Nova Spivack – Minding the Planet

I have been thinking a lot recently about the distribution of prime numbers — in particular, I’ve been trying to figure out if there is a way to predict the sequence of gap sizes between primes. But anyway, in the course of that investigation I came across a really cool site about number spirals in [...]

This evening I had an interesting idea for a new way to look for patterns in the distribution of numbers such as the prime numbers and the digits of Pi. In a nutshell I propose that there may be patterns in these number sequences that might not be evident to a computer but could be [...]

NASA prepares to test its Hyper-X jet — a plane that can fly up to 7 times the speed of sound. Future passenger jets based on the technology could go from New York to London in less than 2 hours.

Evidence is mounting for the feasibility of desktop personal fusion. The technology is based on using ultrasound to generate and collapse explosive nanobubbles in a liquid, releasing light and heat. Temperatures inside the imploding bubbles reaches 10 million degrees.

Here is a really cool gallery of images of networks that you must see. Great stuff!

New research indicates that prolonged exposure to low-level magnetic fields such as those emitted by common household electronic devices causes DNA damage to rat brain cells. The research shows further that damage from brief exposures appears to build up cumulatively over time. Exposure to a 60-hertz field for 24 hours appears to result in significant [...]

Josh Kirschenbaum submitted this interesting link to some cool images from NASA of water balloons bursting in microgravity. Your tax dollars at work!

Researchers have come up with a new way to split water molecules, based on studying plants. This may provide a new way to produce hydrogen fuel.

I just found a really cool new fractal visualization based on the Mandelbrot set. A slight modification to the algorithm results in a Buddha-like image that is self-similar at every level of scale. Very nice. See this page for some very high quality visualizations from a very nice online Gallery of Computation that has a [...]

In a conversation today with my friend Bram, a really smart cosmologist, I suggested that maybe the universe is just the output of a software error in a high dimensional program — basically it’s just a big bug! The owner of the computer could at any time detect the bug and simply reboot — that [...]

I am having an interesting conversation with Howard Bloom, author, memeticist, historian, scientist, and social theorist. We have been discussing network models of the universe and the underlying “metapatterns” that seem to unfold at every level of scale. Below is my reply to his recent note, followed by his note which is extremely well written [...]

I have come across several references to Natasha in the last week. It seems to be a well-documented case of extra-sensory medical perception. This type of perception is not at all uncommon among Tibetan lamas and Chinese Taoists that I have studied with, and I have heard from friends who are close to Native American [...]

Hello all, I have been thinking about the general problems of social networks on the Internet. It occurs to me that these issues are closely related to digital physics. For more on digital physics see the work of Ed Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram, Norman Margolus, Tomasso Toffoli, and other pioneers of the field of cellular automata. [...]

Here’s an interesting follow-up thought on my suggestion of some Hypothetical Laws of Social Networks. What if in fact there is an entirely new way to design social networks, based on the mathematics of tilings? A tiling is a method of filling a space with geometric shapes. For example, you can tile a space with [...]

Paul Davies has put forth an interesting proposal for a one-way trip to Mar as the most cost-effective way to establish a permanent human presence on Mars. It’s a smart and novel idea.

A group of climatologists met recently in England to discuss how to save the Earth from global warming. Rather than actually doing something to stop the emission of greenhouse gasses — they proposed a giant space shield and a bunch of other insane ideas.

Here’s a wildly unexpected proposal that just popped into my brain: Humanity should intentionally contaminate Mars with Earth lifeforms — as soon as possible! The benefits vastly outweigh any concerns to the contrary. Indeed, it may be the smartest thing our species ever does. The first obvious benefit is that it will get Earth life [...]

NASA wisely buried this amazing full hi-res version of their now-famous color Mars image on their site because they are getting too many downloads to handle the load. But here it is — the full sized 8 megabyte color Mars image in all its glorious detail. It’s absolutely incredible!!! Like being there. Totally mind blowing. [...]

One of the many cool things about the Metaweb is that it functions as a vast bottom-up collaborative filtering system. RSS feeds represent perspectives of publishers. Because feed publishers can automatically or manually include content from other feeds they can “republish,” annotate and filter content. Every feed is effectively a switch, routing content to and [...]

Scientists have discovered that there are

After 160 years the first new technology to generate electricity has been announced. A novel nanotechnology technique for generating electricity has been discovered. It uses the movement of ordinary water! This could be a revolution.

More on the big news today — scientists hypothesize that the shape of space-time resembles that of a soccer ball. But wait — this brings up several BIG questions. First of all are they claiming that only SPACE is wrapped back on itself, or SPACE and TIME??? To understand the significance of this question consider [...]

Here’s an article about an interesting modern theory that purports to “prove” that “reality” is not just an illusion. It’s a bit of a complicated appeal to the basis of language, but makes some good points. However, I think there may be a fundamental flaw at the very root of the argument.

Does the universe loop back on itself? Is the universe laid out like a computer game? Read this article citing new evidence and experiments into the shape of space and time.

This is really cool — the idea is to use quantum entanglement to make holograms of things that cannot be seen easily. For example, suppose you have a sphere with a tiny hole in it. You create a pair of entangled laser beams — one goes into the sphere and bounces around. The other remains [...]