space one day, if not a domed colony on the moon or Mars.

Hey, I wasn’t alone in my enthusiasm and geekery. Drummer and lyricist Neil Peart of the rock band Rush apparently had caught the spirit as well when he penned Countdown for the group’s Signals album.

Also in the envelope were other clippings that had been added from a somber day in 1986. That was, of course, the day when Columbia’s sister ship, Challenger, sent its seven astronauts into eternity while I watched the television in my math classroom, turned on to treat us to the event of the launch. Educators nationwide were understandably proud that one of their own, teacher Christa McAuliffe, had joined the astronaut ranks for that trip, but that pride turned to horror when the craft exploded just over a minute into its launch.

If you had asked me that same day whether I would be willing to fly on a space shuttle I would have answered without hesitation, “Absolutely.” I figured the odds of something like that happening again were slim; certainly worth the risk for the thrill of seeing the earth from space.

I would still love to see that sight, but I would say, “No, thanks” to such an offer today. The shuttle was once hailed as the pinnacle of man’s engineering prowess. Now we are on the edge of our seats just to see if it can survive reentry. Space flight has always been fraught with dangers for astronauts, but should it really be this big of a question mark as we approach the year 2010?

A gentleman named Maciej Ceglowski has written a blog article called Rocket to Nowhere^* that explains what’s wrong with the shuttle, how it got that way, and why we should scrap it in order to devote more resources to truly productive enterprises. As someone who has almost unquestioningly assumed that we should be sending people not just to work in space, but to live in space, I confess I no longer think spaceflight is a very good expenditure of taxpayer resources, in its present form at any rate. At least, as Maciej points out, the unmanned missions are actually increasing our knowledge of the universe.

Meanwhile, while the Shuttle has been up on blocks, a wealth of unmanned probes has been doing exactly the kind of exploration NASA considers so important, except without the encumbrance of big hairless monkeys on board. And therein lies another awkward fact for NASA. While half the NASA budget gets eaten by the manned space program, the other half is quietly spent on true aerospace work and a variety of robotic probes of immense scientific value. All of the actual exploration taking place at NASA is being done by unmanned vehicles. And when some of those unmanned craft fail, no one is killed, and the unmanned program is not halted for three years.

Over the past three years, while the manned program has been firing styrofoam out of cannons on the ground, unmanned NASA and ESA programs have been putting landers on Titan, shooting chunks of metal into an inbound comet, driving rovers around Mars and continuing to gather a variety of priceless observations from the many active unmanned orbital telescopes and space probes sprinkled through the Solar System. At the same time, the skeleton crew on the ISS has been fixing toilets, debugging laptops, changing batteries, and speaking to the occasional elementary school over ham radio 8 .

While the author’s characterizations of the information obtained as “priceless” and “of immense scientific value” may be overstated, its value relative to the rewards of the manned program seems indisputable.

The article makes a convincing case for scrapping the Shuttle and ISS programs and suspending manned space missions until a clear mandate is issued and the budgetary resources are supplied to achieve it. In short, if we’re going to send people into space let’s do it right. Determine the task and design and build a craft that is optimized to achieve it. If the national interest isn’t served by that task, then let it be privately funded.

And much as it pains the sci-fi lover in me to say it… if there’s no compelling reason to put people up there then let’s keep them on the ground.

*(hat tip: IfElse)

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(hat tip: Drudge)

I find myself not believing this even as I link it. According to this report from Australian news service News.com.au, scientists in Pittsburgh have ended all life processes in dogs by replacing their blood with a near-freezing salt solution and successfully revived them with no ill effects after three hours.

Duing the procedure blood is replaced with saline solution at a few degrees above zero. The dogs’ body temperature drops to only 7C, compared with the usual 37C, inducing a state of hypothermia before death.

Although the animals are clinically dead, their tissues and organs are perfectly preserved.

Damaged blood vessels and tissues can then be repaired via surgery. The dogs are brought back to life by returning the blood to their bodies,giving them 100 per cent oxygen and applying electric shocks to restart their hearts.

Tests show they are perfectly normal, with no brain damage.

This work is being performed at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, but as of this writing their website only contains older information about their suspended animation program which brought subjects back after two hours, but with brain damage.

The Australian report claims they hope to be conducting trials on humans “within a year.”

The questions raised by this are profound. For one thing, if a human being can be brought back after showing no brain activity for hours… what does that mean for determining at which point to end life support for a family member for whom there seems no hope?

To get a little more bizarre in my thinking, assuming that humans do respond as well to this procedure as the dogs seem to have, is it possible that the soul could depart during suspension leaving an empty husk for something else to fill?

Sounds fanciful, doesn’t it? Shades of Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary.”

Then again, maybe we’ll just be able to save a lot of lives and solve the problem of human travel beyond our inner solar system. Should be interesting either way.

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You may not have caught it, but during SuperBowl XXXIX a commercial aired announcing a contest sponsored by Volvo and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

No, not Virgin Atlantic.

Virgin Galactic.

Strange name for a company, you might think. Not so strange when you know that the grand prize of this contest was a trip into space on the first commercial space ship. Granted, the word galactic still might be overreaching a bit considering that these first commercial flights will just barely be reaching space.

Still, I submitted my entry and would love to have been the winner. Not to be, however. At least not this time. There’ll be another contest from someone soon. Otherwise I just might have to start saving my $200,000 for a ticket!

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I’m creating a new category called Future Now to highlight stories like this one that bring the stuff of science fiction books and movies into the world of the really real.

There’s a hand lying on the blanket on Matt Nagle’s desk and he’s staring at it intently, thinking “Close, close,” as the scientists gathered around him look on. To their delight, the hand twitches and its outstretched fingers close around the open palm, clenching to a fist.

That’s the intro to the afore-linked article in the UK’s Guardian Unlimited about experiments that are successfully allowing patients with brain implants to control electronic devices from computer-linked televisions to robotic limbs.

The implications of brain-mapping technology like this are staggering. For starters, the potential boon to prosthetics is very exciting. Replacement limbs such as Luke Skywalker’s hand in The Empire Strikes Back are certainly not difficult to envision.

Experiments on monkeys have already revealed further possibilities:

In previous studies, his [Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University] team showed that when monkeys had their brains hooked up to robotic arms, they assimilated the arm, effectively making it their own. “Their brains actually incorporated the robotic arm by dedicating neuronal space to it. We want to see if the same thing happens in humans,” he adds. (emphasis mine)

That suggests that, given lots of time and work, human brains could actually learn to control not only replacement limbs, like prosthetics, but extra ones, bringing the image of a Doctor Octopus-like harness with utility limbs from the pages of comic book and film to reality.

Then, of course, there are the military applications. For all the skill that our fighter pilots currently possess, how much better would they be if their brains were integrated with a control system designed to respond to their thoughts? (Someone asked me why we, by which he meant me, always think of the destructive potential of new technologies first. I don’t know why. I’ve just always really loved the war toys.)

Of course, right now the experiments involve cutting a hole in your skull and tapping into the brain. This statement, while it may be pie-in-the-sky, sounds far more appealing:

Ultimately, Donoghue says there should be no need to connect cables to peoples’ heads to read their minds. Miniaturisation should bring smaller devices that can be powered through unbroken skin and transmit signals wirelessly from the brain to a processor worn on a belt that triggers the intended device.

Don’t think I’ll be signing up until we reach that point, thanks.

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